Arsenal v Tottenham: what stats could make people think Arteta is a bad manager?

By Bulldog Drummond

We might still be languishing more than half way down the Premier League table six places below Tottenham Hotspur having had the worst start in Arsenal’s history since the birth of the Messiah…

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
7	Tottenham Hotspur	5	3	0	2	3	6	-3	9
13	Arsenal	5	2	0	3	2	9	-7	6

... but in reality, we are just a whacking, overwhelming, terrifying… err… three points and one goal scored fewer than the Tiny Totts.  Meanwhile we are actually not doing too badly on the injury front – something that tends to say more about the future than the past.

But let us move aside from such detail and instead do a comparison of the managers – simply because I have not seen anyone else do this.  As you will probably have seen, having watched Arsenal slide out of the European places through adopting a process of regularly changing managers, there are quite a few fans who, following the lead of the media, are demanding that we repeat the process yet again and get rid of our current manager, and so, do what we were always told Wenger so stupidly did.  Do something, see if fail, and then do the same thing over and over again.

The media obviously want this because they love to see Arsenal in crisis, as it means they have the story written for them and have to do even less work than usual.  But why Arsenal fans want to see a repeat of a process that has (in their eyes) failed twice in recent years, is beyond me.  For the simple truth is that changing managers normally results in decline not improvement.

But then I wondered how previous Arsenal managers compared to the most recent group.

To look at this further here is a list of Arsenal managers showing games and honours won.  Of course each honour is not of the same difficulty – and in this regard I’ve taken out the Charity / Community Shield in calculating the final column: games per honour.  The table covers the period from the start of the Chapman era (during which the club won its first trophies) onward.

Manager	From	To	M	Win %	Honours	Games per honour
Chapman	1925	1934	411*	49.64*	2 League titles, 1 FA Cup*	137*
Allison	1934	1947	279	46.24	2 League titles, 1 FA Cup	93
Whittaker	1947	1956	430	47.21	2 League titles, 1 FA Cup	143
Crayston	1956	1958	81	41.98
Swindin	1958	1962	186	40.86
Wright	1962	1966	182	38.46
Mee	1966	1976	539	44.71	1 League, 1 FA Cup, 1 Europe	180
Neill	1976	1983	416	44.95	1 FA Cup	416
Howe	1983	1986	117	46.15
Graham	1986	1995	460	48.91	2 League, 1 FA Cup, 2 League Cup, 1 Europe	77
Rioch	1995	1996	47	46.81
Wenger	1996	2018	1,235	57.25	3 League 7 FA Cup	123
Emery	2018	2019	78	55.13
Arteta	2019	Present	88	51.14	1 FA Cup	88

*The Chapman figure is slightly unfair as he died part way through the 1933/34 season.  Joe Shaw took over for the last 23 games and got a win rate of 60.87%.  If we included that season among Chapman’s list he would have a win percentage of 50% and a games per honour rate of 108.

But if you are still with me, look at the win percentage of Wenger, Emery and Arteta – way above anything in the past!

So in terms of games per honour at the moment the list runs

1. Graham (77 games per honour)
2. Arteta (88 games per honour)
3. Allison (93 games per honour)
4. Wenger (123 games per honour)
5. Chapman (137 games per honour or 108 if 1933/4 is included)
6. Whittaker (143 games per honour)
7. Mee (180 games per honour)
8. Neill (416 games per honour)

When asked what guarantee there is that the process of bringing in yet another new manager will bring, those who favour another change generally seem just to talk about how bad Mr Arteta is.

So I thought it might be interesting to carry on with the stats and compare Arsenal in recent years with Nuno Herlander Simões Espírito Santo.

So first the details of Mr Simões Espírito Santo’s career

Simões Espírito Santo

Team	From	To	G	W	D	L	F	A	Win %
Rio Ave	May 2012	May 2014	80	32	17	31	87	97	40.00
Valencia	July 2014	November 2015	62	32	16	14	104	60	51.61
Porto	June 2016	May 2017	49	27	16	6	88	28	55.10
Wolverhampton Wands	May 2017	May 2021	199	95	49	55	277	209	47.74
Tottenham Hotspur	June 2021		9	4	2	3	10	11	44.44

Arsenal considered by manager across the same period

Manager	From	To	G	W	D	L	F	A	Win%
Wenger	October 1996	May 2018	1,235	707	280	248	2,156	1,147	57.25
Emery	May 2018	November 2019	78	43	16	19	152	100	55.13
Ljungberg	November 2019	December 2019	6	1	3	2	8	10	16.67
Arteta	December 2019	Present	88	45	18	25	123	76	51.14

Thus in terms of comparative win percentages among Arsenal managers we have

• Wenger: 57.25%
• Emery: 55.13%
• Nuno at Porto: 55.10%
• Nuno at Valencia: 51.61%
• Arteta: 51.14%
• Nuno: at Wolverhampton: 47.74%
• Freddie at Arsenal: 16.67%

Mr Wenger’s win ratio had declined in the last couple of seasons he was at the club and so in terms of simply winning games we might have been better off with keeping Unai Emery, and letting him see through his bad run of form.

But to be fair to Mikel Arteta he has introduced a radical new approach to football – an approach that the media in England won’t mention because it has been created in order to overcome the curse of PGMO with their habit of giving Arsenal referees known heavily to punish tackles with yellow cards.

But overall the question arises: what statistics are making anyone think Arteta is a bad manager?