Shots, goals… the untold statistics machine keeps on rolling – part 4 « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade
By Walter Broeckx
The way goals are scored can tell you something about a team. It can tell you how they generally play their football. So in the next articles I will be trying to look at how the goals came along and also on how the goals went in against us and the other teams.
So let us have a look at the goals scored by each team.
| 2010-2011 | Goals | Open play | % goals | Dead ball | % goals | Penalty | % goals |
| Chelsea | 69 | 47 | 68,12% | 16 | 23,19% | 6 | 8,70% |
| Manchester United | 78 | 63 | 80,77% | 12 | 15,38% | 3 | 3,85% |
| Arsenal | 72 | 59 | 81,94% | 9 | 12,50% | 4 | 5,56% |
| Manchester City | 60 | 39 | 65,00% | 13 | 21,67% | 8 | 13,33% |
| Tottenham | 55 | 39 | 70,91% | 11 | 20,00% | 5 | 9,09% |
| Liverpool | 59 | 41 | 69,49% | 12 | 20,34% | 6 | 10,17% |
| Fulham | 49 | 28 | 57,14% | 18 | 36,73% | 3 | 6,12% |
| Bolton | 52 | 35 | 67,31% | 13 | 25,00% | 4 | 7,69% |
| Aston Villa | 48 | 35 | 72,92% | 9 | 18,75% | 4 | 8,33% |
| Everton | 51 | 35 | 68,63% | 13 | 25,49% | 3 | 5,88% |
| Newcastle | 56 | 33 | 58,93% | 18 | 32,14% | 5 | 8,93% |
| Wigan | 40 | 28 | 70,00% | 10 | 25,00% | 2 | 5,00% |
| West Ham | 43 | 28 | 65,12% | 10 | 23,26% | 5 | 11,63% |
| Sunderland | 45 | 36 | 80,00% | 5 | 11,11% | 4 | 8,89% |
| Stoke | 46 | 24 | 52,17% | 19 | 41,30% | 3 | 6,52% |
| Blackburn | 46 | 31 | 67,39% | 14 | 30,43% | 1 | 2,17% |
| Wolverhampton | 46 | 27 | 58,70% | 16 | 34,78% | 3 | 6,52% |
| Birmingham | 37 | 24 | 64,86% | 11 | 29,73% | 2 | 5,41% |
| Total | 952 | 652 | 229 | 71 | |||
| Average | 52,88 | 36,22 | 67,74% | 12,72 | 24,82% | 3,94 | 7,43% |
So it is very obvious Arsenal is rather good when it comes to scoring from open play. The most goals scored however from open play in numbers is Manchester United. They have scored 4 more goals then we. In % we are doing a bit better but this is down to the fact they also scored a few goals more in total than we did.
A team that surprises me a bit is Sunderland. They don’t score that much and certainly after the departure of Bent but when they score they score a lot from open play. They get a 80% of their goals from open play and I really think this is a high score.
You can also see that there are a few teams that don’t score that much from open play. Fulham might be a bit of a surprise with not many goals from open play. But it will be no surprise to see the names of Newcastle or Wolverhampton rather low on goals from open play. Their strength is situated in other things than playing fancy football.
And the team that links both tables together the best is Stoke City. The lowest score with goals from open play. Is this really a surprise? But on the other hand the team with most goals from dead balls. I think it is fair to assume that throw ins are in this category.
When you have a lot of goals in one table you cannot have a lot in other tables and so we can only see that Arsenal are really low in the table of goals from dead ball. Not just in numbers but also in % of the goals scored. About one goal in four is from a dead ball in the EPL but we find ourselves around one goal in eight. And I can remember Van Persie, Nasri and Cesc score a few goals from free kicks but this seems to have gone in the past season. Maybe something to practice a bit this summer?
But this low number also has another aspect. If other teams know this, it is another excuse to go in rather hard on our attackers. First of all we know from our ref reviews that refs will not give us all the fouls we are entitled to. But when the ref gives the foul it still means nothing as we rarely score from such dead balls.
In a way you could say that the better football you play the less goals you score from dead balls. Or you don’t need them as much as other teams like Stoke or Wolverhampton need them.
And when we look at the penalties we see that there are some teams that have scored rather a lot. Manchester City got most penalties and scored the most goals from them. They are leading the table and have almost the double of the rest of the EPL on average. But also Liverpool has had a lot of penalties given to them.
But getting a lot of penalties doesn’t help sometimes. Just ask West Ham.
In the next article I will be looking at something that has been our Achilles heel this season. The way we conceded the goals.