Shots, goals the untold statistic machines keeps on rolling – part 6 – passes, succes rates « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager
By Walter Broeckx
Who was the best passing team? Who had the most accuracy in shooting on goal? How many shots where on goal? How many of those ended up at the back of the net? We just keep on finding answers for your questions.
If it comes to passing the ball around you all can remember the media going wild on saying how many successful passes Barcelona has made against Arsenal and how much this shows that they are the best team in the world. So how is this in the EPL? Let us have a look at the numbers of successful passes in last season.
| Team | Succ Passes | Average/game | |
| 1 | Arsenal | 16903 | 445 |
| 2 | Chelsea | 16079 | 423 |
| 3 | Man United | 15336 | 404 |
| 4 | Man City | 14643 | 385 |
| 5 | Tottenham | 13448 | 354 |
| 6 | Liverpool | 12906 | 340 |
| 7 | Fulham | 12458 | 328 |
| 8 | Blackpool | 11553 | 304 |
| 9 | Wigan | 11469 | 302 |
| 10 | West Brom | 11090 | 292 |
| 11 | Everton | 10935 | 288 |
| 12 | Aston Villa | 10827 | 285 |
| 13 | Newcastle | 10794 | 284 |
| 14 | Wolves | 10721 | 282 |
| 15 | Sunderland | 10180 | 268 |
| 16 | West Ham | 10112 | 266 |
| 17 | Birmingham | 10042 | 264 |
| 18 | Bolton | 8508 | 224 |
| 19 | Blackburn | 7291 | 192 |
| 20 | Stoke City | 6612 | 174 |
So if we could use the same standard as they do for Barcelona it is clear that Arsenal are by far the best team in the EPL. Now I could have missed it but I didn’t hear the serious media in the UK praise Arsenal like they praise Barcelona. But in a way this could be understood as Barcelona won something and we didn’t. But still when Barcelona beat us the media couldn’t keep their mouth shut about the passing the ball around but they didn’t make anything of the neck grabbing of 3 Barcelona players.
If you look at the bottom of the table you can see Stoke with a very very low number of successful passes. They sure play a different kind of football over there. The success rate of a “hoof-pass’ is very low compared to the other teams and certainly the top teams. But they like it over there and as long as they don’t hurt anyone with their type of play, who cares. Oh, they do hurt people with their kind of play. I sure wouldn’t miss them if they go down next season.
Now let us take a look at the shot accuracy of the teams in the EPL last season and see how many shots where taken and how many ended on target.
| Team | Shots | On Target | Shot Accuracy | |
| 1 | Arsenal | 501 | 238 | 48% |
| 2 | Liverpool | 434 | 205 | 47% |
| 3 | Man City | 382 | 177 | 46% |
| 4 | Man United | 462 | 212 | 46% |
| 5 | Wigan | 371 | 170 | 46% |
| 6 | Everton | 406 | 181 | 45% |
| 7 | Aston Villa | 379 | 165 | 44% |
| 8 | Newcastle | 380 | 167 | 44% |
| 9 | Chelsea | 563 | 244 | 43% |
| 10 | Fulham | 401 | 172 | 43% |
| 11 | Wolves | 327 | 139 | 43% |
| 12 | Blackpool | 387 | 161 | 42% |
| 13 | Tottenham | 459 | 191 | 42% |
| 14 | West Ham | 419 | 174 | 42% |
| 15 | Bolton | 417 | 173 | 41% |
| 16 | West Brom | 446 | 182 | 41% |
| 17 | Stoke City | 360 | 143 | 40% |
| 18 | Birmingham | 314 | 121 | 39% |
| 19 | Blackburn | 347 | 135 | 39% |
| 20 | Sunderland | 399 | 154 | 39% |
And once again Arsenal is the team that has the most accurate shots. Almost one shot on 2 ends up between the posts. Not saying past the goal line but still some 48% of the shots on target is not that bad. Well it is better than the rest. The only team that has more shots in total than Arsenal is Chelsea. And they also had 6 more shots on target last season in total compared to Arsenal. But they miss the target a lot more than we do.
But how many goals come from all this shooting and can we see how accurate the shooting has been when we look at the goals each team made?
| R | Team | Shots pg | Total shots | Total goals | Success rate all shots |
| 1 | Manchester United | 12 | 462 | 78 | 16,88% |
| 2 | Manchester City | 10 | 382 | 60 | 15,71% |
| 3 | Newcastle | 10 | 380 | 56 | 14,74% |
| 4 | Arsenal | 13 | 501 | 72 | 14,37% |
| 5 | Blackpool | 10 | 387 | 55 | 14,21% |
| 6 | Wolverhampton | 9 | 327 | 46 | 14,07% |
| 7 | Liverpool | 11 | 434 | 59 | 13,59% |
| 8 | Blackburn | 9 | 347 | 46 | 13,26% |
| 9 | Stoke | 9 | 360 | 46 | 12,78% |
| 10 | Aston Villa | 10 | 379 | 48 | 12,66% |
| 11 | Everton | 11 | 406 | 51 | 12,56% |
| 12 | West Bromwich | 12 | 446 | 56 | 12,56% |
| 13 | Bolton | 11 | 417 | 52 | 12,47% |
| 14 | Chelsea | 15 | 563 | 69 | 12,26% |
| 15 | Fulham | 11 | 401 | 49 | 12,22% |
| 16 | Tottenham | 12 | 459 | 55 | 11,98% |
| 17 | Birmingham | 8 | 314 | 37 | 11,78% |
| 18 | Sunderland | 10 | 399 | 45 | 11,28% |
| 19 | Wigan | 10 | 371 | 40 | 10,78% |
| 20 | West Ham | 11 | 419 | 43 | 10,26% |
And in this table we see that Manchester United are the most successful team in the EPL and that this could be the reason (amongst others which we have been talking about in other articles) they won the league.
They didn’t have the most shots per game, they didn’t have the most shots in total. But they had the most goals and had the highest success rate when you look at all the shots each team has taken.
Arsenal ends up in 4th place in this table. So maybe we should shoot less but finish our shots a bit better. I would like to say that most people have the impression that we don’t shoot enough. But in fact we do shoot more than the rest (apart from Chelsea) but we just should score more from our attempts. Easier said than done.
And finally I would like to have a look at the success rate of the shots on target and see how many of those shots end up in a goal. And then we get this table.
| R | Team | Shots OT pg | Total shots OT | Total goals | Success rate shots OT |
| 1 | Manchester United | 6 | 212 | 78 | 36,79% |
| 2 | Blackpool | 4 | 161 | 55 | 34,16% |
| 3 | Blackburn | 4 | 135 | 46 | 34,07% |
| 4 | Manchester City | 5 | 177 | 60 | 33,90% |
| 5 | Newcastle | 4 | 167 | 56 | 33,53% |
| 6 | Wolverhampton | 4 | 139 | 46 | 33,09% |
| 7 | Stoke | 4 | 143 | 46 | 32,17% |
| 8 | West Bromwich | 5 | 182 | 56 | 30,77% |
| 9 | Birmingham | 3 | 121 | 37 | 30,58% |
| 10 | Arsenal | 6 | 238 | 72 | 30,25% |
| 11 | Bolton | 5 | 173 | 52 | 30,06% |
| 12 | Sunderland | 4 | 154 | 45 | 29,22% |
| 13 | Aston Villa | 4 | 165 | 48 | 29,09% |
| 14 | Tottenham | 5 | 191 | 55 | 28,80% |
| 15 | Liverpool | 5 | 205 | 59 | 28,78% |
| 16 | Fulham | 5 | 172 | 49 | 28,49% |
| 17 | Chelsea | 6 | 244 | 69 | 28,28% |
| 18 | Everton | 5 | 181 | 51 | 28,18% |
| 19 | West Ham | 5 | 174 | 43 | 24,71% |
| 20 | Wigan | 4 | 170 | 40 | 23,53% |
And again Manchester United has had the best success rate when they had shots on target. One could say that if they have 3 shots on target they will have one goal scored. And in this table we find ourselves in a mid table position. We had the second most shots on target in the league but when you look at how many goals that we scored we only manage a rather low number. The biggest disappointment in this table could be Chelsea. They had the most shots on target of all the teams but only end up in 17th place when it comes to having success with those shots.
In fact it is a bit strange that the 3 teams who had on average some 6 shots on target per game end up in such different positions in the success rate table. United comes first, Arsenal tenth and Chelsea seventeenth. And another surprise is the fact that Blackpool didn’t take much shots but had a very high success rate of the shots on target. But they didn’t shoot enough to stay in the EPL.
For Arsenal the conclusion could be that we had a lot of the ball and worked the ball rather well. We had a lot of shots and we did manage to shoot on target very well. But we just didn’t score enough goals and at the end of the day, this is what matters most.