- What more can be said about ManC before the game v Arsenal?
- Manchester City v Arsenal: the games no one will tell you about
By Bulldog Drummond
There is an article available today which has the line in it reading Manchester United specialise in not doing as well as might be expected And the question arises “expected by whom?” Probably the journalists, because most Manchester United supporters I talked with this summer were pretty downcast about the way things were going.
Mind you a lot of the time so were Arsenal supporters – or at least those who believed the media propaganda that having scored more goals last season than any Arsenal team for about 60 years the club needed urgently to buy a new centre forward. Just because the media said so.
But then of course the media don’t like to take into account the action of the bankrupt PGMO, who if it were any other company would now have been put into liquidation. But this is football, and this is the English media.
So we press on. All figures below are per game, figures from WhoScored.
| Tackles | Fouls | Yellows | |
| Tottenham | 21 | 12 | 2.75 |
| Arsenal | 18.3 | 13.8 | 2.00 |
| Manchester City | 14.3 | 6.3 | 1.5 |
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The yellow card figures are for “yellows for fouls” only. If we look at all yellow cards for the three clubs that would be 3.25 for Tottenham 2.75 for ARsenal and 2.00 for Manchester City, per game. So whichever way we look at it that would mean that thus far Manchester City have got a better grip on handling referees than the north London teams. Maybe they are just good at tackling, or just maybe no referee wants to wave cards at Manchester City players until we know the outcome of the 115 legal cases against the club. That is certainly possible.
Incidentally, we might also note that tackling is very much an English thing. Half of the 20 clubs putting in the most tackles in the major leagues in Europe are Premier League clubs.
But let us look at the ratios…
| Club | Tackles per foul | Tackles per yellow | Fouls per yellow |
| Tottenham | 1.75 | 7.64 | 4.36 |
| Arsenal | 1.33 | 9.15 | 6.9 |
| Manchester City | 2.27 | 9.53 | 4.2 |
Immediately we can see that Arsenal are very much on the right track at the moment. It is true that Arsenal are more likely to get a tackle called as a foul than the other two clubs – and of course we knew that just by the number of fouls being called against Arsenal.
At the moment Arsenal are struggling to get any tackles seen as anything other than a foul. In fact, Manchester City can put in 71% more tackles than Arsenal before a foul is called. This may well be because Arsenal are putting in tackels as a first resort, the moment the opposition get the ball. They get a foul given against them but all that does is give Arsenal’s defence a chance to get back in position and for White to do his thing in annoying the opposition before the free kick is taken.
But because these tackles are higher up the pitch they are not nearly so likely to be seen as worthy of a yellow. Thus Arsenal and ManC are able to put in roughly the same number of tackles before a card is waved.
But the big benefit of the approach, aside from disrupting attacks before they get going is that Arsenal can get away with many more fouls before a yellow card is waved – 43% more than Manchester City for example.
Of course, this raises the question of why in this case Arsenal are getting so many yellow cards overall. The fact is that Arsenal are picking up cards for what are called by WhoScored “other” reasons. This weird category shows Chelsea, Manchester United, and Newcastle on five yellow for “other” reasons and Bournemouth, Fulham, Arsenal and Everton on four cards for this mysterious category.
Last season Arsenal were running at half the level of Chelsea in this “other” category. However, even so last season Arsenal got ten more yellow cards than Manchester City and almost all of these were accounted for by the “other” category.
Undoubtedly having this vague category which cannot be examined further (it is simply “other”) is of great help to PGMO whose officials can thus hand out cards which cannot be examined in statistical form.
Last season the overall total of yellow cards for all reasons for key teams was 105 for Chelsea, 89 for Tottenham, 62 for Arsenal, and 52 for Manchester City.
On current form the figures will be by the end of the season 171 for Chelsea, 124 for Tottenham, 104 for Arsenal and 76 for Manchester City and these are very extreme numbers. Whether Arsenal are committing 37% more offences worthy of a yellow card than ManC is a little hard to tell, but so far I would have my doubts.
There is no manipulation. And refs are not waiting till after the 115 case, that is plain silly.
Even the most cursory viewing of city and Arsenal this season shows us are far more robust in tackling than last year. Clearly a change from the ‘no tackle’ tactic supposedly adopted to reduce yellows.
As for fans moaning about wanting a striker, of which you are constantly dismissive, this need is repeatedly highlighted in big games. This past couple of weeks have clearly shown it.
Concerning the need for a striker, I would sooner take the 38 games of last seson, rather than four games of this sesaon, as evidence.