By Tony Attwood
I don’t think I’ve ever copied something from Twitter onto Untold before in any of the 12,000+ posts we have published since we started, but this one seemed to fit the thinking at Untold at the moment.
Football fans vs the royal mourning pic.twitter.com/69kg9X2dve
— Simpsons Arsenal (@SimpsonsArsenal) September 12, 2022
We do at least know that Brentford v Arsenal goes ahead at noon on Sunday 18th and will be available live on Sky, so we can now order up the match previews hopefully without finding that they will all have to be scrapped because the game is moved again. The game after that appears to be Arsenal v Tottenham on 1 October.
What does come across in this whole affair, from a footballing perspective, is the lack of planning. Although, of course, no one knew when the queen would pass away, everyone knew it would happen sometime, and the chances were it would be during the football season. Why then was there no protocol in place to say what the response of football would be? It has all been as if everyone was taken by surprise by the passing of a 96-year-old.
But then I suppose that’s football.
What it has given us a chance to do is reflect on some new material in issue 388 of the Weekly Post from Football Observatory. This presents the top 10 Impact Score rates among footballers who are under 25 years old for each of the fifteen technical profiles Football Observatory uses.
Obviously, you can read the whole piece on their site, but I would like to select out the Arsenal players who feature.
The score “is calculated by taking into consideration the average match level in which players participated according to the experience capital method, official game minutes played over the last 365 days, as well as pitch performance compared to both teammates, opponents and same profile’s players.”
There is more information on how the profiles are built up, on the site, and it is well worth reading if you don’t mind a spot of technicality, but here I just want to pick out the Arsenal players. And in looking at this one must remember that the whole table is based on players worldwide – not just in the Premier League.
Aaron Ramsdale is top of the goalkeeper rankings, with a score of 90.6 among the under 25s in that position.
In the “Pure blocker” category Ben White is fifth, one of only two players in the top ten from an English club.
For “air blocker filter man” Arsenal have two players in the top ten, Tomiyasu at fourth, and the player they list as Albert Sambi (whom we tend to know as Sambi Lokonga) at 8th. There are only two other Premier League players in the top ten, one from Leicester and one from Everton.
William Saliba comes up fourth in the “ground blocker filter” category of player. Matinez at Manchester United comes in one place above, and also in the top ten are Kamara from Aston Villa and Mykolenko of Everton.
Saka is the top man in shooter creator, with Odegaard coming in seventh.
So we have seven players who are listed in these top tens from across the whole of Europe, which given their ages is not a bad position to be in.
And changing subjects just for a moment, here’s another couple of thoughts that have ruminated their way around what passes for the Untold offices.
Arsenal of course are still top of the league but only in two categories: the number of points (obviously) and the number of wins (no other team having won five). Beyond that…
We are one of only two teams that have not yet drawn (Manchester United is the other).
Two teams remain undefeated (Manchester City and Tottenham H)
Arsenal are only the fourth highest scorers in the league (Manchester City, Liverpool and Brentford have scored more),
Arsenal have only the eighth best defence in the league (Wolverhampton have the best defence having conceded just four. Arsenal have conceded seven).
We have the third-best goal difference in the League with +7, behind Manchester City and Liverpool.
Fortunately of course the measure of who is top of the league is based on points and that hasn’t changed since the last time we looked.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal | 6 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 14 | 7 | 7 | 15 |
| 2 | Manchester City | 6 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 20 | 6 | 14 | 14 |
| 3 | Tottenham Hotspur | 6 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 12 | 5 | 7 | 14 |
| 4 | Brighton and Hove Albion | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 11 | 5 | 6 | 13 |
| 5 | Manchester United | 6 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 8 | 8 | 0 | 12 |
| 6 | Chelsea | 6 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 8 | 9 | -1 | 10 |
