Tottenham v Arsenal how the season has panned out home and away.

Arsenal v Tottenham: the free video collection: see below

There is a piece in the Telegraph about Harry Kane who is featured in a Museum of London exhibition.  In the press release for this event Kane expresses his “delight” that his “trophies, shirts, golden boots and some personal pieces which haven’t been seen publicly before” will be on display.

And indeed the “not seen before” bit will certainly be true, because Kane hasn’t won any trophies nor indeed winners’ medals with Tottenham or England – although maybe to be fair there might be a trophy from the under 9s or something like that.  

Kane was born on 28 July 1993 and the years since have not really been the great and glorious years of Tottenham.  

Club	Tackles per fouls	Tackles per yellow	Fouls per Yellow
Arsenal	1.53	9.39	6.15
Tottenham	1.57	9.11	5.79

As we can see, for once the referees’ stats contain no oddities.  Tottenham tackle and foul more than Arsenal and pick up more yellow cards than Arsenal.  They can put in slightly more tackles before a foul is called but the number is very small (0.04).   Because they are tackling more often they catch the referee’s eye more often and so can get away with fewer tackles before being shown a yellow (again a low number 0.28).

As a result of this activity, Tottenham can commit fewer fouls before a yellow is given, which is a figure that has become increasingly consistent throughout the league since we started highlighting these numbers a few years ago.

It is also worth noting in passing that Arsenal have reduced their tackle rate still further of late and now have the second-lowest number of tackles made this season.   Only Manchester City has committed fewer – which shows that Arteta’s project introduced in the first third of last season to cut out tackling, is continuing – and it would seem to be continuing to produce results.

In the last 24 games of last season the table read 

P	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Manchester City	24	20	0	4	62	20	42	60
2	Arsenal	24	14	5	5	43	21	22	47
3	Manchester United	24	13	8	3	43	21	22	47
4	West Ham United	24	13	5	6	41	28	13	44
5	Chelsea	24	12	6	6	29	22	7	42
6	Leicester City	24	11	6	7	42	33	9	39
7	Liverpool	24	11	5	8	32	23	9	38
8	Tottenham Hots	24	11	4	9	43	31	12	37