Another weekend goes by. Another example of why penalties can be so crucial.

By Nitram

This is a follow-up to my article on the 7th of January: The last three and a half years and the very remarkable statistic, which delved into, amongst other things, the extraordinary penalty statistics that Arsenal have been up against these past 10 years.

To start with, I have to say, it does rankle with me a bit when people say we ‘shouldn’t need to rely on penalties’, because nobody has said we should. All I, and I assume every other right-thinking Arsenal fan wants is a fair crack of the whip. We clearly do not get that as I demonstrated in my previous article, and as was clearly demonstrated again this past weekend.

As a brief recap, these are the penalty stats involving our 3 closest rivals over the past 10 years, showing the TEAM, penalties FOR and penalties AGAINST

As you can see, Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea all get at least double the number of penalties for’ as ‘against’ that we get. We receive about the same for each. If we had that same ratio we should of received 102 penalties.

Put another way, to have a similar ratio to our immediate rivals we should have been the recipient of another FIFTY penalties over the last ten years. Or five a season. How many points may that of equated to?

In a league of such fine margins as the Premier League, these things are crucial.

But what we saw on Saturday was a perfect example of what I talk about so often. Those 40/60, 50/50, 60/40 calls that so often go against us, and do go for our top rivals, especially Liverpool.

If I’m honest, I can see why our penalty shout MAY not have been given, as I can see why Liverpool’s may have been. They are both subjective calls after all.

But, nonetheless, with that subjectivity ours weighed heavily in favour of it being given, Liverpool’s could have gone either way. I would say in our case that would have been given four times out of five. Maybe more.

Liverpool’s calls were perhaps more 50/50. So an 80/20 call that still went against us, and a 50/50 call that went in favour of Liverpool! Both are perfect examples of what so often happens, and precisely why our penalty stats are so skewed in comparison to Liverpool, and the like. The fact Liverpool missed their penalty is really neither here nor there, because nine times out of 10 they would have scored, and it would have earned them another 2 points.

In other words, this was a weekend where Liverpool would usually have gained two points on the back of being awarded, let’s say, a ‘soft’ penalty, whilst Arsenal lost two points because of being denied, what shall we say, a ‘certain’ penalty.

There could have been a four-point swing to Liverpool in one afternoon on the back of penalty decisions.

No, neither Arsenal or Liverpool, nor any of the other top teams for that matter, should ‘rely’ on penalties, but they are part of the game. A very important part of the game. All top teams win games on the back of them.

It’s just that Arsenal get far fewer chances to do so than Liverpool, Manchester City and Chelsea, to name but three.