What a wacky season.
There was a moment last week when I published my article about projected points where I looked at the projections, then back at the actual table, then back at the projections and thought “hang on a minute, are we only 6 points off Tottenham and am I really going to project Arsenal to get 54 points and Spurs to get 70 because that could literally flip in two games!” And then I looked at 538 and they had a similar projection so I ignored the little voice and smaaaashed the publish button anyway.
And now that my chickens have come home to roost and Arsenal are just 3 points off Spurs, what do I have to say for myself?
“A HOTDOG IS A SANDWICH!!”
This is season is a great reminder that football is not only unpredictable but also that we (me) should be looking at all the available evidence before we get too excited. I do, but then sometimes I ignore it but you know that’s just me making a mistake or (as in the case of “oh no we are going to get relegated!”) being a bit tongue-in-cheek.
All of that is to say that I am now fully on board with the “anything can happen from here on out” theory of the 2020/21 Premier League season. Except relegation, I think we are safe from relegation.
My only hope for this season is to win a trophy and finish above Tottenham! The latter of which only requires us to take 4 more points than them over the next 18 matches.
It’s crazy out there. For example, Man U have taken 14 points at home and 26 points away. You might think that United have gotten a lot of penalties away but that’s not what’s happened: they have 4 penalties at home and 2 away. They are also underperforming xGD at home by 4 goals and overperforming xGD away by 7 goals! And if I project out their points this season, based on this current form, I give them 27 at home and 49 away. And not that it seems to really matter but they are +8 over expected points in away games. Those “extra” points they’ve gotten already count toward the final table. Which is why they are 2nd (this is my idea of being funny).
There are a lot of possible explanations for United’s form in away games. I looked at the data I have available and they are remarkably consistent across home and away form in terms of total number of shots and shots on target, but a pretty big edge in away games to xG.
The popular explanation for this disparity is that they get to play a little bit more on the counter, which I can sort of see? They have 29 big chances in 10 away games (2 pens, so 27 from open play) and 22 big chances in home games (4 pens, so 18). But I think the main difference is that they have only played 3 big games away (Liverpool, Leicester, Everton) and have played 5 big games at home (Villa, City, Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham) so far this season.
I think their form can flip. United have to play Arsenal, City, Chelsea, Spurs, and Villa away in their final 9 away games of the season, that should turn their away form upside down unless I’m looking at this all wrong?
And first up is Arsenal.
It’s a huge game, no doubt, but I think if we give them everything we’ve got we can get a result. There is still something odd about this United side. In their loss to Sheffield United they had a sequence in which they gave up the 2nd (winning) goal to Sheffield. It was just one moment in a season of weird moments but they looked like a team that had completely given up on football: weak passes out, no movement to close down the shooters, no organization. They just sat there and let Sheffield United score. If that had been Arsenal, I’d be apoplectic.
I’m sure they won’t do that again. I’m sure Ole’s at the wheel and he’ll give them the hairdryer or whatever cliches we want to bring to this party. Or maybe they were tired. Or whatever. Still, I think we can get something out of this game.
I also think we can get a result, but I’m not overly confident. As you point out, United’s away form is good, and isn’t our home form not great this season?
Btw, I’m a bit confused by your comment that in their last nine games of the season they face us away…but they’re away today and don’t play us again this season.
This is a crazy season, as you say, but even though I like our current form, I still think we’re good for 7th or 8th rather than 4th. If you look at the teams above us right now, City will win the league, West Ham is on fire, I really don’t think United will tank such that they’ll finish outside the top four, we’re never catching Leicester, nor Liverpool, and I have to imagine that Chelsea’s talented squad under Tuchel will finish ahead of us. I’d love for us to finish above Tottenham. That would be fun, and I think it’s possible. So yeah, battling with Spurs and Villa for 7th. That’s where I see it.
I had to re-read that part about final 9 games as well, its final 9 away games.
Ah, that helps. Thanks.
Yeah, this has been a weird one for sure. Mostly down to COVID, but a few other things too.
I remember saying something similar over the years whenever he’s faced a spell out with injury, but the trouble never materializes. Instead what happens is that Son just starts scoring more. I’m not saying that they finish above us, necessarily, but their current squad is good enough to finish 6th this season, I’d say.
This has sort of been true historically. But Son has already been carrying a lot of the scoring. Kane has been more important this year as a link player. With no Kane, they would really be playing Mourinho ball…parking the bus and trying to get Son on the break. Not sure that’s sustainable at a high-level.
Well, let’s hope!
Spurs on 70 points because 538 concurred. Pshaw! Have you learned NOTHING from reddit v Robinhood?!?!
he he
I think its teasing pilots and titans but not sure ROFL
Great post Tim. Runs of good form and bad form are part of almost every season. Think back to the Wenger years and how many times did we go thru a run of bad form and Arsene would say judge me at the end of the season. In 2015/16 we were on top of the table at one point in December only to hit a run of terrible form in the second half of the season and Leicester won the league by 10 points and those Wenger teams had a lot more talent then we have now. IMO. Arsene was not really smart for 1/2 seasons when we are in good form and suddenly get dumb for the part of those seasons when we were in bad form. There is a lot that happens on the football pitch that managers have no control over and they often can’t control runs of good or bad form
It always strikes me as over the top when we get really excited or angry after relatively short runs of good form or bad form. It was only about 1 month ago that a lot of people really believed we might be in a relegation fight and thought Arteta was tactically inept and needed to be sacked. Now after a relatively short run of good form some of us believe that we are potentially a top 4 team. If it was Arteta’s fault that we were struggling then it must be his excellent management that has changed everything. However, the reality is a manager does not go from being tactically inept and deserving the sack to being smart one month later anymore then Wenger did not go from smart to dumb and back to smart depending on his teams form at the current moment. The reality is that we were never a relegation level team but at the same time I don’t think we are a top 4 team either and I don’t believe the bad run of form was Arteta’s fault nor do I believe that Arteta is completely responsible for the current run of good form. Runs of good and bad form tend to even out over a 38 game season and in the end I think we will finish somewhere in top 10 probably around 7th – 10th place
To me that bad run was more flukey than this good one has been. Red cards, weird goals galore led the way for the opposition back then, whereas now we have had no such help.
Whilst the success of our season will (of course) depend on keeping key players fit, I think things are coming together in a way that was absent until Christmas.
Saka is really growing as a player
Partey gives our midfield some bite and structure
Xhaka looks much better with Partey than anyone else we have
Smith Rowe’s influence
Pepe now has some space to work, with teams having to worry about ESR and Saka and even Lacazette
Cedric offering an alternative to Tierney, who we have to manage carefully*
MO2 … who knows what will happen here
Yes it’s a small sample size and maybe teams will find ways to counter our developing style but I’m more positive of the runner’s equivalent of a negative split than for the past few seasons.
I still think 5th to 7th is most likely but IMO that would be decent enough from where we were.
Another solid game from Cedric today. I thought he was very good on the ball and held his own defensively despite not having a lot of size or elite speed.
Oof. That starting line-up. No Saka, no Tierney, no Aubameyang. This is going to be a tough one.
Yeah, given we were without three of our better players, not a bad result. Assuming that gets them back healthy sooner, I’ll take a draw and clean sheet against Utd.
Exaclty my thoughts Bun: despite all those important offensive players we didn’t have today, we held our own. A draw feels fair on the balance of the chances and the flow of the game.
My man of the match was Pepe. If we were going to score it was going to be through him and he worked so hard on the press and tracking back. I loved what he did in this game.
Another clean sheet today. I know some defensive stats might suggest that our defense is over rated but Arteta’s influence on the effectiveness of our team defense has been tremendous. He took over a team that was on pace for its 3rd season in a row of conceding over 50 goals and improving the defense had to be priority number 1. Now we are on pace to concede 36 and that change was the reason we won the FA cup. Given our struggles to score goals if we were still on pace conceding 50 or more goals we would be in the bottom half of the table.
Didn’t/couldn’t watch every minute of the game, but I saw enough to form credible impressions.
On Pepe, I agree that he played well, but not as well as when he started wide left last week, when he was superb. He worked hard, but when he’s on the right he never runs in behind the full-back, does he? If he doesn’t do that — ever — he makes defending him easier, and he crowds the centre. His one-footed final-third penetrative play can be painful to watch, but it is significantly mitigated by playing wide left. Pepe sometimes gives the impression that he badly needs a dose of footballing IQ when playing wide right. But Willian, no run-in-behind racehorse himself, did help to stop United’s attacking threat down our left.
Luiz the libero was everywhere, and he had a good game. His countryman Willian was noticeably better than he was in recent games. We had more clear cut chances that they did, but Cavani should have scored. Laca should have too, and worked really, really hard. He needed a longer ice-bath, I’d have thought. We dealt with their attacking threats with relative ease, I thought. The rash, nervy defending of Mustafi and Xhaka seems light years away, and Holding is quietly doing the business. How long before the England head coach notices?
Bill mentioned goals conceded, but as recently as December we had a negative goal difference, and it is currently 6+. Conceding fewer is nice, but we have to score more than we do. Spurs have played two fewer games than Arsenal, and both have conceded 20, but Spurs have scored 8 more (in 2 fewer games) fora GD of +14. I don’t see anything to get gaga about regarding our defensive record. Sam Allardyce made Bolton hard to score against, but they were a dire footballing side. Football is played on the whole pitch, and we only really started playing over the holiday break.
Arsenal and United looked like what they are. Two ordinary teams living on past glory. Nil-nil was a fitting outcome.
Watching Pepe’s recent improvement plus Martinelli coming back from injury has me thinking ahead to Lacazette potentially being sold this summer.
Assuming that left wing is Auba’s and right wing is Saka I’d be interested to know if anyone thinks it’s worthwhile trying either/both Martinelli or Pepe up front?
Claude
As your Sam Allardyce reference points out, a manager has much more control over his teams ability to prevent the opposition from scoring compared with a very limited ability to control how many goals his own team can score. We have dozens and dozens of examples over the years that a team with average talent can over perform by organizing them into a solid defensive team and not conceding many goals but you almost never see a manager take a team that is short of goal scoring firepower and turn them into a team that wins because they score a lot. There is no managerial or tactical solution that can overcome a lack of goal scoring firepower and turn a team with average attacking talent into a high scoring team. Arteta has a team that we know is going to struggle to score goals and there is not much he can do about that but he has done a very good job of controlling the thing he can control which is the team defense. Spurs outscoring us has nothing to do with smarter management, more aggressive attacking tactics or better set up but its simply because Mourinho has Kane and Son and we don’t.
I would totally agree on this. I know Bill gets lot of down votes as usually he marches to his own beat which has been pretty consistent (and always with humility and good cheer). I don’t always agree with your points Bill but I would agree that Arteta has definitely improved Arsenal’s defence. Maybe some stats can prove my statement wrong but what is pretty clear is that Arteta wants all of his team to have a mentality of defending. That mentality more than anything leads to more clean sheets. Yes, it has made us less creative and less exciting to watch but I feel those shackles are a necessary part of growth.
It’s like photography. You break the rules to unleash your creativity but only when you have learnt the rules in the first place. This team needs to learn the rules of defending as a team. Once that becomes ingrained, they can add the creative flair and attack mindedness. Atleast that is my hope. Whether Arteta will ultimately have the right players to achieve that vision, only time will tell.
Take a look at Leeds pre and during Bielsa. Completely disproves this argument.
Kane and Son have 24 of spurs 34 goals this season which is about 70% of their total. On the other Arteta has lost a good share of the production from Auba who has been scoring about 40% of our goals and there is nothing he can do about that. Give us Son and Kane and I believe we would be in the top 4 and Spurs would not be in the top 10.
Very true. All of our attacking players have not been very clinical these past few years. We miss lots of chances and can really do with improvement in this area.
Auba was pretty clinical until this season, topped all the scoring charts and had everybody purring.
It just goes to show when you rely so heavily on one player to score you are always fragile – a dip in form, an injury, a loss of confidence from just one player and suddenly your whole team’s offensive output collapses.
Unfortunately, he is an outlier. We need more versions of him.
And on the cue, Spurs lose to Brighton while being “sad” about Kane’s loss 😂
Willian had a decent game yesterday. Excellent defensive work at times, tracking back hard in the 82nd minute to tackle the winger, good link up play with Cedric and ESR over by the touchline to work a couple of opportunities.
SG_Gooner, I personally don’t downvote anyone, I only upvote. I’m not virtue-signaling, I hope. That’s just me.
Have to say though that Bill goes out of his way to earn his 😀The bredda offers the same two black and white arguments over and over again (and does again this morning). And you have to wonder whether he actually watches the matches, because the arguments never vary, even when the circumstances do.
One argument that strikes me as lazy is that only Aubameyang has the ability to score goals for us. Then what did we buy Lacazette for? Laca is actually our leading goalscorer, a combination of Auba’s earlier drought and current absence. Saka scores goals. Part of the appeal of Willian was goalscoring ability. Pepe, in what wasnt a great first season, had 18 goal involvements last year and even with his limited appearances and tactical shortcomings, is on course to pass that. He looked very different playing on the left in the previous match. Xhaka has goalscoring ability with the dead ball and depending on tactics, from open play. Ditto Luiz. They’re not going to get a tonne, but Mari and Gabriel have shown that they have the ability to get us goals from set-pieces. Ceballos is capable… how, tiactically can we maximise this ability with the correct formation. The Leicester team with which Ranieri won the league had only Vardy and Mahrez as goalscoring threats. Claudio’s tactics and setups — all over the field and not only in defence — were very important in getting the most out of that team. Unfortunately, we don’t have Son and Kane… we have what we have. Pep hasnt had Aguero for big parts of the season.
Which brings me to tactics, something else that Bill thinks does not matter (only form does, he argues). There is no doubt that the injection of ESR as a mobile, clever playmaker coincided with an uptick in our results. That is clearly tactical. The expensively paid free transfer from Chelsea was not doing the business for us. And he contradicts his own arguments. He’s happy to credit the coach for improving the defence (I agree) but thinks that over the rest of the football field, it is down only to “form”, and the inability of anyone not named Auba to score goals. Which is it?