By Walter Broeckx
The way goals are scored can tell you something about a team. It can tell you how they generally play their football. So in the next articles I will be trying to look at how the goals came along and also on how the goals went in against us and the other teams.
So let us have a look at the goals scored by each team.
| 2010-2011 | Goals | Open play | % goals | Dead ball | % goals | Penalty | % goals |
| Chelsea | 69 | 47 | 68,12% | 16 | 23,19% | 6 | 8,70% |
| Manchester United | 78 | 63 | 80,77% | 12 | 15,38% | 3 | 3,85% |
| Arsenal | 72 | 59 | 81,94% | 9 | 12,50% | 4 | 5,56% |
| Manchester City | 60 | 39 | 65,00% | 13 | 21,67% | 8 | 13,33% |
| Tottenham | 55 | 39 | 70,91% | 11 | 20,00% | 5 | 9,09% |
| Liverpool | 59 | 41 | 69,49% | 12 | 20,34% | 6 | 10,17% |
| Fulham | 49 | 28 | 57,14% | 18 | 36,73% | 3 | 6,12% |
| Bolton | 52 | 35 | 67,31% | 13 | 25,00% | 4 | 7,69% |
| Aston Villa | 48 | 35 | 72,92% | 9 | 18,75% | 4 | 8,33% |
| Everton | 51 | 35 | 68,63% | 13 | 25,49% | 3 | 5,88% |
| Newcastle | 56 | 33 | 58,93% | 18 | 32,14% | 5 | 8,93% |
| Wigan | 40 | 28 | 70,00% | 10 | 25,00% | 2 | 5,00% |
| West Ham | 43 | 28 | 65,12% | 10 | 23,26% | 5 | 11,63% |
| Sunderland | 45 | 36 | 80,00% | 5 | 11,11% | 4 | 8,89% |
| Stoke | 46 | 24 | 52,17% | 19 | 41,30% | 3 | 6,52% |
| Blackburn | 46 | 31 | 67,39% | 14 | 30,43% | 1 | 2,17% |
| Wolverhampton | 46 | 27 | 58,70% | 16 | 34,78% | 3 | 6,52% |
| Birmingham | 37 | 24 | 64,86% | 11 | 29,73% | 2 | 5,41% |
| Total | 952 | 652 | 229 | 71 | |||
| Average | 52,88 | 36,22 | 67,74% | 12,72 | 24,82% | 3,94 | 7,43% |
So it is very obvious Arsenal is rather good when it comes to scoring from open play. The most goals scored however from open play in numbers is Manchester United. They have scored 4 more goals then we. In % we are doing a bit better but this is down to the fact they also scored a few goals more in total than we did.
A team that surprises me a bit is Sunderland. They don’t score that much and certainly after the departure of Bent but when they score they score a lot from open play. They get a 80% of their goals from open play and I really think this is a high score.
You can also see that there are a few teams that don’t score that much from open play. Fulham might be a bit of a surprise with not many goals from open play. But it will be no surprise to see the names of Newcastle or Wolverhampton rather low on goals from open play. Their strength is situated in other things than playing fancy football.
And the team that links both tables together the best is Stoke City. The lowest score with goals from open play. Is this really a surprise? But on the other hand the team with most goals from dead balls. I think it is fair to assume that throw ins are in this category.
When you have a lot of goals in one table you cannot have a lot in other tables and so we can only see that Arsenal are really low in the table of goals from dead ball. Not just in numbers but also in % of the goals scored. About one goal in four is from a dead ball in the EPL but we find ourselves around one goal in eight. And I can remember Van Persie, Nasri and Cesc score a few goals from free kicks but this seems to have gone in the past season. Maybe something to practice a bit this summer?
But this low number also has another aspect. If other teams know this, it is another excuse to go in rather hard on our attackers. First of all we know from our ref reviews that refs will not give us all the fouls we are entitled to. But when the ref gives the foul it still means nothing as we rarely score from such dead balls.
In a way you could say that the better football you play the less goals you score from dead balls. Or you don’t need them as much as other teams like Stoke or Wolverhampton need them.
And when we look at the penalties we see that there are some teams that have scored rather a lot. Manchester City got most penalties and scored the most goals from them. They are leading the table and have almost the double of the rest of the EPL on average. But also Liverpool has had a lot of penalties given to them.
But getting a lot of penalties doesn’t help sometimes. Just ask West Ham.
In the next article I will be looking at something that has been our Achilles heel this season. The way we conceded the goals.
The one thing i was surprised about was the number of goal ManU scored from penalties…only 3??
Yes, Walter – that Manure penalty statistic jumped out at me as well. Is that correct? And how many penalties were they awarded?
Also, going back to a different article did you post how many of the goals we conceded were from penalties?
Yes, strange to see Utd get such few penalties. Or rather score such few penalties, they might have missed a few too.
Sorry to go off-topic, but have you all seen the fixture list? Our season starts away to Newcastle, crime scene of Dowd and Barton, followed by Liverpool at home, and Man Utd away. With these games sandwiching our CL qualifiers of course. If I didn’t know better I would think the FA were trying to screw us out of Europe and/or put us on the back foot straight away with this strangely difficult start to the season….
United missed a penalty against us, but then, we missed ones against Sunderland and Wigan.
Great analysis Walter!
However Tony, I do have one suggestion to make. When you post these stat tables, it would be amazing if we could click one of the headings to have that particular stat arranged in ascending/descending order. For example, if I want to find out where Wigan was in percentage of goals scored from open play, all I have to do is click that column heading and … hey presto! They’re 6th!
Unfortunately, I’m not a very computer minded person, and I don’t know how to do this, but I have seen sites before with this capability, and it would make these stats much easier to discern!
Matoo,
I know what you mean and yes that would be very interesting as it is something I can do when I make the tables. But somewhere I have to put it in a word file and this goes missing.
Don’t know how to change this to be honest…
If the gunners could improve their goals from dead balls it would help a great deal. I think it would make teams less likely to foul our players if we could put free kicks in the back of the net! We don’t seem to have players that are even testing the keeper on free kicks. I also think we could improve the results on corners by doing more with near post flicks – these are hard to defend if executed well.
Speaking of free kicks, anyone else think Walcott and Nasri have decent free kicks on them? I’ve seen them both take some pretty accurate shots at the goal with amazing power. I think they should practice free kicks a lot more, before the league starts, and should be allowed more chances at free kicks. Van P’s free kick seems to have been a bit off this past season. He only scored 1, a deflected shot against Birmingham.
These stats do prove if we had a deadly dead ball specialist/s so to speak, maybe we could create the same panic and frenzy we probably all experience as gooners whenever we are confronted with a set piece.
In that respect i know as Wenger deals with the issue of our conceding from set pieces which he inevitably must be in training now,the stats in regards to unsuccessful dead balls attempted will be addressed i not only assume but predict of a manager of Arsenes intellect and scrutiny. It is therefore an essential tool in our arsenal that we should be feared and reveared for so we can make our opponents literally make the mistake of succumbing to what would seem an inevitability (us scoring from set play).
I also feel that with every problem raised and dealt with we turn up a new issue, which can only be good for our progress as long as the team stays some what together. Yeah some players are villafied for making costly mistakes but which one of those players would have imagined being in the positions we where last seaon when they where written off by the media at the begining of the season.
Love fact hate Tabloids…i mean fiction!