Totally informal, very “bloggy”, blog today.
First, if you are looking for a book to read check out Embers of War by Gareth L. Powell. I know that we often (get pretentious and) talk about books like Baudrillard’s “America” or Eco’s “Travels in Hyperreality” but every once in a while I just want to slip into the ether of hyperspace and jump faster than light-speed through a story. If you’re looking for something like that, this is your baby.
It’s not just another easy-reading sci-fi story either. From a writer’s perspective there are some great tricks he’s using in this book to make it fast and enjoyable: small chapters, each one told from a different character’s perspective, pulled together to tell a story. The plot is thinner than a Premier League offside but Powell makes up for it with some good character development and almost no “filler” like I find in a lot of other thick novels.
As an aside, this novel and the other two in the series, have been optioned for Netflix or something. So, if you read it now you’ll be able to be one of those people who say “I liked the book a lot better” and who among us hasn’t wanted to be that person?
Second, Avie and I were watching TV (Netflix) last night and I noticed that Brian Regan has a new special out. It is rated G and so, I popped it on for us. We were immediately both laughing, but not at the jokes. Well, we were laughing at the jokes but not at the punch lines. Regan was doing this observational comedy routine straight out of the 80s: “women’s hair coloring products are called X but men’s hair coloring products are called Y”. Avie was laughing at the joke, and how dumb it was, she said that she saw a YouTube video where the guy was talking about deodorant and how women’s deodorant is called “fresh strawberries” and men’s is called “old log.” “YES!” I said, “this is the most hack comedy bit of the last 20 years! They even satirized it on Futurama. Remember when they had that stand up comedian who did his bit about people under the orange sun and the red sun and how they were all “woooeweee” (waves arms)? It’s kinda incredible that he’s just up there doing that kind of bit.” Then she asked me how come the people in the theater were laughing. “They are probably laughing for the same reason we are laughing, because it’s so dumb it makes us uncomfortable!” Anyway, you should watch it just to see how uncomfortable it makes you.
Third, remember back when we used to do match previews? That was a long time ago. Last year, or 10 years in human life (ba-dum-tish). I never promised to be funny.
Or insightful!
Anyway, I was looking at Burnley’s stats for the season and boy are my eyes tired. Ok, but seriously folks.. Burnley and Arsenal both share some similarities statistically.
- Both have a keeper with a high saves rate (72% Arsenal, 75% Burnley).
- Both keepers have a similar PSxG +/- per90 (0.21 Arsenal, 0.19 Burnley)
- Both teams don’t press much, Arsenal are 19th in pressures, Burnley 18th
- Both teams mostly press (when they do) up top
- Neither team is big on tackling (Burnley 19th in tackles won, Arsenal 18th) though Burnley does like to tackle high a lot more than Arsenal (61 v. 44)
- Both teams have been dribbled past some of the fewest in times in the League with both teams joint 4th fewest dribbles past. Burnley are also 3rd in the League in winning tackles against dribbles at 38%.
- Neither team really tries much in terms of interceptions or blocked passes, though Burnley are 2nd in the League in blocked shots
- Both teams are joint fewest in number of times their players have been dispossessed.
- Neither team shoots from distance, Burnley doesn’t get many chances in the box but they do get more chances than Arsenal in the six yard box
- Both teams have generated almost exactly the same number of shots from set pieces which makes them 15th and 16th worst in that category in the League
- Neither team is very good at generating key passes from corners or free kicks
- Neither team is very good at generating goals off set pieces
Differences
- Burnley keeper is 2nd in the League in average launch distance (55.3)
- Arsenal are bottom of the league in average launch distance (27.7)
- Burnley’s keeper is best at stopping crosses with a 12% stop rate
- Arsenal’s keeper is 3rd lowest with 5.2% (this isn’t an important stat, just tells us how they play)
- Arsenal are 5th in carries
- Burnley are 19th in carries
- Arsenal are 5th in progressive distance carried
- Burnley are 20th
- Burnley are last in dribbles attempted and won
- Burnley and Arsenal are also not alike in terms of touches in the pen and final third: Arsenal are mid-table and Burnley are low table.
- Burnley are 2nd in attempted long passes, Arsenal 12th, though funnily enough both teams complete roughly the same number
- Burnley lead the League in offsides, Arsenal are 15th
- Burnley are worst in the League for assists with just 10 this season, Arsenal are 11th with 24
Yep, so, as you expect it to go: Burnley will press us when we play the ball out from the back, quickly recover their shape, sit deep, pick off crosses, bomb the ball out the back, fall over to win a free kick in midfield and try to win the game off a set play sent into the 6 yard box. Arsenal will need to break them down in the box but won’t have many chances to dribble because it will be too packed.
1-1 draw my prediction.
Thanks very much for the Embers Of War recommendation Tim. Just got it free on Amazon.
For anyone interested.
You can download the audiobook from Audible for free by signing up, entering your card number, getting your free credit for the month, and then cancelling your membership before the first charge at the end of the month.
It costs you nothing and the audiobook is yours to keep even after you cancel.
(Use your credit to buy the audiobook before you cancel though because once you cancel unused credits are lost)
Unfortunately I can’t say that I like it at all. Too much of a ‘shoot ’em up’ sci-fi book. I suppose as usual you get what you pay for.
what is PSxG? new one to me.
So you’re saying we’re pretty much as bad a team as Burnley this season (under Arteta). Yes, I concur.
I’;m not saying that! I just think we have some stylistic similarities (which is quite annoying!)
Wenger’s wisdom being felt in FIFA handball and offside rule revisions. Good to have someone you trust looking at it. Changes in time for Euros?
Embers of War l would buy just for the title but big thanks for the review. I’ve ordered it. Contact the author for sales commissions.
I wish I could think about Burnley but I’m already doing the Gooner neurotic, angst-ridden, handwringing over the upcoming NLD and the Olympiacos Europa ties.
I look at myself in the mirror and I realize absolutely nothing has changed since the Wenger years.
Thankfully, I always have a guitar handy to take me to my happy space.
1-1 will be like a lose, in terms of our European ambition.
We really have to be winning against the likes of Burnley, particularly given that we lost earlier in the season, as well as the long terrible run we had been.
Hence, we have to play to take all the points.
Also, in terms of the compare and contrast to Burnley, is on the performance so far this season, which includes the above mentioned rut. Hope we are playing better now and win it tomorrow.
Noticed an interesting stat: since Christmas, Arsenal are 3rd in the form table, behind City and West Ham.
It doesn’t feel like it. I guess we’re hyper critical at times.
Nice point. I think YankeeGunner said something similar to me on Twitter.
There does seem to be something to this idea that Arteta is turning it around but I’m still being cautious.
2nd best in goals allowed and I think 3rd in points per game.
But..
7th in expected goals
7th in xG allowed
7th in expected points
Looks like we have a bit of overperformance (especially in defense) which explains why some of us are still feeling a bit uptight about things.
Although the sun has long since gone and the early emergence of spring here turned out to be a false dawn, nonetheless my optimism has remained. 0-3
I had of course forgotten about Granit Xhaka’s accumulator bet on Burnley when making that prediction…
HAHAHA!!!
Well, you called it.
Should have won that one, though, even with the stupid mistake goal. Those have now probably cost us 4-5 matches this season.
Honestly, VAR is ridiculous. Can’t understand how that first one was not given. Arm was well away from the body, and it wasn’t blasted. Far more obvious than many that have been given, including the recent one against ESR.
Tim
Arteta has been managing the team for about 1 1/3 years now and our defense has consistently over performed compared to xG. That’s certainly a large enough sample size to say that we are good at preventing the opposition from scoring and the xG is not an accurate way to judge the effectiveness of our team defense.
My interpretatin of those stats is that Arsenal and Burnely are similarly risk averse in terms of conceding chaces and goals, but Arsenal has better offensive players. Seems about right.
Another game, another tough result that could be called into question on the basis of the refereeing that was or wasn’t done, and yet another crushing individual error. We may be overperforming xG but we seem to be way under on xR, the expected refereeing decisions to go our way.
For the record, I don’t believe that referees are plotting against Arsenal. It feels silly to have to say that. I do believe that refereeing decisions have a huge impact on these games and I don’t feel bad about complaining when an obvious penalty for my team is missed.
i agree with your last paragraph. there is no conspiracy against arsenal. the referees in england are simply awful. how var missed that handball is difficult to understand.
as for xhaka’s assist, cleverly finding chris wood unmarked at the back post, i don’t know what he was trying to do. you have to use extreme caution when playing out from the back…especially when you’re facing your own goal and you’re trying to make a difficult pass with your weaker foot. i don’t blame leno at all. playing this way is the directive coming from the manager, which adds pressure on the players so arteta has to accept that risk; maybe arsenal can’t vary their approach because leno’s long balls suck. regardless, it’s cost arsenal today. in fact, the last two goals arsenal conceded (tielemans and wood) have been down to xhaka’s poor passing, in the back, technically and tactically.
speaking of the tielemans goal, did you guys see how arsenal reacted when wood had the chance that leno saved? somehow, david luiz fell down when vydra received the redirect from wood. unlike the tielemans goal, when nobody closed him down, mari went out and closed vydra down, leaving wood unmarked. vydra recognized it right away and played the ball first time to wood, who was onside, behind the defense, and in on goal. somehow, wood failed to score. arsenal could have easily lost today. while i agree with mari rotating over, something that clearly came up in training after the goal leicester scored, his angle should have been to deny that entry pass directly to wood; the same way wood denied xhaka’s out ball to david luiz.
Dr. Gooner and Joshuad are both correct, at least semantically. While there may be neither a “plot” nor a “conspiracy” by the “referees” against Arsenal — because that would by definition require more than one referee — there is the most curious case of Mike Dean. Both this site and others have cited the anomalies in his decisions regarding Arsenal, especially during the Wenger era.
Doc
That should have been called a handball and a penalty. Unfortunately the refs are inconsistent and this sort of stuff happens more often then it should. No denying that.
Fans remember every call that goes against their club and never think about the ones that go in their favor. I am sure plenty of Burnley fans can give you a list of calls that went against them this season but will quickly forget about the one today. I’m sure the same thing happens with fans of every team in the league and I suspect most fans from every club in the league think they are way on the wrong end of the majority of referee decisions.
I’m sure it happens to everyone but that doesn’t make me feel any better about it. Lots of people go hungry and suffer tragic accidents but I’m still going to cry if it happens to me.
Arsenal have 2 very bad footballing habits… they regularly concede goals just before halftime, one. Two, they sit back and overplay after taking leads, instead of building advantages over lesser teams. Let me quote the excellent stats guy, Orbinho, from twitter.
“Only WBA (8) and Brighton (7) have conceded more goals between the 39th minute and halftime than Arsenal this season (6). 21% of all the goals they have shipped have come just before half time this season”.
Xhaka’s doziness exemplified that casualness in their play when leading. In Arsene’s time, we wanted to walk the ball into the net… overplaying in the interest of scoring technically perfect goals. Meanwhile, across town, Didier Drogba and co were scoring them any which way and winning titles for Chelsea. In Arteta’s team, we pass the ball to death without looking like fashioning actual chances. No one takes risks. Who’s going to score us goals from midfield like Ramsey used to?
Saka, Pepe, Ødegaard/ESR (hopefully).
no one will regularly score the goals ramsey scored for arsenal. the two that sit in midfield are being deployed in a risk-averse strategy, as you’ve already noted. remember that the strategy is arteta and not the players. it is intended to make arsenal more solid defensively.
to my recollection, it became en vogue after both france and switzerland properly executed it at the 2006 world cup. the occasional goal from midfield can still happen. xhaka scored a lovely free kick. elneny scored a thunderbolt of a goal and has smashed another off the bar. ceballos hit the post yesterday. however, neither of the guys that screen the defense will get close to double-digits with the current strategy. the defenders are likely to score more goals than those players.
I remember those Orbinho tweets when I used to be on Twitter. They’re not really statistics, more like weird trends. He likes to pick on these kinds of things and I remember it always left me with a kind of pit in my stomach. In other words it’s not helpful and may be a little toxic. What he says is true but it’s just a little slice of reality, plucked from the whole. At best it’s irrelevant but slightly entertaining. What worries me about it is that even if the highlighted trend is something worth discussing and perhaps intervening on, the tenor of the tweet is very negative and seems to suggest we are as bad at something as the worst teams in the league. To me that creates a tone that doesn’t invite a balanced discussion. It’s more like a meme than a “stat.”
In a lot of ways Orbinho is a troll
Tim’s said this many times but I think it’s worth reiterating. We don’t have a midfield that is suited to pressing or to bombing into the box. Partey is the start of a solution to that but the fixture in the engine room is still Granit Xhaka, for all that that entails. We saw under Wenger what it looks like when Xhaka is left to defend space on his own and it’s not pretty. Two subsequent managers (three if you count Freddie) have seen this and made the same types of adjustments.
Unless you have superlative players, it’s impossible to be both secure against the counter and adventurous in attack. Even then it’s nearly impossible for 90 minutes. I’ll bet it would take one game like the types of drubbings Liverpool gave us in Wenger’s last couple of seasons or Man United at any point past 2007 for us to remember that boring security is better than adventurous foolhardiness, especially if you don’t have central midfielders with the talent to profit from that adventure or the athleticism to recover if it goes wrong.
What Orbinho tweeted is true. Whether you are prepared to hear it or not. Facts don’t care about your feelings, Doc.
In truth, we didn’t need him to tell us that. We need to cut out concentration lapses before halftime. That is one of the most psychologically damaging times to concede in football games, and we do it too often.
About goals from midfield, why would you characterise that as “bombing into the box?” To me, terms like this lack analytical rigor…. as if a coach can’t explicitly select and coach a team to make that part of his attack. As if it is heedless and not planned. Our GD is pretty poor, and suggests that we need that.
Well well well, what an absolute sh1t show that was. I am struggling to comprehend how we did not win that game. In a season of manic capitulation, this just about takes the biscuit. From spurned chances in the 6 yard box to hitting both the post and bar, never have so many golden opportunities gone begging. We could even have lost it if not for Leno.
The less said about Xhaka the better. It is as regular as clockwork, 5 good games then one calamity that lets the whole team down. Mustafi-itus as It’s called. We will not move on until he moves on. He is not agile or two-footed enough to take the ball in tight spaces in the Premier League, and that is two goals conceded in a row directly linked to his errors. I advocated for Cebellos to start this game, he always performs against Burnleh. Why we haven’t seen him and Partey play together yet I will never know. That is our most technical midfield and on loan or not, we are here to win games.
VAR is an absolute disgrace, not only was that a penalty, it was more of a penalty than 5 or 6 from the previous month that actually were given. It is way past embarrassing. We have seen penalties for legitimately accidental arms-by-the-side, classic ball-to-hands where the defender is not even aware of the ball and it is going away from goal and not causing danger. Yet here, Pepe is past the defender and in to the 6 yard box with that flick. Pieters comes in like a jumbo jet and literally stops a goalscoring move with his hand, it is astonishing. Who is going to hold these referees accountable? The ones on the pitch hide behind the VAR and the VAR hide behind their computers. It is why the linesman didn’t flag for the penalty when he was meters away. Nobody is taking responsibility for decisions any more, it is far, far worse than it ever was with on pitch human-error.
We cannot ignore the fact this game should have been dead and buried before half time, but this team’s capacity for self-destruction seems to be deeply ingrained. Until we move on from the 2 or 3 players that continue to get us into this mess, no lessons will be learned and no progress will be made. Bring on Thursday.
Probably don’t put Partey & Cebellos together due to them both being right footed. Xhaka at least gives balance if not much else, although he’s been quite solid lately and even had assists.
LoneStar
The 4 players you mentioned have 16 goals in about 125 league appearances. Expecting any of them to score double digits in league goals may not be realistic.
Claude
I agree with Dr Gooner. The fact that we have seem to give up more goals late in the first half is probably not all that relevant since we are currently 3rd best in the league in terms of goals conceded/game and that is the only trend which has a direct influence on our results. I also agree completely with Dr Gooners comment at 5:35am that we just don’t have the right players to effectively play the type of football most of us seem to want. A Managers options are dictated by the players they have.
I would still argue the biggest problem this squad and Arteta has is the lack of goal scoring firepower. Look at the entire career stats of the players not named Auba who start in most games and how many are a realistic threat to score a goal in any game? This is a squad which will struggle to score under almost any tactical setup or philosophy. When you know your team is going to struggle to score then you have to count on your defense to get results.
You say, “A managers options are dictated by the players they have”, which is true. But that comment seems to me suggest that Arteta doesn’t have a hand in his squad selection.
Xhaka, Elneny, Partey, Ceballos, Nelson, Odegaard, Guendouzi, Torreira, Willock, AMN. That’s 10 players (and perhaps Im forgetting others) in which he’s had a stay/go/buy decision. Im sure there are other targets we don’t know about. What Im saying is that the choice of what kind of attacking midfielder to have is deliberately tactical on Arteta’s part. He doesn’t have a genuine B2B, perhaps because he chose not to have one, perhaps to play more conservatively. But we need to rid our selves of this notion of “Poor Arteta…. he doesn’t have the player he wants.” He has presided over significant squad turnover. He has chosen who to keep, who to move out, who to loan, and brought in players like Willian as a wide creator.