Arsenal v Chelsea: less money, more goals, better defence

 

 

 

By Bulldog Drummond

• From “Arteta doesn’t rotate” to “he rotates too much” in one week
• Apart from the results is any football reporting actually correct?

I quite enjoyed this from ESPN:

“According to the site Transfermarkt, Chelsea have spent €1.1 billion on transfer fees since summer 2022.  Arsenal have spent €421.34.”

So that has Chelsea spending over two and a quarter times the amount Arsenal have spent.   ESPN’s commentary is that “If you took all of the money that Boehly and the rest of Chelsea’s ownership have invested in just the fees necessary to get a player to break his contract with his previous team, turned it into pennies and stacked those pennies on top of each other, the resulting structure would be more than 150 times taller then Mount Everest.”

So, I think we can say that Chelsea haven’t really spent wisely especially if we compare the two teams current state of affairs.

 

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Arsenal	33	23	5	5	77	26	51	74
9	Chelsea	31	13	8	10	61	52	9	47
	Difference	-2	-10	+3	+5	-16	+26	-42	-27

 

So as we can see Chelsea have spent 225% the amount that Arsenal have spent but this season have…

• 56% of the victories Arsenal have
• 180% of the defeats that Arsenal have
• Scored 79% of the goals Arsenal have
• Conceded 186% of the goals Arsenal have
• 18% of the goal difference Arsenal have.

I’m not really sure that is good value for money.  But maybe there has been some progress.  Let’s have a look at where they are now compared to this moment last season:

 

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
3	Chelsea 2022	31	18	8	5	66	27	39	62
11	Chelsea 2023	31	10	9	12	30	33	-3	39
9	Chelsea 2024	31	13	8	10	61	52	9	47

 

So yes compared to last season, there has been real progress, for they are eight points better off, have scored 31 goals more but also conceded 19 goals more.  But of course, Chelsea have really declined since where they were in 2022 after 31 games.

But what about Arsenal?

In 2022 after 33 games Arsenal had 60 points.   In 2023 after 33 games Arsenal had 75 points.  And this season after 33 games Arsenal have 74 points.   So a huge leap forward from 2022 to 2023, and a fractional decline this year.  But thanks to a defence that has got ever more miserly the goal difference is 11 more than it was a year ago.

So both teams making progress, but while Chelsea are progressively moving up mid-table, Arsenal are progressively inching up to challenge at the very top.   Maybe this year, maybe not, but the movement is still in the right way.

And we might note, Arsenal are achieving all this by spending just 38% of what Chelsea has spent.

Surely this must be a lesson to those who keep on claiming that Arsenal must buy and must buy and must buy and …. well I am not sure what else they are saying.

But hang on a minute you might say, aren’t Chelsea doing quite well at the moment?    And yes, that is a fair point to make (if indeed you did make it).  For across the last six games the clubs are pretty close to Arsenal

 

Premier League Form (Last 6)

Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Manchester C	6	4	2	0	17	6	+11	14
2	Newcastle U	6	4	1	1	15	7	+8	13
3	Arsenal	6	4	1	1	9	3	+6	13
4	Chelsea	6	3	3	0	19	11	+8	12

 

But if we go back just a little further and look at the last ten matches the gap is somewhat larger.

 

Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Arsenal	10	8	1	1	30	4	+26	25
7	Chelsea	10	4	4	2	26	21	+5	16

 

So how can we resolve this?   Let’s try it with Arsenal at home against Chelsea away, taking into account just the last six games in each case…

 

Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Arsenal	6	5	0	1	16	5	+11	15
5	Chelsea	6	2	3	1	12	12	0	9

 

Indeed across the season as a whole Chelse have gained under half the number of points that Arsenal have accumulated at home.

Is there to be any redeeming factor for Chelsea?  Actually not much no matter how hard we look and no matter how many stones are turned.  If we go back through the last ten games between the two clubs, which takes us back to 29 December 2019 we have two wins for Chelsea, and six wins for Arsenal.

The one word of warning we can find is that the two Arsenal defeats were both at Arsenal’s ground – a 0-2 in December 2019 and a similar score in August 2021 – that being the season where Arsenal lost all three of the opening home league games in a row and were bottom of the league.

You’ll recall that there was a wholesale call for Arteta to be dismissed immediately.

One other little factor from these games from December 2019 onward: only three times has a team scored three or more goals. And each time, it was Arsenal.

 

Date	Match	Res	Score	Competition
26 Dec 2020	Arsenal v Chelsea	W	3-1	Premier League
20 Apr 2022	Chelsea v Arsenal	W	2-4	Premier League
02 May 2023	Arsenal v Chelsea	W	3-1	Premier League

 

And since this season Arsenal have scored 16 more goals in the league than Chelsea and conceded 26 goals fewer, we might look forward to some fun tomorrow night as well.