Arsenal's 101-year low, winless without Isak: your club's season in a stat

Times

2 days ago

There was far more to this Premier League season than Liverpool's unstoppable march to the title, Manchester United's extraordinary slump, and Southampton's disappearance out of sight at the bottom of the table. For example, Nottingham Forest moved the ball forward faster than any other team, while Bournemouth had a league-high 337high turnovers.
Read on for all the other numerical nuggets that may have passed you by…
Liverpool — 47 goal contributions from Mohamed Salah
Mohamed Salah's 29 goals and 18 assists in the league this season amount to 55 per cent of Liverpool's goals. His contributions have been the single most important factor in Liverpool's Premier League-winning campaign and the decisive point of difference with the rest of the league.
Salah's final goal, against Crystal Palace on the last day of the season, drew him level with Alan Shearer and Andy Cole for the most goal contributions in a campaign; both players achieved their tallies in 42-game seasons.
For a while, Salah looked to have Thierry Henry and Kevin De Bruyne's assist record (20 in a season) in his sights. Yet assists can be a peculiar thing, dependent on the shot-taker far more than the creator: Salah created 17 big chances for his team-mates after his last assist, against West Ham United in April, yet none of those were converted.
Arsenal — 21 dropped points from winning positions
Mikel Arteta's team took the lead on 30 occasions this season, but won 20 matches, drew nine and lost once. In total, Arsenal drew 14 matches — only Everton, with 15, recorded more stalemates.
Yet Arsenal had the best defensive record in the division, conceding 34 goals and facing 34.4 expected goals (xG). Their attacking was the issue: they scored 69 goals (the third most), yet had the seventh-highest xG in the league (59.7).
Arsenal did not have a goalscorer with ten or more goals for the first time since 1923-24 — so could getting a bit more attacking output from them hold the key to success next season? Keeping the best of those players fit will be a key part of that.
Manchester City — 61.6 per cent possession
The former champions were the only team to have more than 60 per cent possession this season, yet it was very low by their own standards.
This, and Manchester City's wider problems, can be traced back to Rodri's injury near the start of the season. His ability to recover loose balls, snuff out danger and add physicality and consistent midfield passing was sorely missed.
As City's possession rate fell, so has their ability to disrupt their opponents' possession sequences. The chart below shows their pass-completion rates in build-up play.
Chelsea — 66.7 expected goals
When Mikel Arteta said Chelsea had the best attack in the league — 'by a mile!' — he raised a few eyebrows. While I wouldn't go that far, it is good enough to take notice of, evidenced by their 66.7 xG, the second most in the league.
And they mixed up the way they attacked. They had 125 attacks from sustained build-up play, which was fewer than Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool. But they also had 97 direct attacks (i.e. counters), which was almost the same as Liverpool, and considerably more than Arsenal and Manchester City.
Most top teams are good at one style at the expense of the other, but Chelsea have managed to get the best of both worlds.
So, Arteta was right when he said: 'They can open you, they can run in transitions, they have individual quality, any player in the defensive line can threaten inside.'
In fact, they produced the most xA (expected assists) from take-ons (3.2). But they also need to hit the target more… Nicolas Jackson and Cole Palmer struck the woodwork six times each, the joint most, alongside Salah and Mohammed Kudus.
Newcastle United — 0 wins without Alexander Isak in the XI
There was a period this season when Alexander Isak was enjoying an eight-match goalscoring streak, where it appeared he was the second coming of Thierry Henry.
He ended the season with 23 goals at a rate of 0.75 per 90, taken at a 23 per cent conversion rate.
In those four games without him, Newcastle United scored just one goal and drew twice, for an average points-per-game rate of 0.5, compared to the 1.9 rate they have with the Sweden international in the side.
Aston Villa — one loss at Villa Park
Unai Emery has turned Villa Park into a formidable arena — they, along with Liverpool, lost just once at home. Their 2.11 points per game at home is bettered only by Liverpool, Manchester City and Chelsea.
But Villa's away form was their weakness this season: no team had a greater discrepancy between their expected goal difference per 90 at home (0.79) and away (-0.47) — a swing of 1.26.
Nottingham Forest — 12,956 passes: the fewest in the league
Nuno Espírito Santo's Nottingham Forest had been a real point of difference this season. Instead of trying to control games with pressing or possession, they preferred sitting back and countering.
Forest completed the fewest passes in the league, had two of the top-ten defenders for clearances (Murillo, 242, and Nikola Milenkovic, 208) and moved the ball towards goal at an average speed of 2.04 metres per second — the fastest in the league.
Chris Wood's eight headed goals were also the most in the division and double that of the next best players — Erling Haaland, Isak, Mikel Merino, Kevin Schade, Ollie Watkins and Yoane Wissa all scored four headers.
Brighton & Hove Albion — Bart Verbruggen's 60.9 per cent save percentage
There was plenty to like from Fabian Hürzeler's debut season with Brighton & Hove Albion, but one area for improvement is in goal. Bart Verbruggen had a save-completion rate of 60.9 per cent.
In terms of shots inside the box, it was 60.1 per cent, which is quite low, although four teams have a lower rate (Leicester City, Manchester United, Ipswich Town and Wolverhampton Wanderers); but from outside the area, it was 66.7 per cent.
Collectively, Verbruggen and Jason Steele conceded five goals more than expected, given where those goals have entered the goalmouth. Only Wolves and Ipswich had a worse record, conceding six more than expected.
However, Hürzeler's team managed to do well from difficult situations, taking 23 points from losing positions, a joint-best record in the league. They salvaged six wins and five draws from 20 losing positions.
Bournemouth: 9.9 — average number of passes opponent completes before south coast club make defensive action
Opposition passes per defensive action (PPDA) is a proxy for pressing intensity and — no surprise — Andoni Iraola's team were the most intense in this area in the league.
Bournemouth also had a league-high 337 high turnovers, two more than Arsenal. Unlike Arsenal, though, Bournemouth were efficient at turning those chances into shots and goals.
Their 68 shot-ending high turnovers was the best in the league and a perfect encapsulation of Iraola's high-pressing, man-to-man tactics.
Bournemouth's directness with the ball is represented by their speed of two metres per second (the second highest in the league, behind Nottingham Forest), and also their league-high 238 flick-ons, one more than Forest, and 15 more than Brentford.
Bournemouth elicited 50 errors from opposition teams too — no doubt a consequence of their pressing.
Brentford — 27 goals and assists for Bryan Mbeumo and 23 for Yoane Wissa
The obvious and most striking story of Brentford's season was the incredible attacking numbers produced by Bryan Mbeumo and Yoane Wissa, who were deputising for the injured striker Igor Thiago, who was meant to replace Ivan Toney.
They may have had the lowest number of different goalscorers in the league (10), but Brentford had the highest xG per shot 0.14 and the best conversion rate (15 per cent). However, there was also another dimension to Brentford's excellent season: their phenomenal defensive numbers. They conceded just two goals from set-pieces. In addition, they averaged the lowest xG per shot faced — the average chance against Brentford was worth just 0.09 xG.
Fulham — 158 open-play crosses
In the same way that Nottingham Forest represented a repudiation of modern tactical trends, so did Marco Silva's Fulham.
Their 158 crosses (excluding set-pieces) is a league high, with Bournemouth (134) the only side running them close.
Fulham also had one of the highest shares of attacks from the left wing (41 per cent of all attacks originated from that position), where Antonee Robinson and Alex Iwobi (mostly) had been playing this season.
Crystal Palace — 77.5 per cent pass-completion rate
More often than not, pass-completion rates are an indication of a team's intentions and attitude to risk. A team that rarely misplaces a pass is probably attempting a lot of safe passes, and one that has a low success rate is either poor at keeping the ball or trying to be attacking.
In Crystal Palace's case, they attempted to play attacking football. They passed the ball forward at the fourth-highest rate in the league (34.9 per cent of all passes were forward), had the lowest backwards rate (14.4 per cent), so avoided the risk of going back to the goalkeeper.
But it was their final third pass-completion rate (62.5 per cent) that was so interesting. When Palace were in the final third they were always looking for an attacking pass, even if an opponent could intercept it, because that meant they could counter-press.
Everton — 31 points from 20 matches under David Moyes
Few imagined a Goodison Park homecoming for David Moyes at the start of the season and of those who did, even fewer would have thought it would have played out so perfectly.
Brought in to stave off relegation, Moyes earned enough points (31) in his 20 matches to ensure safety, even without those accumulated by the team under Sean Dyche.
West Ham United — 0.108 xG difference improvement under Graham Potter
West Ham United hoped to jolt an underwhelming season into life when they replaced Julen Lopetegui with Graham Potter.
However, it didn't prove to make much of a difference: Potter earned 20 points from his 18 matches (1.11 per game), while Lopetegui took 23 from 20 (1.15).
Potter's tenure was a slow-burn, characterised by tactical flexibility from game to game, but there was some small improvement in the underlying numbers.
West Ham's expected goal difference (the difference between the quality of chances they created versus those they faced) improved from -0.375 per 90 under Lopetegui to -0.267 under Potter. It was still underwhelming, maybe just a bit less so.
Manchester United — 18 losses
A win over Aston Villa on the final day of the season moved Manchester United above 16th-placed Wolves on goal difference, but there was very little that was redeeming about their season.
Although, for the first time in a while, their xG ticked above their xG against.
On a more positive note, after enduring a rotten run of form taking direct free kicks, Bruno Fernandes managed to score two, and in doing so became this season's top scorer for direct free kicks.
Wolverhampton Wanderers — 33 pints
'First the points, then the pints,' said Vitor Pereira, who has been well acquainted with the public houses of the Black Country since moving to Wolverhampton. At this rate, it appears Pereira has sunk at least 33 pints.
In truth, he could have moved onto the bubbly a few months ago, when it was clear enough that Southampton, Ipswich and Leicester couldn't keep pace with them, and Wolves could move their sights onto Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United.
Tottenham Hotspur — 11.9 per cent long-pass rate
It's how they play — unless they are in the business end of a European knockout competition, apparently. Only Arsenal (10.4 per cent) and Manchester City (8.6 per cent) had a lower long-pass rate.
In the league, Ange Postecoglou's side stuck to their principles of play, refusing to go long from goal kicks. Guglielmo Vicario launched just 7.7 per cent of his goal kicks long, the lowest rate in the league.
Spurs did make tweaks, such as moving their full backs from inverted positions to more conventional roles, but the game model largely stayed the same, even as they slumped to 22 league defeats.
What's even stranger is that it took until the final day of the season for Tottenham's goal difference to turn negative. Their 64 goals was bettered by only six other clubs in the Premier League.
Leicester City — 12 first goals in the opening 45 minutes
Given Leicester City scored the second-fewest goals in the league (33), it was no surprise that they struggled to get their noses in front. But that simple fact meant they never really got the opportunity to control games by managing time, or counter-attack, which would have suited players such as Jamie Vardy.
Leicester were also one of six clubs (West Ham, Bournemouth, Nottingham Forest, Chelsea and Manchester City) to not score a goal in first-half added time.
Ipswich Town — 0.5 points per million spent on wages
Ipswich Town's rise under Kieran McKenna has been remarkable, even if they were not able to sustain it this season.
They achieved consecutive promotions from League One to the Premier League, and as they progressed up the football pyramid, they attempted to scale their squad and spending accordingly.
According to their most recent accounts, Ipswich increased their wage bill from £19.8million to £44.5million — a considerable jump — which still pales in comparison to the league leaders, for example, who paid £341-£454million in wages over the same period.
It works out to around 0.5 points per million spent, a better return than Liverpool (0.25 points per million spent) and considerably better than United (0.14 per million spent). It might have been a tough season, but Ipswich punched well above their weight.
Southampton — 12 points (one more than Derby County)…
… But the real story of Southampton's season can be told through the 50 defensive errors the team made — a league high. Three of the season's surprise packages (Crystal Palace, Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest) sit at the opposite end of the defensive errors' table.
Not going behind early through soft goals can go a long way to defining anyone's season.