Can we cope without Nasri? Here’s the stats. « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade
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Victory Through Harmony
By Walter Broeckx
Thanks to a reader from a very cold place in Canada we got some interesting statistics which we will bring to you.
Our reader pointed at the numbers and maybe they could settle a few nerves in the coming weeks with the absence of Samir Nasri. Off course we will miss him. Not only for his goals but also for his overall game. He works hard, is difficult to take the ball from him, he plays other people in, he is intelligent and he scores goals. So yes we will miss him.
But would we miss him as much as Man United would miss Berbatov? Or Man City if they should lose Tevez? Or Chelsea losing Anelka? Or Sunderland losing Bent? Oh, they have lost that one. Or Tottenham losing Van der Vaart?
So the first thing is to see how many goals the best 5 goal scorers of each of those teams has made so far this season:
| Team | Best 5 goal scorers |
| ManU | 20,11, 8,6,4 |
| Arsenal | 14,10,10,9,8 |
| ManCity | 16, 8, 6,5,4 |
| Chelsea | 13,10,10,9,5 |
| Tottenham | 11,11, 9,7,5 |
| Sunderland | 11, 8, 6,2,1 |
In this table you can see the top 6 teams at the start of the week and their best 5 goal scorers in this season. It includes all goals in all competitions before the last run of games. So we can see that Manchester United have the best goal scorer so far #9in the person of Berbatov). And City have Tevez who is their best goal scorer with 16. Nasri comes in third place with 14, just before Anelka.
Berbatov is really having a good season so far but will he continue to do this for the rest of the season? A few hat-tricks in one season is making nice headlines but this also means that in many other games he hasn’t scored at all. And scoring 5 goals in one game is nice but this means that 14 goals of his 20 came in 4 games.
Tevez on the other hand is a player who scores more separate goals in different games. I do think this is more valuable for a team than scoring 5 in one game.
The following numbers are the other best goal scorers from each team. So you have Chamakh and Walcott with 10 goals for Arsenal in second position. And in other teams you have the likes of Bale, Hernadez for United, Malouda and Drogba for Chelsea.
The next thing you can do with these numbers is to see how the goals add up from the 5 best goal scorers of those teams.
| Team | Total best 5 goal scorers |
| ManU | 20,31,39,45,49 |
| Arsenal | 14,24,34,43,51 |
| ManCity | 16,24,30,35,39 |
| Chelsea | 13,23,33,42,47 |
| Tottenham | 11,22,31,38,43 |
| Sunderland | 11,19,25,27,28 |
Now if we take the numbers from the five best goal scorers it is clear that Arsenal takes the lead. Our best five made 51 goals and in second place we have United with 49 goals. Chelsea also is close to this but then the gap goes open and Tottenham are a bit in between but in this table you can see how dependent Man City is from their main striker Tevez. If we look at sixth place Sunderland we can see that their reliance on Bent was enormous and that after Gyan there is a big gap when it comes to goal scoring.
But then we take the last numbers and these are the ones that should make us and the players believe that we can cope for a short while without our leading top scorer Samir Nasri.
| Team | Without top scorer | Total with topscorer |
| ManU | 11,19,25,29 | 49 |
| Arsenal | 10,20,29,37 | 51 |
| ManCity | 8,14,19,23 | 39 |
| Chelsea | 10,20,29,34 | 47 |
| Tottenham | 11,20,27,32 | 43 |
| Sunderland | 8,14,16,17 | 28 |
And this is where we see the brilliance of Arsenal shining compared to the rest.
If we look at our numbers without Nasri this season we are leading and have a big advantage over ManU if they should lose Berbatov. They suddenly would drop back to 4th place when it comes to goal scoring.
Losing Tevez would also be a major disaster for City ans they suddenly fall back to a team like Sunderland. Sunderland whose fifth best scorer has one goal in total this season. Compare this to eight for our fifth best.
We can see that Chelsea wouldn’t suffer as much as United would so they also have a bit of fire power in their team. But with players like Anelka, Drogba, Malouda and even Kalou this comes as no surprise.
And also Tottenham could cope better than United if they lost their top scorer.
For Arsenal it is clear that we have other players capable of scoring goals. And maybe we are the team that is best equipped to lose our top scorer. Not that we want to lose him but the rest of the team can step in the place of Nasri if needed and score goals.
So we will miss him but the likes of Robin Van Persie, Walcott, Arshavin, Cesc, Bendtner, Chamakh have shown this and other seasons that they can score a few goals.
They must step up for Samir now and show us that what Wenger has been building is not a team relying on one goal scorer but we have been building on a team that can share the goals and can bring other players in the team that can score. But yes we will miss Nasri and it is a sad loss. But this is football and maybe in 3 weeks time he comes back like after his knee injury: firing on all cylinders and scoring goals as if he never has been away.
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