Shots, goals… the untold statistics machine keeps on rolling – part 5 – How did we concede last season? « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade
By Walter Broeckx
So now let us take a look at the goals that were scored against Arsenal and the rest of the teams in the EPL. And we will try to look at how the goals were scored like we did it with the goals in our favour: open play, dead ball and penalty.
| Goals 2010-2011 | Goals against | Open play | % goals | Dead ball | % goals | Penalty | % goals |
| Chelsea | 33 | 23 | 69,70% | 8 | 24,24% | 2 | 6,06% |
| Manchester United | 37 | 21 | 56,76% | 11 | 29,73% | 5 | 13,51% |
| Arsenal | 43 | 24 | 55,81% | 13 | 30,23% | 6 | 13,95% |
| Manchester City | 33 | 19 | 57,58% | 10 | 30,30% | 4 | 12,12% |
| Tottenham | 46 | 33 | 71,74% | 9 | 19,57% | 4 | 8,70% |
| Liverpool | 44 | 29 | 65,91% | 8 | 18,18% | 7 | 15,91% |
| Fulham | 43 | 35 | 81,40% | 8 | 18,60% | 0 | 0,00% |
| Bolton | 56 | 35 | 62,50% | 18 | 32,14% | 3 | 5,36% |
| Aston Villa | 59 | 36 | 61,02% | 19 | 32,20% | 4 | 6,78% |
| Everton | 45 | 36 | 80,00% | 7 | 15,56% | 2 | 4,44% |
| Newcastle | 57 | 41 | 71,93% | 11 | 19,30% | 5 | 8,77% |
| Wigan | 61 | 44 | 72,13% | 13 | 21,31% | 4 | 6,56% |
| West Ham | 70 | 52 | 74,29% | 13 | 18,57% | 5 | 7,14% |
| Sunderland | 56 | 37 | 66,07% | 14 | 25,00% | 5 | 8,93% |
| Stoke | 48 | 33 | 68,75% | 12 | 25,00% | 3 | 6,25% |
| Blackburn | 59 | 39 | 66,10% | 14 | 23,73% | 6 | 10,17% |
| Wolverhampton | 66 | 47 | 71,21% | 15 | 22,73% | 4 | 6,06% |
| Birmingham | 58 | 39 | 67,24% | 14 | 24,14% | 5 | 8,62% |
| Total | 914 | 623 | 217 | 74 | |||
| Average | 53,15 | 34,61 | 67,78% | 12,06 | 23,92% | 4,11 | 8,30% |
So if we take Arsenal and look at the goals against us in open play we are the team with the best record. Slightly better than Manchester United in second place and Manchester City in third place.
So in fact this is not as bad at first sight. But I can hear some of you saying: it is the dead balls that have killed us this season. And yes in numbers we have the worst record of the whole top half of the table. But when you compare this to Manchester United (and as they are champions I think it is a good team to compare yourself with) then you see that United only manages to be a little bit better than our “bad defence”. In fact United have the second worst record of the top half teams when it comes to defending dead balls!
A small detail I would like to point at is the fact that Bolton (Cahill) and Blackburn have conceded more goals from dead balls than Arsenal this season in numbers. Bolton conceded 5 more than Arsenal and Blackburn one more. Now this is something that makes you wonder.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying the world is fine and all is fine with our defending. But when you take in account that we lost what should have been our best defender for almost the whole season this really is not as if we have been totally useless the whole season long when it came to defending dead balls. And like I said in one of my other articles: each goal that you can prevent from being scored against you has a high value.
So yes we should work on this and add something to our team and reduce this number. If we only could avoid a few it could have brought us some extra points. I also would like to point at the fact that the +40% of goals against Arsenal from set pieces also includes almost 14% penalties, as one of our readers already said a few weeks ago in his comment.
When you look at the goals scored from penalties we can see that Liverpool are the number one team. No team has got more penalties given against them this season. And there should have been more given. But Arsenal are in second place closely followed by Manchester United and City. And from United I know for a fact that a few more penalties should have been given.
And to finish this series for the moment I will try to give a few tables in which one could try to see the difference between the different types of play and the goals conceded. In a way one could say a table with strength and weaknesses of each team. And see if there is any balance between the way a team scores their goals and concedes their goals
| Goals 2010-2011 | Open for | Open against | Difference |
| Chelsea | 68,12% | 69,70% | -1,58% |
| Manchester United | 80,77% | 56,76% | 24,01% |
| Arsenal | 81,94% | 55,81% | 26,13% |
| Manchester City | 65,00% | 57,58% | 7,42% |
| Tottenham | 70,91% | 71,74% | -0,83% |
| Liverpool | 69,49% | 65,91% | 3,58% |
| Fulham | 57,14% | 81,40% | -24,25% |
| Bolton | 67,31% | 62,50% | 4,81% |
| Aston Villa | 72,92% | 61,02% | 11,90% |
| Everton | 68,63% | 80,00% | -11,37% |
| Newcastle | 58,93% | 71,93% | -13,00% |
| Wigan | 70,00% | 72,13% | -2,13% |
| West Ham | 65,12% | 74,29% | -9,17% |
| Sunderland | 80,00% | 66,07% | 13,93% |
| Stoke | 52,17% | 68,75% | -16,58% |
| Blackburn | 67,39% | 66,10% | 1,29% |
| Wolverhampton | 58,70% | 71,21% | -12,52% |
| Birmingham | 64,86% | 67,24% | -2,38% |
| Total | |||
| Average | 67,74% | 67,78% | -0,04% |
So the higher the difference between the two scores means the higher the way they conceded goals from open play in this case.
And so you can see that Manchester United and Arsenal are the teams that score most from open play and concede not that much from open play. Fulham is the opposite of the two teams mentioned as they have a high negative difference between conceding and scoring from open play.
| Goals 2010-2011 | Dead ball for | Dead ball against | difference |
| Chelsea | 23,19% | 24,24% | -1,05% |
| Manchester United | 15,38% | 29,73% | -14,35% |
| Arsenal | 12,50% | 30,23% | -17,73% |
| Manchester City | 21,67% | 30,30% | -8,64% |
| Tottenham | 20,00% | 19,57% | 0,43% |
| Liverpool | 20,34% | 18,18% | 2,16% |
| Fulham | 36,73% | 18,60% | 18,13% |
| Bolton | 25,00% | 32,14% | -7,14% |
| Aston Villa | 18,75% | 32,20% | -13,45% |
| Everton | 25,49% | 15,56% | 9,93% |
| Newcastle | 32,14% | 19,30% | 12,84% |
| Wigan | 25,00% | 21,31% | 3,69% |
| West Ham | 23,26% | 18,57% | 4,68% |
| Sunderland | 11,11% | 25,00% | -13,89% |
| Blackpool | 0,00% | 0,00% | 0,00% |
| West Bromwich | 0,00% | 0,00% | 0,00% |
| Stoke | 41,30% | 25,00% | 16,30% |
| Blackburn | 30,43% | 23,73% | 6,71% |
| Wolverhampton | 34,78% | 22,73% | 12,06% |
| Birmingham | 29,73% | 24,14% | 5,59% |
| Total | |||
| Average | 24,82% | 23,92% | 0,90% |
And in this case we see a definite weakness in the numbers of Arsenal. We don’t score a lot but we concede a lot more than we score. But the same goes actually for Manchester United and this is a bit more surprising for me.
And what goes up must come down and when I had to say that Fulham had a big difference between goals for and against in open play it is the reversed thing with goals from dead balls.
| Goals 2010-2011 | Penalty for | Penalty against | difference |
| Chelsea | 8,70% | 6,06% | 2,64% |
| Manchester United | 3,85% | 13,51% | -9,67% |
| Arsenal | 5,56% | 13,95% | -8,40% |
| Manchester City | 13,33% | 12,12% | 1,21% |
| Tottenham | 9,09% | 8,70% | 0,40% |
| Liverpool | 10,17% | 15,91% | -5,74% |
| Fulham | 6,12% | 0,00% | 6,12% |
| Bolton | 7,69% | 5,36% | 2,34% |
| Aston Villa | 8,33% | 6,78% | 1,55% |
| Everton | 5,88% | 4,44% | 1,44% |
| Newcastle | 8,93% | 8,77% | 0,16% |
| Wigan | 5,00% | 6,56% | -1,56% |
| West Ham | 11,63% | 7,14% | 4,49% |
| Sunderland | 8,89% | 8,93% | -0,04% |
| Blackpool | 0,00% | 0,00% | 0,00% |
| West Bromwich | 0,00% | 0,00% | 0,00% |
| Stoke | 6,52% | 6,25% | 0,27% |
| Blackburn | 2,17% | 10,17% | -8,00% |
| Wolverhampton | 6,52% | 6,06% | 0,46% |
| Birmingham | 5,41% | 8,62% | -3,22% |
| Total | |||
| Average | 7,43% | 8,30% | -0,86% |
And finally the difference between the penalties for and against. And we must admit in this case that you cannot say that United for this season success has been dependent on received penalties. They had a low number of penalties and also a low numbers in percentage of goals scored from penalties. Arsenal is in second place so we cannot say that we have been well treated when it comes to penalties. Also Blackburn has been badly treated in this way.