Friday, March 29, 2024

Palace 1-2 Arsenal – Palace keep Arsenal narrow: by the numbers

A tale of three halves

In the first half (from minute 0-45), Palace had just 6 shots: 2 were from distance, 2 were inside the 18 yard box, and 1 was inside the 6 yard box, 0 shots on target. The first half was the very definition of abject shooting: 1 of their shots went out for a throw in, another of their shots wasn’t even in the direction of the goal, a third shot was blasted into row Z, and two shots were blocked.

In the second half (from minute 45-81), Palace had 10 shots: 2 were from outside the box, 2 were in the “Prime Area” right in front of the Arsenal goal, 0 were on target. In fact, Arsenal had 6 blocks on those 10 shots.

In the third half (from minute 82-95), Palace also had 6 shots: three on goal, two saved, one off the post, one scored. Of all 6 shots, only 1 was from outside the box, the remainder were from either inside the 6 yard box, or from the “Prime Area” right in front of goal.

This season, on average, teams are converting 28% of their shots in Prime Areas against Arsenal and Arsenal are converting 34% of their own shots in that same area.

Seen from a whole game perspective, Palace outshot Arsenal 22-12, got 9 shots in Prime Areas to Arsenal’s 4 from similar positions, and forced Arsenal to make 10 blocks.

But… Palace failed to get a single shot on target until the 82nd minute, that was from distance, and didn’t get a good shot on target until the 85th minute. Though, from the 90th minute on, they took 4 shots in the Prime Areas, scored one goal, and hit the post.

Pressure and Pitch

Palace did something I’ve never seen a team do to Arsenal: they made Arsenal clear the ball 75 times. This is a staggering number of clearances. I was literally stammering when I saw that. I can’t find a single game in all of my stats databases where Arsenal had to make that many clearances. When Arsenal beat Bayern Munich 2-0 in Munich, they only made 48 clearances. When Arsenal beat Tottenham 1-0 last year (the Rosicky golden flare goal match), Arsenal made a previous high 64 clearances. And today, against Crystal Palace, Arsenal made 75 clearances.

To give this some context, Hull are the most clearancy team in the League and they average 40 per game. Arsenal are the 5th least clearancy team in the League, they average 26.6 per game. That means the Gunners cleared the ball almost 3 times as many as their season average.

Mertesacker made 19 clearances in this game, he’s only made 138 clearances this season. Obviously, 19 clearances was the most by any player in the game.

Why so many clearances? For one, the pitch.

When Spurms made Arsenal clear the ball 64 times last year, they dominated every aspect of the match: they made 109 passes in the Arsenal final third (Arsenal made just 43), they outpassed Arsenal 366-248, they completed 78% of their passes, and they attempted 34 crosses (6 successful), and 20 dribbles (9 successful).

Palace only made 86 passes into the final third, they only made 249 total passes, which were completed at a 69% rate, they attempted 51 crosses though (11 successful), and 29 dribbles (12 successful).

This weird number of clearances while the opposition didn’t really dominate happened because partly the pitch was terrible. Neither Arsenal nor Palace looked particularly comfortable in possession all game and players were slipping all over the place, especially in the wide areas going forward in the first half.

But for two, Palace clearly had a game plan to attack the Arsenal fullbacks and cut off Arsenal’s width in the counter attack. Palace were 11/51 on crosses, they only average 22 attempted crosses per game. Palace also attempted 29 dribbles, only five of those attempted dribbles were in the center 3/5ths of the pitch. Contrast to Arsenal, they attempted 24 dribbles, but only 11 of those were in the wide 2/5ths of the pitch.

More evidence of the Palace plan to choke Arsenal’s width is that Arsenal’s fullbacks (Monreal and Chambers) struggled to complete passes. The four worst pass completion rates were: Ospina (keepers are almost always the lowest) at 55%, Chambers at 61% (his season average is 84%), Giroud at 61% (his season average is 64% and like keepers, forwards are often low % passers), and Monreal at 68% (his season average is 85%).

I’m not tactically astute enough to tell you how they are doing that or how Arsenal can combat this tactic. But I can tell you it looks a lot like the same tactic that Spurms used against Arsenal in their 2-1 victory 2 weeks ago. Which I wrote about here.

One suggestion is that Arsenal miss Arteta and Ramsey. I haven’t gone back through the games and looked at Arsenal’s passing rates when missing one or both of those players but it is normal to assume that Arsenal’s best passer (94% this season) and most active runner in midfield would help in these games where the opposition pressure the Arsenal midfield.

Say it with me… “no shit, Sherlock.”

Why no individual stats?

Ok… I shall relent. Coquelin was 5/6 in the tackles (despite a yellow card) and was a perfect 3/3 tackling in the Arsenal penalty box. I can’t recommend players to make a bunch of tackles in the box. He also led all players with 6 interceptions.

Cazorla led all players with 14 ball recoveries. Remember that moment when there was a loose ball in the middle of the pitch and Cazorla raced in at full speed and took an amazing touch to start the Arsenal attack? That was a ball recovery. He was also 3/4 dribbling and 4/7 tackling (both second best on the team) and completed 34/44 passes, also second behind Özil (who didn’t complete the match).

Özil had 14/14 passes in the final third, including that one, where he collected a loose ball, switched it to his left foot to pause time, then played in Sanchez for a shot that just went wide.

Mertesacker had 19 clearances, Koscielny 14, Chambers 11, and Monreal 9. To put that in context those four combined average 20 clearances a game.

@7amkickoff

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NotWitty

switched it to his left foot to “pause time”, then played in Sanchez for a shot that just went wide.
Haha great writing
Ozil was really good today just waiting for him to do something Ozil-esque in the next games to come
By the way Squawka is showing 81 clearances made by Arsenal today and you say there are 75?

LKoscielny6

Mertesacker has been outstanding lately!! He got some amount of stick earlier in the year, but recently he has been excellent.

arsepedant

Earlier in the year he had to train Monreal. The fact that Monreal’s now a decent emergency backup shows that Per did a good job of it. Unfortunately, when you’re doing on-the-job training, your own performance suffers as a consequence. Now that he’s able to focus on his own game and not anyone else’s, he’s back to being the brilliant Per we all know and love.

CB

Disappointed that they said they lost some concentration at the end, the rest of the match I was very impressed as Palace worked very hard, but we kept them from having any shots on target until close to the end. Great result, great other results.

3rd place, let’s stay there (at least).

Arsene's Selfie Stick

1. Huge loser mentality (Alan Pardieux): “I can’t remember being as fulfilled by a defeat for a long time.”

arsepedant

I’m stunned not so much by Pardieux’s saying he felt fulfilled by a defeat, but by the implication that it’s not the first time he’s felt fulfilled by a defeat!

Great smeg, if Wenger ever said anything like the, the knives wouldn’t just be sharpened, they’d all be embedded in his back.

Jagger

The expectations are totally different. For lower table teams the performance is more important than the result in such matches because they all aim for 40 points to stay in the Premier League. To achieve this low points total you have to beat the teams around you and hope to avoid heavy, confidence shattering defeats from teams above you. The aim for Crystal Palace is 40 points and they had a confidence boosting performance. Thus it was fulfilling despite the result.

You cannot expect every team to go for the win each game.

Gooners & Roses

Although we are getting the results, i’m a bit concern about the team struggle in dominating games recently. Against Leceister and Crystal Palace, that just even more worrying.

gooner 44

on shit pitches like that, workhorses can compete with thorobreds
but cream rises to the top and the bacon was brought home
COYG.
P.S shame about th manx

Clock End Mike

pps. LVG “we forget to score” ha ha!

gunner giroud

I think we’ve got to be happy with the win. I think that there were improvements to be made from that game in particular but nothing that causes major concern. The main thing I got from the game is how important bellerin has become in that right back position. Chambers couldn’t compare in this game. Bellerin’s pace is vital in games with pacey wingers. Anyway overall good job lads, on to the next one.

VAGooner

Why were we wearing yellow shirts and socks?

gooner21

52: A player slipped every 52 seconds on average during today’s match. This was also Lord Bendtner’s squad number at Arsenal. So it may just have been caused by shock waves from the Lord practicing roundhouse kicks at his home.

palace gunner

The pitch was slippery and showed in the game even the keepers had probs with frost but the main thing importantly is conceeding late in the game despite an attacking teams play it was a tough, scrappy match good early goal from arsenal fc and some gd moves coyg

Mark

You can’t really blame the fullbacks in a match like that for not defending the wings well when you’ve got a team whose main intent is to get the ball wide to speed players and have them cross it. Our defending on the crosses was really strong when you consider how many they had and how few shots Ospina had to stop. It wasn’t until the end when they threw on the big players and everyone forward and started lumping the ball in there that they really got their best chances. Hard to defend that even with three center defenders… Read more »

Anonymous Physicist

Not sure why you’re getting thumbed down for this, as I thought this was a very fair comment. Coquelin is a great addition to our squad, but he isn’t the kind of player (yet?) who should be an automatic first choice in a title challenging side. A high quality addition in his position in the summer would be my top priority, and taking some pressure off him while providing him with more competition will only be good for Coquelin in the long run.

Francis123

You wish…

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