- Arsenal v Leverkusen, tuesday at 8pm. How the opposition are doing
- Why we should encourage the talk that Arsenal have cheated their way to the top
By Tony Attwood
Arsenal have played Bayer Leverkusen in the Champions League on three occasions – twice in 2002 and once just recently on 11 March. The first and last of these were 1-1 draws, but the game in between, played on 27 February 2002, saw Arsenal knock up a very decent 4-1 victory.
Now as we all know, Arsenal won all eight of their preliminary group games, as so obviously came out top of the league. Leverkusen however, went into the next knockout round, and so have played two more games than Arsenal in the competition this season.
Even with this advantage of playing extra games Lverkusen have still not equalled Arsenal’s record, Arsenal winning eight to Leverkusen’s four wins in CL games. Arsenal have thus far scored 24 to the opposition’s 16. And in terms of goals against, Arsenal also come out on top, having conceded five to their 15.
What is particularly interesting, however, is that Leverkusen have a higher level of accuracy in terms of passing (88% for them, 86% for Arsenal) in Champions League matches, but I suspect this figure is quite heavily influenced by them incorporating in their approach a fair number of short-range, simple back-and-forth passes across the defence.
But if we really want to see a difference between the two teams, it occurs when measuring the distances the teams have covered. Arsenal players have covered 467km, while the opposition players have moved 224km. And we have to remember that they have played two more games in the Champions League this – all of which suggsts Arsenal players are fitter.
On the cards front, in Europe Arsenal have 22 yellows and the opposition tomorrow have only 17 – and with that we have to remember they have played two games more than Arsenal!. But then, if we look at red cards, Arsenal have picked up none, and they have seen two red cards waved at their players.
Moving on, this is where we look for any nasty shocks with player injuries. Arsenal are currently showing three players as injured: Merino of course, is out for the long term, while both Martin Odegaard and Leandro Trossard are being assessed. I would suspect that neither will be even on the bench for this game, so that they can have as much time as possible under the care of Arsenal’s own medics without the stress of thinking they might be called upon.
By way of comparison, Tottenham Hots, who are the world champions for injuries, are currently listing 13 players as injured, and one wonders what on earth they are getting up to in the medical rooms.
I suspect (and really this is just a suspicion) that each time they change manager and his associates (which seems to be about every couple of months) so the new man comes in, and to show he is no pushover, every player who is listed as injured has to go and prove that he is really injured – on the grounds that each new manager calls the previous regime “soft”, while showing just how “tough” he is. Indeed, one of the problems in clubs like Tottenham that habitually change managers every month or so, is that the new man likes to show that he is not the pushover his predecessor is alleged to have been.
This “you can’t pull the wool over my eyes” approach can mean a lot of extra re-examinations, some of which inevitably can cause extra damage with a new medic trying to prove that his predecessor missed something, or the old medic, if retained, saying, “I told your predecessor about this problem, but he wouldn’t listen…”
And we must also remember that we are now in the knockout rounds, although the old rule about away goals counting double was abolished in all UEFA club competitions a few years back.
But thinking of goals, we might also note that the seemingly endless tales about Arsenal needing a striker have at last ended. Viktor Gyökeres has now scored 16 goals, Martinelli 11 and Saka nine, with Eze on eight, which is not bad going, And we can note that Arsenal are still top scorers in the league.
| Player | Games | GoAls | Goals per game |
|---|---|---|---|
| Viktor Gyökeres | 31 | 16 | 0.52 |
| Gabriel Martinelli | 20 | 11 | 0.55 |
| Bukayo Saka | 30 | 9 | 0.30 |
| Eberechi Eze | 28 | 8 | 0.29 |
For the opposition, I don’t have the penalties and yellow card data to hand but just staying with the two main issues we see….
| PLAYER | GAMES | GOALS | GOALS PER GAME |
| Patrik Schick | 20 | 7 | 0.35 |
| Alejandro Grimaldo | 21 | 6 | 0.29 |
| Ernest Poku | 24 | 5 | 0.21 |
| Christian Kofane | 23 | 5 | 0.22 |
Now I find this approach quite interesting, and if I have the time I’ll come back and see how this can be applied to teams that Arsenal play in the Premier League. It’s amazing what one can come up with if one spends half an hour thinking about it.
