An informative spot of media support for Arsenal following Klopp v Arteta

By Tony Attwood

I am very sorry to say that as usual I have not made myself clear to everyone in terms of my review of the Liverpool game relating to tackles, fouls and yellow cards – figures which if you are a regular reader you will know we have been tracking for over two years now.  (Last season’s summaries are here).

My point overall was that Liverpool deliberately chose to play a different sort of game from their normal approach first by roughing up the players and then seducing Arteta into a false move.  And we have to admit it worked completely.

And so as a result we need to understand exactly what Arsenal did wrong and what Liverpool did right – which is exactly what Mr Arteta will have done immediately he got hold of the statistics.

Prior to match the figures per game for the two clubs were as below

	Tackles	Fouls	Yellow	Tackle/foul	Tackle/yellow	Foul/Yellow
Arsenal	14.64	9.09	1.54	1.61	9.47	5.88
Liverpool	13.45	9.72	1.09	1.38	12.33	8.92

In this game of Liverpool v Arsenal the figures changed radically.

	Tackles	Fouls	Yellow	Tackle/foul	Tackle/yellow	Foul/Yellow
Arsenal	18	12	0	1.5	No yellow	No yellow
Liverpool	14	15	2	-0.93	7.00	7.50

Tackles: Arsenal’s tackling went up by just under four, Liverpool’s stayed just the same as normal.

Fouls: Arsenal’s fouling rate went up by three from its average, Liverpool’s went up by over five.

In terms of tackles per foul, Arsenal stayed at their normal point, but Liverpool revealed the most unusual result…

Liverpool got more fouls against them than they put in tackles!   

This is the first ever game I have seen with more fouls than tackles for a club.  The extra fouling incident was presumably the misconduct of the Liverpool manager.  If that is so then it appears that every single tackle put in by Liverpool was a foul.   And if that is right, then that was a deliberate ploy.  (In which case the admission of guilt in the article linked above is very clever, deflecting the fouling approach of the game, and focusing on the manager’s yellow card).

Pulling this together we can see that Liverpool’s tackling rate in the game was their norm, but their fouling rate shot up, because the tackles were always illegal.  Again it seems like a ploy.

But that is not all we can say because there was that touchline bust up.  Looking at the game prior to the shouting and pointing between the two managers, I feel Arsenal were coming out on top, but after that it was all Liverpool.

The cause was what Arteta perceived as a flailing elbow in an challenge on Tomiyasu.  Klopp then immediately got faux angry and both managers were booked.

In relation to this Garth Crooks put forward the view that this was a further deliberate ploy by Klopp, and certainly the figures are tending to point in this direction.

What Crooks said on the BBC was, “It was clear from Klopp’s post-match interview that he thought that Sadio Mane’s challenge on Takehiro Tomiyasu was fair, but boy, did he use the ensuing confrontation with Arteta to fuel the Anfield crowd.

“Liverpool were struggling until that moment and the only mistake Arteta made was getting involved with Klopp in the first place. The row ignited the crowd as Klopp knew it would.

“Mane, the architect of the incident with Tomiyasu, also took advantage of Anfield’s rise in temperature with a well-taken goal and a glorious assist. But it was Klopp who was the villain here, not Arteta.”

This is not to say that Arsenal were ahead before the incident, nor that they would have won had the incident not taken place, but the point is made that Klopp engineered events to his benefit, while Arteta became emotional and fell for the ploy.

That led the Anfield crowd to raise its efforts in support of Klopp and as the Mirror put it “whipped up a frenzy… (which) … seemed to prompt a renewed effort and feistiness from the Reds’ players too, with Mane perhaps fortunate to escape with just a booking soon after for a robust foul on Ben White near the touchline.”

Now whereas the first part of this piece is based on actual statistics the latter part is an opinion.  But it does raise the point that Arteta is still an inexperienced manager.  In films of him at Manchester City as assistant, he is generally seen sitting with a notepad recording details, never moving from his seat, and leaving the pitch calmly at the end.

So we can take it he has rarely had to deal with manipulation by a more experienced manager who will use whatever ploy is available to convince his players that they need to take on this nasty bunch of ne’er-do-wells and see them off the park.

Thus Arsenal were clearly unsettled after the incident, and Liverpool with their crowd, reinforced.

Indeed one can think back over the years to how many times the Anfield crowd has been considered the 12th man, and of course thanks to the LSE research during lock down, we now know how much influence the home crowd can have on a referee and presumably players (although I’ve not seen any research on the latter point, and it may not exist).

Arsenal does not have these advantages at home because of the activities of the AAA in general, and AFTV, Black Scarf and Arsenal’s Supporters’ Trust, and many bloggers in particular, all of whom have been very voluble in their denunciations of the players, board, coaches, manager and everyone else down to the groundsmen and physios.  Remember it was only two months ago that many so-called supporters plus all the media, wanted Arteta out of the club.

It is obviously much harder for Arsenal to get themselves together in such circumstances.  But these circumstances are not going to change, and so we need to sort this out.  Mr Arteta has to learn that when Klopp goes a-shouting, he needs to stand still, look at Klopp, smile, and allow himself to be pushed to the ground.   That could have happened, Klopp would have been sent off, and the Liverpool players unsettled.  As it was, Arsenal were unsettled and we lost heavily.

But a lesson learned for next time.

• Liverpool v Arsenal: Liverpool adopt a level of fouling not seen before
• Liverpool v Arsenal – the rather alarming implications
• Reasons to think that the Premier League is not in control of its own destiny