Yeah, what’s scary isnt just that they aren’t playing great and winning it’s that Klopp has had the foresight to slow them down a little. I thought for sure he would burn out that front three, but by strengthening the defense he has taken the pressure off them and pulled back the pressure a bit. As I’ve digested the game a little, I think Emery got the best of Klopp though in the tactics department which is encouraging. Our weakness had to be identified as our LB situation with xhaka, holding and auba covering a recently injured and defensively poor Kola. Liverpool failed to take advantage and/or Emery coached those players to deal with the weakness. I think Salah had only 4-5 touches in our box and two shots, both contested from distance. Last season he scored and had another three shots from inside the area. Under AW I think we’d have seen Kola ran ragged like chambers v Montero a few seasons ago.
I said this weeks ago - we haven't been playing well, but there's way more structure in the team, especially in the press. I think the Liverpool game was our second best performance of the season (behind the Leicester game), though I didn't see the first half. Having said that, we had 4-5 games last season under Wenger where we played significantly better than we've played at any point under Emery, especially in attack.
Having Leno is huge as he helps us bypass a bit of the press with his passing, even though he did look like a clown a few times that first half. (the goal, he actually punched the ball but Holding deflected it to Milner)
Thank you for being the player I knew you were from day 1. And thank you for being fit, just quality.
One major piece in the rebuilding of pool's defense was the £75m they spent on Van Dijk. Arsenal were linked with him two years earlier when Southampton ended up paying £14m for his services. Where would Arsenal be today if Wenger had pulled the trigger.
This can’t possibly be right: Arsenal PL win percentage with Shkodran Mustafi in the starting line up 60%. Without him 48%.— Orbinho (@Orbinho) November 6, 2018
Think that speaks more to the lack of quality depth. If he was any good the win % with him should be much higher.
This stat has false significance as most starting defenders have a similar figure. I did this a while back for Kos—1.95 ppg with, 1.70 without. CB is critical position and there usually is a bigger drop off between the starter and the backup. Mustafi isn’t great but he is better than chambers m and better than holding was. Also, it’s common to rest starters in bunches for games that don’t matter as much and therefore your chance of winning drops.
Interesting data point: the Wenger data is for the whole season, including the period from January on where the wheels fell off. Data for the first half of the season was much better. Good foundation under Emery, but at some point performances have to get better. We had 5-6 games last season that were far better than the best game we've seen under Emery. Arsenal seemingly worse under Emery than during Wenger's last season in everything apart from actual goals scored and conceded (and therefore results).It's enjoyable so far, but if things don't change there's probably a correction around the corner. pic.twitter.com/nEWajaoWox— Orbinho (@Orbinho) November 6, 2018
I saw this. I agree that we haven’t really had stellar performances, but we also haven’t had terrible ones either. I looked at the first 11 games from last season and total XG was about 5 higher than this season at the same point. Xga was about two lower. Those numbers were padded by some dominating performances—Everton, Albion, Swansea. Note we played all three relegation teams that first 11 games...maybe the same this season...lol. What does fall out of an admittedly small sample is that the standard deviation of the XG and XGA are quite a bit smaller this season—1.05 vs 0.73 and 0.90 vs 0.65, respectively. That is...we are more consistent this season from game to game even if we haven’t hit the highs we all want. Bottom line is this: we’ve got 4 more points than this stage last season having played the same 3 of the big 6 and the same relegation fodder. All with at times a make-shift defensive line.
Fair. Also think we got hosed a fair few times last season : Stoke away, Man City away, Watford away (that Richarlison dive was awful).
I did some of the same calculations about a week ago, I.e. before the Liverpool game. As an alternative to xG and xGA, I was looking at chances created (shots) and chances allowed (shots against). My take is that a shot differential of +0.1 this season vs shot differential of +5.5 last season is problematic. Note that whoscored.com's stats show Arsenal allowing 14 shots per game in the league, not the 12.2 cited in the tweet by Orbinho. This puts the shot differential in negative territory. Going back to the 2009/10 season (the furthest back I could find data for) Arsenal never average fewer than the 13.8 shots per game they averaged in 13/14 season and never allowed more than the 11.9 shots against per game from the same season. Arsenal aren't creating enough chances in Emery's offense and have been bailed out by what appears to be an unsustainable team wide conversion rate of 17%. The difference of 3.3 shots created per game between last season and this season is in part explained by Emery's almost exclusive use of the 8 as a holding midfielder. This season Xhaka, Torreira, and Guendouzi have averaged 1.8 shots per game, while last season Ramsey and Xhaka averaged 4 shots per game. I'm not sure that what some would refer to as the greater discipline shown by the 8 this season has produced the defensive improvement necessary to offset the reduced number of chances created. I became an Arsenal fan because of their open style of play under Wenger. I fear that under Emery we may be returning to the one nil to the Arsenal teams of George Graham.
Ya, I don’t have a problem with cautious optimism, I just get a bit annoyed when it borders on criticism and calling Emery just lucky. Emery seems to have checked a lot of boxes independently of the good results—better attitude, bold subs, solid midfield, better organization, and not rolling over when the game goes against. He’s well known as a good man manager and I think we see some fruits of that especially in iwobi, xhaka, holding and lacazette. Go back and watch Holding play against Liverpool early last season vs the other day—a stark contrast. Also, contrast how we responded in going down 2-0 at Chelsea this season with the early thrashing at Liverpool last year.
We also played the same three big teams by the end of October last season that we played this season.
Picking one game for each manager to compare a young center backs performances under the two managers can be deceptive, you could just as easily have picked the FA Cup Final vs Chelsea where he was quite good. I suspect Iwobi was suffering a sophomore slump last year, it does happen when a player thinks they have it all figured out and gets a little to com placement and whatever improvements you see in Xhaka and Lacazette's games can be attributed to the fact that Xhaka is not being asked to be the defensive mid and that Lacazette appears to be fully healthy. Let's see the season play out before anointing Emery as a savior. As noted in my previous posts, I'm concerned about the drop in chance creation.
Chelsea won the league with a shot conversion rate of 14.3% two seasons ago. A lot of shots come from chasing the game or chasing goals. We haven’t been doing that so far and our shot discipline has been pretty good. A reverting to the mean is not necessary, but can happen by just taking more shots not scoring fewer goals. When we’ve gone down, the players seem to just continue with the game plan and not react by taking low xG shots. When we’ve gone up a goal, it’s the same.
I was just anecdotal illustration of what I like so far. If you don’t think Holding is better and more consistent this season then I don’t know what to say. Of course there are pullbacks as well—Ramsey and ozil being the two notable ones. Emery isn’t a savior in the sense that he hasn’t accomplished a succes yet, but he has saved me as a fan. The games are interesting, his lineups unpredictable and I don’t have the same sense of doom every time we concede or start slowly.
Arsenal seemingly worse under Emery than during Wenger's last season in everything apart from actual goals scored and conceded (and therefore results).It's enjoyable so far, but if things don't change there's probably a correction around the corner. pic.twitter.com/nEWajaoWox— Orbinho (@Orbinho) November 6, 2018 Y'all know I don't get caught up in a lot of the "new stats". But the math I did quickly upon seeing this chart was: GF-GA: Wenger: 1.9-1.27 = +0.63 Emery: 2.3-1.36 = +0.94 That seems like improvement to me. And maybe a sizable factor of why we've been on a good run.
This is the sort of thing where I'd love to actually have game tape to watch. Were we better than everybody remembers at the beginning of last season? Are we doing things that aren't showing up on xG this season? I feel like we are creating a lot of chances on cutbacks or passes across the box. Also Xhaka is way over his xG by scoring on 2 fks. The only guy who might hit a long cold streak is Laca. He's been shooting really well and it might not hold up.
I'm not saying he isn't more consistent now, I'm saying that as a young defender you should naturally expect some inconsistencies that become less glaring with experience. I don't believe you can write this off as the difference between managers. I have been a Holding fan for a while and believe he will become a very good defender regardless of who manages him.
My only comment on this is that I agree the team were extremely lucky at first but I feel like in the last couple of weeks they've showed signs of playing at a higher level - especially 2nd half at Leicester and vs Liverpool If that can be sustained, we should see Emery's underlying data improve.
I’m not saying it’s all down to Emery, but he will get the credit because he is his coach right now and the players I mentioned are performing well. While I’m not sure how much on the individual level Emery has done with holding, he has at least put him in an environment where he can improve. He now has two outlets in front, the keeper behind, the full back down the line and a coach that encorurages a risky long pass from deep. So when he gets the ball he has plenty more options than before. Defensively, both xhaka and torriera are sitting deeper and covering the fullbacks better taking some pressure off the CB to cover all of the back third like under AW.
Two points on this post. The first is a clarification. You say that Holding now has a coach that encourages risky long passes from deep. Are you suggesting that the man who bought Xhaka because of his long passing range and who coached Kos, who during his Arsenal career averaged more than 4 long passes per game, completing 60 percent of them, didn't encourage long passes from deep? The second point is that there is a trade off between the defensive improvements seen when you employ two deep lying midfielders and the number of chances created. Which is related to one of your earlier posts. When Chelea won the league two years ago, they scored 2.2 goals per game on 15 shots per game, a conversion rate of 14.3 percent. This season Arsenal are averaging 2.3 goals per game on 12.2 shots per game a conversion rate of 18% (the 17% number eliminated the 2 own goals by the opponents from the calculation). After padding their goal stars this weekend City are averaging 3 goals per game on 20 shots per game, a conversion rate of 15 percent. I don't expect Arsenal to continue converting 18% of their shots so they are going to have to start creating more chances for this run to continue. That's where the trade off comes into play, to create more chances Emery is probably going to have to loosen the reins on the 8. Re your point about not taking low xG shots ignores one of the major points of the table posted by Orbinho, Arsenal have averaged 2.3 goals per game vs an xG of 1.4 per game. In the end this may be nothing more than that the team still hasn't fully adjusted to his system, but the chances per game need to go up, e.g. Fulham are the worst defense in the league this year as attested to by the 5 goals that Arsenal put past them, but Arsenal did that on just 9 shots. They have to create more shots against teams like Fulham.
@casoccerdad47 you are getting sucked into the baseball statisfication of football. And, why Xg in my opinion is not suffecient to analyze a specific team. For me it doesn't suffecient weight the factor of player power. The ability of a player to pattern certain aspects of play to improve the reliability of an action. These margins mean something, in an instant, and even more over a season. I don't particularly care about the average difficulty of a chance for the average striker. I care about what the probability of a goal in a specfic position, from a pass to a particular foot, to a particular player. Because those are all factors the manager has some control over when setting up his team. It is quite possible that the clubs have this data, but the stuff I have access to will always be flawed by generalization and thus it's usefulness will never be useful beyond the general. I've watched just about every match this season. What has been a striking contrast to our last I would say 3 seasons. Is where the chances are being created, and who the chances are falling to. There is a systematic nature to our chance creation that I don't think the stats display at a glance. Previously our play required Ozil to make both the pass to Ozil, and the pass to the goal scorer. Or be involved in some other method of footballing perfection. Ozil has 1 assist this season. However, he has been employed differently. He has been picking out the player in the position to play the deadliest ball to the striker. And, it's showing how you might expect to see it, better shot conversion. This creates a secondary issue, where if as against Liverpool, the opposition specifically targets the space Ozil operates in he can be neutralized. I think Emery's solution was simple and elegant. Ozil operates as a 3rd striker, we play long ground passes and collapse/pressure the opposition's CBS and CMs. It's extremely difficult to defend both with one set up and why I think the team has been successful so far. It also explains Ramsey's situation. He doesn't know instinctively how to play midfield, he isn't trustworthy and his passing has fallen off, or was never that good. He was asked to play the Ozil roll against Blackpool and he frankly sucked. He is a predator at his best, but you don't pay that player that much money. Almost all of his strengths are wasted as a bench player, so it really is a question of what else can the team do with those resources.