Saturday 17 May 2014

Arsenal vs Hull City - FA Cup Final Thoughts.



Just fucking win.

Tuesday 6 May 2014

#Numbers..




It's that time of year where you can start to look back at where things went right and things went wrong. I was at The Emirates on Sunday and I literally cannot remember a single thing that happened apart from the goal. It may of well been Bacary Sagna's testimonial for the pace it was played at.

So my mind has turned to where has it gone wrong this season? Why aren't we fighting it out? The easy answer is injuries, Ramsey, Ozil & Walcott missing large portions of the season etc but what about the numbers?

I've split the league in half and bear in mind I'm also accounting for the fact that we'll take 3 points at Carrow Road on Sunday......


11th - 20th Place


There is an argument for saying the main theme running through our season is that we're "flat-track bullies", devil's advocate says Arsenal have finally learnt how to win the scrappy points and the games we should win...

Total: 53 points out of 60, 45 goals scored, 14 goals conceded

Home: 25 points out of 30, 23 goals scored, 8 conceded

Away: 28 points out of 30, 22 goals scored, 6 conceded


Pretty bloody impressive, especially the away results, only a 1-1 draw against West Brom (And providing a win on Sunday) will mean that we would have a 100% per cent away from home against 11-20th place teams. The opening day defeat against Villa is a blight on the home form against these sides, the only other dropped points was a 2-2 draw against Swansea, otherwise 7 doubles over 10 sides.


10th Place - 1st Place

Now obviously you can see where the problem lies, and boy there is a contrast....

Total: 26 points out of 54, 21 goals scored, 27 goals conceded 

Home: 19 points from 27, 13 goals scored, 3 conceded

Away: 7 points from 27, 8 goals scored, 24 conceded.

If you consider the near perfect away form this season against the second half of the Premiership, the away form against the top 10 is shocking, only the form against the bottom half brings Arsenal's total away form up to 5th best in the country, compared to 3rd in home form. You obviously have to consider that we can't play ourselves twice so the totals are out of 54. 6 out of the 7 entire defeats came at the homes of sides inside the top 10 and only Spurs, Southampton and Newcastle haven't won against us at all in that section. The home form suggests nervous games, only 13 goals scored, 8 of those against 8th,9th and 10th, but only Geoff Cameron, Gerard Deulofeu & David Silva have scored for Top 10 sides at The Emirates this season.


Now all we have to do is address that away form against the big sides, is it Mentality? Is it tactics? You tell me.


@JamieDalton82