Arsenal v Swansea – what the stats say

“The kind of game you play 20 times and win 19 times.”

                                                                                        – Arsene Wenger

That was what Arsene Wenger had to say about the game in his post match press conference. After 10 games undefeated in the league it hurts to lose, especially when every fan (and probably Swansea fans too!) knows that game was there for the taking. With no win in our last three games v Swansea, and only one victory in our last four home games, the Welsh club are fast turning into our bogey team. So where did it go wrong, let’s take a look at the stats.

The numbers for this game show it as a simple attack v defence training exercise. We had more shots, possession and passes whilst Swansea made more tackles, blocks and clearances. So why then did they head back to Wales with the three points and we end up relinquishing control of second place? Well the stats show one simple fact – our finishing was not good enough.

Without being drawn into the debate on whether we need another striker or if Giroud is good enough to make us title challengers, the stats show that for all the chances we created (16 to Swansea’s 4) our shooting was not successful enough. Below is all the attempted shots by Arsenal over the 90 minutes:

  

However, this is far from representative of the whole game. It took us until the hour mark to register our first shot on target, and then the curse of the ex-player struck. In the final 30 minutes we had 17 shots, nine of which hit the target. An impressive 53% shooting accuracy. However, Fabianski was equal to all those shots and earned his clean sheet. In the same period, Swansea had one shot on target and over the goal line, just about!

That implies that in the first hour of the game, we only managed six shots, without hitting the target. In the same period Swansea managed seven shots, with two on target. Although we dominated the attack with a flurry at the end, this was far from the case for the first hour. One caveat to the shooting stats is that of the 14 shots off target, eight were actually blocked. Some credit should be given to the Swansea defence here, although with Arsene’s philosophy of passing until we have a clear opening, some players could be considered hasty in shooting too early.

So who were the culprits that missed the target? Cazorla took the most shots of any Arsenal player, with seven, five of which didn’t reach the goal. Ramsey was also quite wasteful with four shots away from the goal. While Sanchez and Giroud chipped in with two each too. In terms of genuinely missing the target, and not being blocked Ramsey, three, and Giroud, two, contributed the most (or should that be least?!).

Despite the poor shooting we created 16 chances during the game. That is very good and puts into perspective Wenger’s quote at the top. If we start to focus on the positives now, some players actually had a very good game. Ozil and Wilshere both created five chances, supplemented by Ramsey and Sanchez who created three and two chances, respectively. It’s no surprise to see Ozil at the top of that list. He’s been outstanding for us in recent games and has started to dictate games from the midfield as he was bought to do. However, Wilshere on the other hand is a bit of a surprise, given he only came on in the 67th minute and has been out for so long. A deeper look at his stats show that actually all the chances he created were outside the area, an indication of the desperate long shots taken in the final 20 minutes.

There are other stats which also help to paint the picture of our performance, but I don’t consider these as vital as the above. Our crossing was very poor, with no player making more than one successful cross. In total we had five crosses which reached an Arsenal player, out of the 31 attempted crosses. A paltry 16% conversion. Sanchez, Wilshere and Ramsey deserve a shout out for having made no successful crosses from the 14 attempted. The above stat includes the six, ie all, unsuccessful corners in the match too.

Dribbling was interesting too. Clearly Swansea had done their homework, and restricted Sanchez to only one successful take on in the 90 minutes. Others had some more success here, and as a team we did well with 11 successful dribbles out of 19. The stat that stands out here is Swansea’s Jefferson Monetero made five successful dribbles. After he tortured us at the Liberty Stadium, he went on to set up the goal for Gomis yesterday to seal an improbable victory. Doesn’t look like we learnt much from the away tie.

Taking a step back and looking at the bigger league picture, this means that we are now three points behind Man City with a game in hand. If both teams win all there games, that puts second place down to goal difference, and given their recent 6-0 thrashing of QPR I wouldn’t bank on coming out top there. But on the plus side next up we have Man Utd at Old Trafford and we haven’t beat them away in the league since 2006….

RK

All stats courtesy of Opta. Source used was FourFourTwo StatsZone.