Key Data Tables 2020/21 – Untold Arsenal: Supporting the club, the manager and the team

Compiled by Tony Attwood

In 2020/1 we began to realise that something curious was happening to Arsenal. Something none of us had ever seen before. So as ever we went searching for the statistics.

We started with the home/away statistics which show that the percentage of points won by away teams dramatically increased when there was no crowd, despite others saying this never happened.

Season	Home percentage of points	Away percentage of points
2018/19	57%	43%
2019/20	58%	42%
2020/21	44%	56%

After that we really set to work and this page contains some of the main data sets that we found and which have influenced our view of what happened in 2020/21 – and why it is important to make this public.

This data is not complete yet – we have some more to add, but this might interest you even without the next set of information.

Table 1: the first 14 games of the 2020/21 season. 14 games is an interesting dividing line since it took us up to Christmas Day. Here is how the league table looked on entering the holiday season.

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Liverpool	14	9	4	1	36	19	17	31
2	Everton	14	8	2	4	25	19	6	26
3	Tottenham Hotspur	13	7	4	2	25	12	13	25
4	Leicester City	13	8	0	5	24	17	7	24
5	Southampton	14	7	3	4	25	19	6	24
6	Manchester City	13	6	5	2	19	12	7	23
7	Manchester United	12	7	2	3	22	19	3	23
8	Chelsea	13	6	4	3	26	14	12	22
9	West Ham United	13	6	3	4	21	16	5	21
10	Wolverhampton Wanderers	13	6	2	5	13	17	-4	20
11	Aston Villa	11	6	1	4	21	13	8	19
12	Newcastle United	13	5	3	5	17	22	-5	18
13	Crystal Palace	14	5	3	6	19	25	-6	18
14	Leeds United	13	5	2	6	22	24	-2	17
15	Arsenal	14	4	2	8	12	18	-6	14
16	Brighton and Hove Albion	13	2	5	6	15	21	-6	11
17	Fulham	14	2	4	8	13	23	-10	10
18	Burnley	12	2	4	6	6	18	-12	10
19	West Bromwich Albion	13	1	4	8	10	26	-16	7
20	Sheffield United	13	0	1	12	7	24	-17	1

Arsenal were four point above the relegation places with four of the five teams below them having at least one game in hand over Arsenal. If Brighton and Burnley won their games in hand, Arsenal would be down to 17th.

The media made much of that – far more in fact than the commented upon what happened in the remaining 24 games of the season. Here is the league table of last 24 games of the season. For ease of reading I’ve just included the top eight clubs

P	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Manchester City	24	20	0	4	62	20	42	60
2	Arsenal	24	14	5	5	43	21	22	47
3	Manchester United	24	13	8	3	43	21	22	47
4	West Ham United	24	13	5	6	41	28	13	44
5	Chelsea	24	12	6	6	29	22	7	42
6	Leicester City	24	11	6	7	42	33	9	39
7	Liverpool	24	11	5	8	32	23	9	38
8	Tottenham Hots	24	11	4	9	43	31	12	37

So that’s part one: Arsenal were poor in the first third of 2020/21 but superb in the last two thirds of the season.

Part two: finding out what was going wrong

Even the briefest of looks at the profiles of referees who oversaw Arsenal games in 2020/21 will reveal two factors.

First is the fact that while some referees just undertook one game involving Arsenal, other refs took control of Arsenal three, four or even five times.

This of course is not permissible in some leagues, where no referee can oversee any club more than twice – it is a basic way of stopping corruption. But this doesn’t apply in the Premier League.

Arsenal got an average of 1.24 cards per game last season. But as we can see, four of the five referees who oversaw Arsenal games the most (all having 3+ Arsenal games in the season) were referees who awarded above average yellow cards against Arsenal.

The only saving grace was that Mike Dean who gave out three yellows in his one Arsenal game, only had one Arsenal game. Even for the lackadaisical PGMO, this was too obvious.

Referee	Games	Fouls awarded against Arsenal per game	Yellow cards against Arsenal per game
1.Michael Oliver	5	11.60	1.40
2.Martin Atkinson	4	7.75	1.00
3.Chris Kavanagh	3	11.33	1.67
4.Craig Pawson	3	9.33	2.33
5.Andre Marriner	3	10.67	1.67
6.Paul Tierney	2	8.00	1.00
7.Anthony Taylor	1	8.00	0.00
8.Jonathan Moss	1	11.00	2.00
9.Kevin Friend	1	6.00	2.00
10.Graham Scott	1	5.00	2.00
11.David Coote	1	9.00	0.00
12.Stuart Attwell	1	8.00	0.00
13.Lee Mason	1	3.00	0.00
14.Mike Dean	1	12.00	3.00
Average			1.24 cards per game

The conclusion was clear. PGMO would give Arsenal games to referees who gave out an above average number of yellow cards to Arsenal players while clubs are not allowed to question referees in any way.

So what could Arsenal do?

Arsenal’s management decided to stop having fouls given against them all the time, since it harmed the flow of their game. To do this they had to reduce the number of tackles they deployed. The logic was fewer tackles = fewer fouls against = fewer yellow cards.

These figures are for the whole season, although the bulk of the change came in the last two thirds of the season as the players got used to the new arrangement.

Tackles down 22%
Fouls down 18%
Yellow cards down 45%

Team	Tackles 2019/0	Tackles 2020/1	+/-	Fouls 2019/0	Fouls 2020/1	+/-	Yellow 2019/0	Yellow 2020/1	+/-
Arsenal	584	456	-22%	421	345	-18%	86	47	-45%
Aston Villa	523	530	+1%	451	439	-3%	68	63	-7%
Brighton & HA	641	628	-2%	385	427	+10%	57	46	-19%
Burnley	547	507	-7%	412	384	-7%	67	48	-28%
Chelsea	638	612	-4%	386	433	+12%	60	50	-17%
Crystal Palace	686	636	-7%	425	409	-4%	62	54	-13%
Everton	671	640	-5%	472	386	-18%	70	59	-16%
Leicester City	742	681	-8%	418	416	0%	41	61	+49%
Liverpool	550	526	-4%	331	396	+19%	38	40	+5%
Manchester C	514	498	-3%	361	361	0%	60	46	-23%
Manchester U	580	551	-5%	433	452	+4%	73	64	-12%
Newcastle U	603	512	-17%	370	388	+5%	66	61	-8%
Sheffield United	611	634	+4%	410	459	+12%	61	73	+20%
Southampton	706	727	+3%	450	426	-5%	53	52	0%
Tottenham Hot	665	636	-4%	423	439	+4%	82	53	-35%
West Ham U	696	514	-26%	387	374	-3%	62	48	-23%
Wolverhampton	646	588	-9%	406	425	+5%	57	53	-7%

Of course Arsenal were not alone

17 out of 20 clubs cut their tackling, but Arsenal did it the most.
7 out of 20 clubs cut their fouling, but Arsenal cut theirs the most
13 out of the 20 clubs reduced their yellow card rate, but Arsenal cut theirs the most.

As you may know, newspapers, TV and radio stations never comment on referee performances aside from the occasional “I think he’s got that one wrong” comments. Statistics of refereeing are absolutely not allowed in media reports.

So Arsenal did what others were doing, but they did it more and they did it better, and in the end they cut the number of free kicks and yellow cards against them. Which led to the rise up the league in the last two thirds of the season.

As for why no one else will run these figures and simple analyses – we will come back to that in another piece..

Next we look at fouls committed and fouls received.

Team	Played	Total fouls by team	Fouls per game by team	Total fouls by opposition	Fouls per game by opposition	Fouls committed / Fouls endured (%)
Arsenal	38	345	9.08	421	11.08	81.95
Aston Villa	38	439	11.55	567	14.92	77.43
Brighton and Hove	38	427	11.24	376	9.89	113.56
Burnley	38	384	10.11	403	10.61	95.29
Chelsea	38	433	11.39	377	9.92	114.85
Crystal Palace	38	409	10.76	438	11.53	93.38
Everton	38	386	10.16	409	10.76	94.38
Fulham	38	484	12.74	387	10.18	125.06
Leeds United	38	427	11.24	432	11.37	98.84
Leicester City	38	416	10.95	440	11.58	94.55
Liverpool	38	396	10.42	355	9.34	111.55
Manchester City	38	361	9.5	389	10.24	92.8
Manchester United	38	452	11.89	411	10.82	109.98
Newcastle United	38	388	10.21	432	11.37	89.81
Sheffield United	38	459	12.08	304	8	150.99
Southampton	38	426	11.21	438	11.53	97.26
Tottenham Hotspur	38	439	11.55	494	13	88.87
West Bromwich A	38	404	10.63	430	11.32	93.95
West Ham United	38	374	9.84	367	9.66	101.91
Wolverhampton W	38	425	11.18	404	10.63	105.2

Finally our figures from the Football Observatory

The CIES Football Observatory rates players on a match-by-match basis by “taking into account the pitch production and efficiency at both individual and collective level” (methodology) while using data from OptaPro.

It is interesting that in the past some British journalists have themselves proclaimed that Opta is the only usable source of reliable data, but now, oddly, they have suddenly shied away from Opta. Just at the moment it shows how incredibly well Arsenal players are doing!

Their monthly analysis shows player rankings for games played at big-5 league level over four different time periods: last week, last month, last three months and last six months, obviously only including players who have played in enough games to have a suitable level of statistics available.

For the last month their ranking includes these players – rating the best players for the last month of the season.