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By Bulldog Drummond.
On Thursday Arsenal play the second leg of their Europa League battle with Sporting Clube Portugal (also still known in some quarters as Sporting Lisbon), having drawn the first leg 2-2 away. There is a video of the highlights here.
Looking back over the past few days we find that on Sunday 12 March Sporting beat Boavista at home 3-0. On the same day Arsenal beat Fulham away 0-3. It looks like a certain amount of similarity.
Except that Boavista were not the toughest of opponents. Here’s the Portuguese league table for the last 10 games in the 18 club league table.
| Pos | Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Benfica | 10 | 9 | 1 | 0 | 24 | 3 | 21 | 28 |
| 2 | Porto | 10 | 8 | 1 | 1 | 19 | 7 | 12 | 25 |
| 3 | Braga | 10 | 8 | 0 | 2 | 22 | 10 | 12 | 24 |
| 4 | Sporting Lisbon | 10 | 7 | 1 | 2 | 20 | 8 | 12 | 22 |
| 13 | Boavista | 10 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 12 | 15 | -3 | 10 |
| 17 | Estoril-Praia | 10 | 2 | 0 | 8 | 7 | 17 | -10 | 6 |
Now no one is suggesting that Boavista is a relegation-threatened team. It is the 17th and 18th placed clubs in that league go down, and Estoril-Praia although still only 14th overall seem to be sinking fast in recent matches. But even so Boavista are for the moment a mid-table team.
But back to Sporting Lisbon. They are not just six points behind Benfica over the last ten games, they are 15 points behind across the whole season of 24 games. The conclusion, without going deeply into the maths, is that there is a consistently widening gap between Sporting Lisbon and Benfica.
In short, Sporting Lisbon are a fourth-placed team, playing in the league as a fourth-place team and showing all the signs of ending up fourth in the league by the end of the season in Portugal.
So let’s compare Arsenal and Sporting Lisbon across the last ten games for each club – and what we find is that the records are nearly identical. Arsenal have scored two more and conceded three more than Sporting. Otherwise everything really is the same – except the quality of the opposition.
| Pos | Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Arsenal | 10 | 7 | 1 | 2 | 22 | 11 | 11 | 22 |
| 4 | Sporting Lisbon | 10 | 7 | 1 | 2 | 20 | 8 | 12 | 22 |
The difference for the two clubs of course is in the quality of teams that each club plays. Sporting’s previous match was a 0-1 away win against Portimonense who are 14th in the league with a goal difference of -16. Arsenal’s last game was against Fulham who are eighth in a much tougher league – even though Arsenal made the whole process against Fulham look extraordinarily easy.
So let’s compare the full season’s table including home and away games, rather than just the last 10 games.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | PPG | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal | 27 | 21 | 3 | 3 | 62 | 25 | +37 | 66 | 2.44 |
| 4 | Sporting Lisbon | 24 | 16 | 2 | 6 | 49 | 23 | +26 | 50 | 2.08 |
Now we can see the difference. Arsenal are playing in a tougher league and picking up 0.36 points per game more than Sporting.
We can also compare home vs away and this is where the big difference emerges.
| Pos | Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | PPG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Arsenal home | 13 | 10 | 2 | 1 | 34 | 16 | 18 | 32 | 2.46 |
| 4 | Sporting Lisbon away | 12 | 6 | 2 | 4 | 17 | 16 | +1 | 20 | 1.67 |
Arsenal’s points per game in the Premier League is 2.46 and Sporting’s points per game away is 1.67. If we then compare the goal scoring of each team, Arsenal at home are scoring around two goals for every one goal of Sporting away, while the goals against are the same.
This is suggesting a 2-1 win for Arsenal, and given the first leg was drawn Arsenal will go through overall, as expected. And that is without taking into account that the Premier League is generally a much tougher league than the Portuguese league.
Moving on we might also consider that Arsenal qualified for the Europa last season by coming fifth as you will recall.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Manchester City | 38 | 29 | 6 | 3 | 99 | 26 | 73 | 93 |
| 2 | Liverpool | 38 | 28 | 8 | 2 | 94 | 26 | 68 | 92 |
| 3 | Chelsea | 38 | 21 | 11 | 6 | 76 | 33 | 43 | 74 |
| 4 | Tottenham Hotspur | 38 | 22 | 5 | 11 | 69 | 40 | 29 | 71 |
| 5 | Arsenal | 38 | 22 | 3 | 13 | 61 | 48 | 13 | 69 |
That league position showed Arsenal last season with 1.82 points per game. (This season Arsenal are on 2.46). Last season Sporting got 2.50 points per game this season they are on 2.08 points per game.
Thus Arsenal’s points per game this season has gone up by 0.64 points per game. While Sporting’s points per game this season has gone down by 0.42 points per game.
Stats like these suggest once more that Arsenal should get the victory and move on to the next round.
