It took Arsenal a while to click into attacking gear this season but since the turn of the year, Mikel Arteta‘s squad have steadily improved their goal difference in the Premier League table.
The Gunners have racked up seven successive league wins scoring 31 goals, more than any other club in the division has managed since New Year’s Day. Following Monday night’s 6-0 win over Sheffield United – their third consecutive away victory by a margin of five goals or more – they now have a superior goal difference to both Liverpool and Manchester City which could make all the difference in a title race that looks as though it will go down to the wire.
Arsenal’s refined finishing has (temporarily at least) dampened demands for the club to spend big on a new striker in the summer transfer window. Bukayo Saka is in the form of his young life, Kai Havertz seems to have rediscovered his long lost confidence in front of goal, and Martin Odegaard has re-emerged as a creative force. Even Gabriel Magalhaes and William Saliba look like scoring every time they venture forward for a corner or free-kick.
Pleasing as Arsenal’s sharpened attacking edge will be to Arteta, he will be equally delighted that his team continues to look so difficult to breach at the other end.
If the Gunners are to stop 20-year wait to lift the Premier League title their defensive prowess could well be the factor that swings it in their favour.
Arsenal currently have the best defensive record in the division having conceded 23 goals from their 27 matches so far, two fewer than Liverpool and four fewer than City with the same games played. They are also the only side to have reached double figures for clean sheets with David Raya and Aaron Ramsdale keeping 11 between them.
The difference between the top three in terms of goals conceded is minimal, but underlying data offers more persuasive evidence that Arsenal boast the league’s most miserly defence. Warning: analytics sceptics are advised to look away now.
Expected Goals Allowed (xGA) is a metric that measures the quality of an opponent’s chance by calculating the likelihood that it will be scored by using information on similar shots in the past. Arsenal’s xGA of 18.4 is not only comfortably the best record in the Premier League, but it is also the leading total across Europe’s “Big Five” leagues.
In essence, this means that Arsenal are limiting their opposition to more low-quality chances to score than any other team in the division, which ultimately increases their chances of not conceding goals and therefore, winning games.
xGA is a more useful statistic to judge a team’s defensive aptitude than shots on target conceded as it measures how likely those shots are to go in. For what it’s worth, Arsenal have also faced by far the fewest shots on target anyway with 59; City have faced the second-fewest with 76.
Burnley were xGA masters during the Sean Dyche era. While the Clarets allowed a large number of shots on their goal they defended their 18-yard box so effectively that a large portion of those attempts came from outside the penalty area, reducing the probability of them going in.
Arsenal’s xGA expertise bodes well for their title chances based on how previous Premier League winners have rated in that regard. According to the football stats website FBREF which uses Opta data, every league champion bar one has had the best xGA total since 2017-18 when expected data began to filter into the sport’s mainstream.
Manchester City have won five of the last six Premier League titles and recorded the best xGA every single time. Liverpool’s success in 2019-20 is the only outlier and their defensive data only began to dwindle once they had already wrapped up the title. Their xGA was only 1.5 worse off than that season’s second-placed team (which happened to be City), the smallest difference between first and second by a considerable margin.
The obvious conclusion to draw from the above is that the team that concedes the fewest high-quality chances tends to win the league and Arsenal are easily the leaders in that regard this season. According to FBREF, City’s xGA is 24.9 and surprisingly given their overall defensive record, Liverpool’s is 32.9. That indicates that Alisson and Caoimhin Kelleher have been far more effective at preventing goals than Raya or Ramsdale.
Encouragingly for Arsenal, they have tightened up considerably compared to last season, which has been evident to the naked eye and is reflected in the numbers. Last season, their xGA was 9.9 worse than City’s; this season it is 6.5 better.
There are a few reasons for that. Declan Rice’s importance should not be underestimated, with the midfielder making more combined tackles and interceptions (87) than any other player from Arsenal, Liverpool or City. The Saliba x Gabriel axis at the heart of defence has continued to grow stronger and both players have stayed fit throughout the campaign.
The offensive players deserve credit too for the intensity of their pressing which has been noticeably sharper since the Premier League’s winter break which coincided with Arsenal taking a week off in Dubai for warm-weather training.
A successful high press, which is often spearheaded by Odegaard, makes it more difficult for teams to build out from the back and advance up the pitch into potential shooting positions.
And most simply, Arsenal are just a better team than they were last season. A youthful squad has an extra year’s worth of experience, has benefited from a few additions in key areas and has a point to prove after falling away during the run-in.
At the start of the season, it looked as though Arteta may have compromised Arsenal’s attacking threat too much in search of greater defensive stability.
Now, with goals flowing at one end and being limited at the other, Arsenal have struck an optimal balance. Continue to keep the back door shut tightly and the title may just be on its way to north London.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/GIf0qEL
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