Özil’s Humble Nine
Mesut Özil created two goals for Arsenal today taking his assists total on the season to NINE. FRICKING NINE. To put that in context, Mesut Özil now has as many assists as Manchester United… the entire football club. Half the teams in the League have less than 10 assists, actually.
Nine assists leads all players in Europe’s five top leagues and matches the blistering start (nine assists in 11 matches) to a season that Cesc Fabregas enjoyed last year. For those wondering, Özil’s assists have gone to: Giroud (4), Alexis (3), Walcott, and Campbell. All but one of Özil’s assists have come from open play, that corner today was his first set piece assist of the season.
I don’t have to tell you that the assists record for a season is 20. Nor that record is held by Thierry Henry. Özil has 27 games left to get the 12 assists needed to break that record. Just to show you how difficult that will be: even if he plays in all 27 of the remaining matches, he still needs to average 0.444 assists per90 to get to 21.
That’s not impossible for the German genius. At Real Madrid, with plenty of players up front who looked to score, he averaged almost 0.6 assists per90. He’s in a similar situation at Arsenal, who have a plethora of attacking players.
Özil created 5 shots today taking his total on the season to 47. That means Özil is creating chances at a peerless rate of 4.7 per game. Arsenal have created 169 chances this season (passes for shots) which means that Özil has created 28% of Arsenal’s chances.
But look again at that chart above. Özil is playing out of his mind at the moment. If he keeps up his current pace he will surpass his total key passes for all of last season before Christmas.
As I mentioned last week, Cazorla is Arsenal’s second most prolific shot creator with 34. Combining Özil and Caz together, they have created 81 of Arsenal’s 169 chances. That’s 48%! It’s the Premier League’s deadliest duo.
Cech Saves
Petr Cech now has 6 clean sheets in the League this season and that puts him well past David James’ record of 170 all time with 172. Of course, Cech’s record is significantly better than James’ because Cech’s 172 clean sheets were in 343 matches compared to James’ 170/572.
*UPDATE: A lot of places are reporting the 172 number for Cech’s clean sheets, including the BBC. But the Boffins at Opta assure me that Cech is actually on 168 and James is on 169. What’s the discrepancy? Subs. It appears there is more than one way to count clean sheets. Opta only count the clean sheet if the keeper plays all 90 minutes of the game. Other places apparently count a cleaan sheet if the keeper comes on or off and doesn’t let in a goal. Cech only counts full 90s so I guess we will too. That means Cech is one clean sheet shy of King James.*
Thanks to some heroics by Bellerin and a timely offside call, Cech didn’t have to make any big chance saves or shot in prime saves today.
In fact, keeper stats suck.
How bad was that first half?
Pretty bad. Let’s not do that again.
@7amkickoff
Sources: 442 StatsZone app, WhoScored.com, statto.com, transfermarkt.com, my personal database
A game of two statistical halves
Joel campbell stat please ? Curious to know how he performs
Campbell offers something different to Oxlade, Ramsey and Walcott on the right flank. All these three players (Oxlade, Ramsey and Walcott) have strong right foot and somewhat weak left foot. Campbell has very strong left foot and his shots with that foot are quite dangerous. I think Campbell on the right is comparable to Alexis on the left, and how he (Alexis) just cuts in an shoots with his right. Campbell should do more of that on the right side.
Kowe bocah purwokerto ya?
Kebumen
Ozil has adapted to the physical demands of the premier league and has unlocked how to use the aggression of the premier league pace to control and/or open up games. What’s even more encouraging is you can see the comfort he has with the squad and array of weapons to choose from; he caters to each individual player and knows their preferred options. I honestly believe he has quite a bit of room to improve, which sounds silly to say. He has an appetite for goal now, too, along with enjoying his football. I am loving the assertiveness he has… Read more »
thesedays, i regret not seeing Dennis’ earliest stage of rising to prominence just a tad less.
it’s really an honour to have Mesut and i do believe most people will only fully realize that with time and in perspective.
hopefully there’ll be more major trophies during his stay, so that this era will not be quickly forgotten.
because it just might be a fucking excellent era.
There is too much talk about Ozil ‘s assists at times and not his general play. He is now like a conductor of the team (esp. in the final third) that we can almost visibly feel his lack of presence when he’s not playing. Also, yes, Ozil has grown into a leader of the team something he never needed to at Madrid. He is also working much more harder, aggressive and helping out in defence as well as in attack. He is gesturing and organizing a lot this season. And yep, you can see him trying to score goals but… Read more »
Hi @7amkickoff how many clean sheets does Mertescielny axis have? Lets say over the past 3 seasons. Would be interesting to know that is compared to other successful partnerships in the league.
RIP Chelsea, 2005-2015. My thoughts with the worst champions ever.
And yeah Ozil’s great form this season is simply due to a good full pre-season and those arrogant chavs thundercunts arrived overweight and overcunted in preseason…….
Consequence—-> PRO-FOOTBALL leading ANTI-FOOTBALL by 14 fucking points…..
Hi @7am. Was wondering if we could get Alexis’ minutes per goal while playing alongside Giroud compared to when he’s playing alongside Walcott or even Welbeck from last season. To me it seems that with Walcott/Welbeck’s more mobility and tendency to drift wide, Sanchez gets into more central areas and gets more goals. Just to be clear, I wasn’t criticising just curious.
Gosh that’s a huge ask!
If anyone can do it…..
No pressure to 7am there
That first half is already a distant memory for me.
Özil was magnificent.
Campbell really is quite good defensively, probably the best of our right hand options which makes me feel slightly better about losing Theo and the Ox. I like that he kept it simple for the most part. His goal will do him a world of good.
Bellerin, what else can you say? Just amazing. Up for player of the season so far. That’s taking into account Özil’s brilliance. And he’s a fullback ffs!
Special mention to Cech as well.
Very well done Arsenal.
About Campbell, it may be true, that he is the best option on the right (although I personally think that Walcott is) I really hope that when he grow on confidence he will pass the ball earlier, and generally he will make his decisions faster. In the first half on 4 or 5 occasions he could pass a lot faster and we could start an attack, he hesitated to much.
All in all good performances from him, but I hope he will be more sharp.
Maybe Wenger pointed that out to him at half time and he did better in the 2nd half?
What were Real smoking?
Bale’s cock, IIRC
Hi @7amkickoff, you presented a few matches ago an interesting analysis how AOC and Ramsey styles differ when playing in the right side (tackles, passes, etc). How did Campbell compare to the two?
Its a tad too early, it will skewer the result.
When you save your best for the last.. COYG
Didn’t watch the game but did Wenger change something tactically at half time? Or is it a simple case of giving a hairdryer half time talk?
The team chemistry is high atm. He didn’t need a hairdryer. He probably just exchanged goal suggestive glances with the xi and they got out there and put it right.
I think it might be more tactical. Our main objective in the first half was to keep the ball and not give Swansea chances to score. Needed a bit of defensive genius to achieve that, but 0-0 at half time was ok. Then in the second half, with Swansea starting to tire, we created more and got our goals.
I didn’t see the Watford game (except for MOTD), but we were again 0-0 HT, 3-0 FT, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we had the same mindset.
As I’ve said elsewhere, I think in both games Arsenal wore the other team down. Both Watford and Swansea seemed very tired towards the end of both games.
100 – The num of times I laughed today at Chelsea and Mourinio!
However, I hope he is still in the same job till we kick their arse in the league!
i would just like to point out that the assist record that Thierry holds is quite amazing. what a player he was
‘ Özil is playing out of his mind
at the moment ”
You dont say?
Ozil has actually accumulated 9 assists in 10 games. I remember he missed the away game against Newcastle.That makes it more impressive and slightly better than fabregas’ tally.
l what a game
I feel like a big share of the difference between the first and the second halves was that Friend had already yelled at Swansea for their constant fouling every time we tried to bring the ball through the midfield. It was pretty frustrating watching our players get kicked in the back of the leg every time they tried to receiver the ball.
I’ve also noticed a willingness for Ozil to pass and shoot with his weaker right foot.
That’s a sign of a player constantly trying to improve. long may it continue.
I have nothing to say
Well you did a pretty poor job of not saying anything, is all I can say. 🙂
Think i have taken longer than most to be convinced by Ozil, but I have to say he has played really well so far this season, long may it continue
David fucking James?? Seriously? I must be new to the game but the moment I knew him he was at Portsmouth where he looked decent but not someone you’d think hold the record clean sheet in the PL. Pretty mental.
Google him, he was a PL keeper for a very long time, played for Liverpool, Villa, West Ham and Man City too.
He played for City and Liverpool too..Aston Villa..Watford…the man has had a career..
Comment:Awesome. I’m starting to believe.
Kos equaling vermaelen’s record of most goals by an arsenal defender.
2.27: Average points per game Arsenal have collected this season. 2.27: Average points per game over a whole season that would have been enough to win the league in 8 out of the last 10 seasons. Disclaimer: I’ve taken “enough to win the league” to mean the points total of the second placed team plus one. Or in other words: in 8 out of the last 10 seasons any team that managed our current average over a whole season or more won the league. Off course, teams have won the league with way more points as well, but they didn’t… Read more »
I’m not sure I understand how “2nd +1” gets you 1st. Doesn’t it just get you 2nd?
Yep. Thats why he is an anonymous physicist instead of a more renowned one.
If you have more points than the number 2, you are the number 1. Think of out like this: the most points a second placed team has ever made is 89. So if you want to know how many points you need to be sure (almost) of winning the league, the answer is 90, as any team that has ever reached 90 points has won the league. It doesn’t matter that some teams have won with more, because if one team reaches 90 no-one else will.
So it’s a measure of how many points you would have needed to come 1 point ahead of where 2nd place came. In real life this probably means we are doing well enough to be sure of coming 2nd with 1 extra point than if we were getting slightly less average points for each game and coming 2nd. This is a good figure to have because we could compare it to the average points we would have to have in order to come 1 point ahead of the highest points scored average for the lowest 8 of the winning totals… Read more »
If we are talking hypothetical point tallies over a 38 match season, it is actually mathematically possible for one team to accrue 90 points…and finish 5th.
Imagine if you will:
Arsenal 114 (38W 0L)
Man City 108 (36W 2L)
Man U 102 (34W 4L)
Liverpool 96 (32W 6L)
Spurs 90 (30W 8L)
.
.
.
Chelsea 11 (Hahahahahaha)
You know what I loved about Mesut yesterday?
When everyone else was jumping on Joel after his goal, Mesut was thanking Alexis for the return pass that lead to it.
Cohesion or whatever that is….our boys have been together for some time now…AW is not selling since the RvP business. No suprise we’re doing this