Palace due for a long wait before beating Arsenal again

by Bulldog Drummond

Continuing our review of the stats from games this season, Palace have 38 yellow cards this season (Arsenal have 27) and neither club has had a player sent off yet.

But they are third in the table when it comes to tackles – they undertake 18.1 tackles per game – only Chelsea and Huddersfield get more tackles in. (Arsenal are 16.2 per game).

Where they do work hard is on interceptions – they make 13.9 per game, and only one team does more – which is Everton.  Which overall suggests that working on interceptions is not necessarily the best game plan.

Curiously both sides are equal when it comes to fouls per game – 10.9.  The worst offender in the league is Everton, followed by Watford, West Brom and Manchester United.  What they don’t do is go in for a game of catching the opposition off side – on average it only happens 1.5 times per game – the third lowest in the league.

However they do go down for fouls a lot – Palace have got more fouls recorded against them than any other team except West Ham and Bournemouth.

Anyway, since we have two long term managers on show today, I thought it might be interesting to do a comparison between Roy Hodgson and Arsène Wenger in terms of what they have achieved.  These figures come from Wikipedia.

First Roy Hodgson

Team	From	To	Record
			P	W	D	L	Win %
Bristol City	3 January 1982	30 April 1982	21	3	5	13	14.3
Malmö	14 April 1985	15 November 1989	165	98	38	29	59.4
Blackburn Rov	1 June 1997	21 November 1998	63	22	18	23	34.9
Udinese	21 June 2001	10 December 2001	17	7	5	5	41.2
Viking	11 July 2004	20 December 2005	50	23	11	16	46.0
Fulham	30 December 2007	1 July 2010	128	50	32	46	39.1
Liverpool	1 July 2010	8 January 2011	31	13	9	9	41.9
West Bromwich	14 February 2011	14 May 2012	54	20	13	21	37.0
England	14 May 2012	27 June 2016	56	33	15	8	58.9
England U21	13 August 2013	13 August 2013	1	1	0	0	100.0
Crystal Palace	12 Sept 2017	Present	17	5	6	6	29.4
Total			602	275	152	175	45.7%

Arsène Wenger’s record is easier to get as he has managed many fewer clubs…

Team	From	To	Record
			P	W	D	L	Win %
AS Nancy	1 July 1984	1 July 1987	114	33	30	51	28.9
AS Monaco	1 July 1987	17 Sept 1994	266	130	53	83	48.9
Grampus Eight	1 February 1995	30 Sept 1996	87	49	4	34	56.3
Arsenal	1 October 1996	Present	1,204	693	275	236	57.6
Total			1,671	905	362	404	54.2

As manager of England Hodgson got a win percentage of 58.9% – something he only beat during his spell at Malmo where he got a win percentage of 59.4%.  However of a massively greater number of games Mr Wenger has got a win percentage of 57.6% at Arsenal.  At Palace Hodgson’s record is 29.4%.

Mr Hodgson did get Fulham to be runners’ up in the Europa league in 2010, and is also Knight, First Class of the Order of the Lion of Finland which sounds like fun.   Mr Wenger is a member of the National Order of the Legion of Honour as established by Napoléon Bonaparte which sounds like less fun.

Crystal Palace have only beaten Arsenal four times across the years – the first match was back in 1934 in the FA Cup (we won 7-0) but league games didn’t start until 1969.

Palace won a league cup match against Arsenal in 1970 which was followed by six games without them winning another (they beat us again in 1979).  Then there was a 13 match run in which they didn’t win a game until they won a league game in 1994.

Then there was a 14 match run until that awful 3-0 defeat in April this year. So if the pattern holds it should be about another six years or so before they beat us again, assuming that they don’t go down.

That 3-0 win of theirs in April was their biggest win against us, and just their third league win.  Our last decent sized win was a 5-1 in 2005.    Arsenal have only failed to score in two of their last 19 league games against Crystal Palace – the 0-3 loss last season and a 0-0 draw at Selhurst Park in October 1997.

So the teams…

Something along these lines if we want an attacking formation in the 4-3-3 mould…

Cech,

Bellerin, Mustafi, Koscielny, Maitland-Niles

Xhaka

Wilshere      Iwobi

Ozil       Lacazette   Alexis

 

A variation on the use of the same players could be

Cech,

Bellerin, Mustafi, Koscielny, Maitland-Niles,

Wilshere              Xhaka

Iwobi           Ozil           Alexis

Lacazette

If however we go over to three central defenders then I would expect Kolasinac to replace Maitland-Niles.   Overall the rest of the squad who are available looks like this…

Ospina, Mertesacker, Holding, Chambers, Debuchy, Nelson, Kolasinac, Coquelin, Elneny, Ozil, Iwobi, Welbeck, Walcott.   That would mean a beach of something like this…

Ospina,  Holding, Debuchy, Kolasinac, Coquelin,, Welbeck, Walcott.

Or something along those lines.

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