The dramatic decline in Arsenal’s away form and what we can do about it

By Tony Attwood

The fact that there is nothing wrong with Arsenal as a team is not something that you will read in many publications.  What you will see over and over again is that there is something wrong with Arsenal as the main theme, and things need to be changed.

But, let me take you back to a topic that I’ve written about before.   Consider this: our home form this season…

Home form this year

Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Manchester City	15	14	0	1	50	11	39	42
2	Liverpool	14	12	2	0	40	7	33	38
3	Arsenal	15	12	2	1	35	12	23	38
4	Chelsea	14	9	4	1	28	9	19	31
5	Tottenham Hotspur	13	9	0	4	24	12	12	27
6	Manchester United	13	7	5	1	25	16	9	26

Yes, we are the third best team on home form in the Premier League.  OK Liverpool have a game in hand at home, as to Chelsea.  Tottenham and Manchester United have two games in hand.  But even if Liverpool and Chelsea win their games in hand, and even if Tottenham and Manchester United win both of their games, we will still be the third best team at home, just four points behind the top team in the country.  And still significantly ahead of the three members of the “top six” who are below us.

In short, our home form is very good.  Even our home defence is quite reasonable (just one more goal conceded than Manchester City at home.)

Now, as we all know, our away form is not that good – if it were just as good we would be happily looking forward to a top four finish, without any worries.

But I keep coming back to why.  Why, if it is the same players in the team, is the away form that much worse?

Away form only – this season

Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Tottenham Hotspur	15	11	0	4	31	17	14	33
2	Liverpool	14	9	4	1	24	8	16	31
3	Manchester United	15	9	2	4	30	20	10	29
4	Manchester City	13	8	2	3	25	9	16	26
5	Chelsea	13	7	1	5	19	20	-1	22
6	Watford	15	5	5	5	22	22	0	20
7	Wolverhampton Wanderers	14	5	4	5	15	16	-1	19
8	Arsenal	13	5	3	5	25	26	-1	18

Even if we won our two away games in hand over Tottenham and Manchester United, we’d still not make it into the top four on away matches.

This decline in away form is something that has occurred across this season and the previous two seasons.  If we go back to 2015/16 our away form at the end of the season showed us in third place

2016 – away games only

Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Leicester City	19	11	6	2	33	18	15	39
2	Tottenham Hotspur	19	9	7	3	34	20	14	34
3	Arsenal	19	8	7	4	34	25	9	31

We started to slip seriously when it came to away games in 2016/17 – although to be fair we were only one point worse than the season before – but other clubs all around us were improving their away form.

Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Chelsea	19	13	3	3	30	16	14	42
2	Manchester City	19	12	2	5	43	22	21	38
3	Manchester United	19	10	5	4	28	17	11	35
4	Liverpool	19	10	5	4	33	24	9	35
5	Tottenham Hotspur	19	9	6	4	39	17	22	33
6	Arsenal	19	9	3	7	38	28	10	30

By 2017/18 we were in real trouble because our away form really had collapsed from 30 points gained in the season right down to 16 points, and 11th place.

Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Manchester City	19	16	2	1	45	13	32	50
2	Tottenham Hotspur	19	10	4	5	34	20	14	34
3	Manchester United	19	10	4	5	30	19	11	34
4	Chelsea	19	10	3	6	32	22	10	33
5	Liverpool	19	9	5	5	39	28	11	32
6	Burnley	19	7	7	5	20	22	-2	28
7	Leicester City	19	5	5	9	31	38	-7	20
8	AFC Bournemouth	19	4	6	9	19	31	-12	18
9	Crystal Palace	19	4	6	9	16	28	-12	18
10	Southampton	19	3	8	8	17	30	-13	17
11	Arsenal	19	4	4	11	20	31	-11	16

Now this season we can see from the table above of away matches we are 8th with 18 points – meaning that with six away games to go we have already got two more points than last year.  If we won four of those games we would indeed be back to our position of a few years ago, but that seems unlikely.

I don’t know why we have been so poor away from home, but I do know that this is not simply a matter of buying more and more defenders.  The defenders we have can and do work well in home matches.  So they are not bad players.  What we have to do is get them to defend just as well in away matches, and for our attackers to nick the odd goal.  Indeed we need around 35 goals away from home each season – not the 20 we had last season.

I really do think that endless tales of buying this defender or that defender are not right – there is simply something wrong with the way we play away from home, which replacing two or three defenders won’t put right.  The guys we have can and do put up a good show at home – we just need to be able to get them to do the same away from home.