How Arsenal learned from PGMO and so climbed the table after Christmas

By Tony Attwood

In my reviews of this last season, I have made much of the fact that Arsenal cut their yellow card rate by almost half compared with the previous season, while cutting their tackling rate considerably.

But I wanted to go further and see how Arsenal’s figures compared both to Arsenal’s past record for tackles and yellow cards and how it compared with the rest of the traditional top six.   I also thought I would look at Leicester, because they had at one stage bucked the trend and gone in for tackling on an industrial scale.

Percentage of tackles that get a yellow card

In football – especially at the highest level, where players are highly trained expert athletes, clubs have a choice in the way that they play.

And as I have often said, last season, Arsenal went wholesale into the business of cutting tackles.  And they were not the only ones.  In fact the level of tackling in 2020/21 across the traditional top six, plus Leicester, was 40% lower than it was in 2015/16.

Indeed for Arsenal between 2015/16 and 2020/21 the decline has been even greater.  Last season we undertook 55% fewer tackles than in 2015/16.  A decline of over half in just five years.

Interestingly, the decline in tackling can be seen in all clubs – although not by the same amount.  Liverpool have led the way cutting tackling by 66%, Arsenal are second on 55%.  Tottenham, Leicester and Chelsea have all declined but by between 27 and 29%.

Tackling is interesting because the ratio of tackles to fouls is very low – normally about 1.2, so in essence if a team commits six tackles it will probably give away five fouls.  Not really worth doing in fact.

As if that were not bad enough, anything between 6% and 13% of tackles committed by the clubs I’ve been looking at (traditional top six and Leicester) result in a yellow card.  In short, almost all the time the other team gets a free kick and something around 10% of the time the player gets a yellow.  Tackles should in fact be abandoned, providing an alternative approach can be found.

Now Arsenal suffered from that problem with a vengeance in recent years because across recent years the number of tackles that turned into a yellow card has grown – until this last season when Mr Arteta put a stop to it.

Percentage of tackles that got a yellow card

	2015/16	2016/17	2017/18	2018/19	2019/20	2020/1
Arsenal	6%	10%	8%	12%	15%	6%
Chelsea	7%	10%	7%	8%	9%	8%
Leicester	5%	11%	8%	8%	9%	9%
Liverpool	7%	8%	7%	6%	7%	8%
Man C	8%	11%	10%	8%	12%	9%
Man U	9%	11%	11%	13%	13%	12%
Tottenham	9%	9%	8%	11%	12%	8%

If you look at the Arsenal line you will see that the percentage of Arsenal tackles that got a yellow card increased year on year from 2015/16 to 2019/20, so that by that year Arsenal every six or seven tackles would mean a yellow card.

This figure was frightening because a) no one knew how far PGMO would take this, and b) while all clubs were getting a higher percentage of yellow cards from tackles Arsenal figures were way in front of others.

So drastic measures were called for and Arsenal moved from having 15% of their tackles getting a yellow card down to 6%.  In fact they moved from having the highest percentage down to the lowest percentage in one season.  An amazing achievement, although the side-effect was a disastrous first third to the season (up to Christmas) as the players came to terms with the new approach.

In fact all the seven clubs in our analysis have cut their tackling across the years, as they have all been perfectly aware of what game PGMO is playing with the rules.   But two clubs stand out way above the rest in this move.

Figures in brown are the lowest in the column, figures in black the highest.

	2015/16	2016/17	2017/18	2018/19	2019/20	2020/1	Decline
Arsenal	709	673	623	609	584	456	55%
Chelsea	790	652	636	618	638	612	29%
Man U	760	690	564	581	580	551	38%
Man C	729	643	563	518	514	498	46%
Liverpool	871	719	637	610	550	526	66%
Tottenham	805	661	618	626	665	636	27%
Leicester	869	677	630	676	742	681	28%
Total tackles	5533	4715	4271	4238	4723	3960	40%

The bottom line of that table (total tackles) shows how tackles have declined for these seven clubs by 40% over the six years.  The last column on the right (Decline) shows how much the club has reduced its tackling between 2015/16 and 2020/21.

Liverpool have cut their tackling by two thirds, and Arsenal by just over half.

Further  in the last two seasons we have seen the gap between the tackling sides (Leicester, Tottenham and Chelsea) and the seriously non-tackling sides (Liverpool and Arsenal) widen.  In these six years Arsenal and Liverpool have cut their tackling by over half, Chelsea, Tottenham and Leciester on the other hand by just under a quarter.

One tactical change, meaning that Arsenal now get far fewer yellow cards and give away far fewer free kicks to the opposition.

Ignored by most commentators of course, because, well, this is Arsenal, and besides most commentators think that fans are far to stupid to understand statistics.

Arsenal against the Media

• The challenge facing Arsenal fans is to disregard the fairytale and follow the facts
• If this is an explosive rant from Arteta I’m a Martian
• Arsenal are once again a top four club, and the figures since Xmas prove it
• Arsenal are back to being a top four club – so why change the defence?
• How the media is trying to destroy Arsenal: the perfect example
• Proof that the media is inventing statistics to show there’s no ref bias.
• How one journalist decided to turn the truth about Arsenal upside down.
• Why the media is always so negative about Arsenal
• Are we unique in doing so well after Christmas, and why 8 goals would sort it
• The four reasons why are the media so very much against Arsenal
• Have Arsenal always been a team of two halves?
• And so the anti-Arsenal tales continue, but here is the truth…