Arsenal News » Downtime retrospective: How good is Diaby?

By Cape Gooner, with some additional material by Tony

I was watching the Wolves game on Arsenal TV and was thinking how good a game Diaby was having before he went off.

Is he doing a Denilson? Taking his chance and playing really well, only for the “fans” to pick on every misplaced pass. His goal against AZ was wonderful. He won the ball deep in our half, good pass, long run and then good control and shot.

Then I saw this table at http://desigunner.wordpress.com/. I cannot vouch for the accuracy, but if correct, the stats paint a picture of Diaby that is quite different from the one we normally hear.

Basically his ability at making a successful tackle is the highest out of all the players who are analysed and his number of tackles lost is the lowest.  In tackles won he is right up there near the top, and he has scored three goals.

You can study all the details (and there are lots of them) on that site, but it looks from this analysis that like Denilson before him he is being criticised by people who seem to have an overall vision of a game without taking in much of the detailed interplay that goes on as opposition moves are broken down and our moves are built up.

I know that many people say that you can prove anything with stats, and if that is your opinion then obviously this sort of article is not for you.

But if you are interested in way in which the Denilson was maligned and came good this could be a good guide to the future.

Of course it doesn’t resolve the problem of who plays when Denilson, Song, Diaby, Nasri, Ramsey and Cesc are all fit at once.  Of course Ramsey is not yet ready to run the show so we can can’t him down for the moment, but for the rest – how would we fit them all in?

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