ARSENAL 4-1 CRYSTAL PALACE: BY THE VISUALS
ARSENAL 4-1 CRYSTAL PALACE: BY THE NUMBERS
Prior to yesterday’s fixture, Crystal Palace hadn’t recorded a league win since the winter World Cup, had failed to score in 9 of their previous 14 Premier League games, including the last four straight, and had registered the fewest goals in the top-flight this season (21).
However, the visitors, who’d sacked former Arsenal legend Patrick Vieira two days earlier, started brightly and were inches away from taking the lead around ten minutes in, as a deflected Wilfried Zaha strike (0.03 xG) came back off the post.
But after a slow start, the league leaders made the breakthrough via Gabriel Martinelli. Benjamin White nipped ahead of Zaha, played in Bukayo Saka, whose cross was finished well by the Brazilian (0.11 xG). White was involved again for the second – playing a delightful pass to Saka, who slotted low (0.14 xG) past Joe Whitworth just before half-time.
Going into the break, Arsenal held 69% possession, had out-shot their opponents 9 (6 inside the box) to 2; played more than double the passes (322 vs 151) with a superior completion rate (89% vs 72); won more duels (29 vs 20); won more aerial duels (10 vs 5) ; and were in complete control, as they looked to bounce back from Europa League defeat.
Ten minutes after the restart, Granit Xhaka exchanged passes with Leandro Trossard before finishing smartly (0.19 xG, 0.91 xGOT) and seemingly putting the game to bed. However, this season’s Achilles’ heel would allow Palace to get themselves on the scoresheet as Jeffrey Schlupp’s (0.25 xG) consolation ended a near seven-hour goalless run as Arsenal conceded from another set-piece.
3 – Arsenal have kept just three clean sheets in their last 19 Premier League home games.
On 74 minutes, Kieran Tierney, who replaced Oleksandr Zinchenko, crossed for Saka to turn home a brilliant first-time finish (0.17 xG) and wrap up all three points.
4 – Arsenal finished the game with a back four of Thomas Partey, Rob Holding, Jakub Kiwior (who made his Premier League debut) and Kieran Tierney.
4 – Arsenal have now scored four or more goals during a single game six times this season.
40 – Touches in the box for Arsenal. This is the tenth time in which Arsenal have registered 40 or more touches inside the opposition penalty area.
15 – Arsenal recorded 15 shots against Crystal Palace on Sunday, with Saka and Martin Odegaard leading the way with three each.
6 – Gabriel Martinelli has now scored 13 Premier League goals this season with six in his last six appearances. Only four players in the league have more. He is one goal behind Marcus Rashford and two goals ahead of Mohamed Salah.
2 – Bukayo Saka scored twice and set up the opener for Gabriel Martinelli, becoming the first Premier League player this season to reach double figures for both goals (12) and assists (10).
83 – Thomas Partey played the most passes of any payer with 83 attempts (86.7% completion rate). He made nine progressive passes (ranked first for the match), played 13 into the final third (ranked first for the match) and recorded 92 touches (ranked first for the match).
6 – Since making his first start for Arsenal a month ago, Leandro Trossard has registered six assists in five appearances. He only made five assists in his previous 64 Premier League games.
16 – No-one completed more touches in the opposition penalty area than Bukayo Saka (16).
6 – Arsenal win six Premier league games in a row in a season for the first time in the Mikel Arteta era.
69 – Arsenal have already equaled last season’s points tally (69) with ten games more to go.
10 – Arsenal have played ten London derbies in the Premier League this season and are the first team in history to record nine derby wins in a single campaign.
20 – Arsenal are TWENTY points clear of Sp*rs.
The Interlull comes at a welcome time as Arsenal await updates on Takehiro Tomiyasu and William Saliba’s injuries, but we can deal with that later. For now, let’s enjoy taking full advantage in applying pressure on Manchester City by extending the gap to 8 points. Ten games to go.
Follow me on Twitter @jonollington
Sources: Opta, fbref, @Orbinho twitter feed
One of those games where 1.57xG really feels weird. It felt like we were bombarding them.
That’s why it’s good to have both xG and momentum charts. Combined they indicate what we saw. Dominance. These last two games have been such pleasant viewing. Happiness for most of the game with little anxiety. This really is the stuff of champions taking care of business when they should. COYG!
Is it clearence or clearance? Top section
Love the graphics! Cheers
Great spot. Will get that changed. Thank you.
Should be clearance. Good spot.
A fan of the movie “Airplane” no doubt.
“We have clearance, Clarence.”
“Roger, Roger, what’s our vector, Victor?”
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.
Shirley you can’t be serious?
I am serious.
And don’t call me shirley.
I am serious…and don’t call me Shirley!
I found out recently that Airplane! is a remake of an old film called Zero Hour (it is practically shot-for-shot). It’s amazing how minor changes take a serious (albeit melodramatic) disaster movie into something hilarious.
We have 10 matches left, City have potentially 18, so we can mostly play just at the weekend (apart from the City match) and recover during the week.
Still not getting excited, plenty can go wrong, but we’d all have taken this at the start of the season!
Great work on the numbers above, thanks!
Great job, Ollington. Thanks
Go on, be informal!
I’m sure he can cope with being called Jon…
😀
Trossard was a great player at Brighton and moving to Arsenal and playing with great players will only make him improve.
Nice analysis. Has it gone under the radar that we can no longer achieve 100 points? #ArsenalCrisis
If we maintain our current points/game ratio, we’re on course to end with 94 points. Only once has that not been sufficient to win the title. It is also the maximum amount of points that City can get (if they were to win all their games).
Not wanting to get ahead of things though. We just need to keep winning our games.
TBH, from here I think 90-91 pts wins it. City will not win every remaining game (particularly because we’re going to kick their butts on their turf). Let’s say City draw 2 or lose one and draw one. That’s 89/90 points – realistically that’s about the max they can surely get (esp. with 18 potential games to play in all comps – 11 in the league). That means we need 21/22pts. Let’s run with 22pts.
At least:
7 wins, 1 draw, 2 losses.
6 wins, 4 draws.
Come on Gooners – we can freaking do this!!!!
I’m just gonna lay back and enjoy this 69 (points) for the next couple of weeks.
Too many ifs and butts. Sorry, buts.
Apologies to Seth Rollins 😀
I think this format is excellent, nice one!
Particularly like the twist on the classic match report format, with all of the (0.xx xG) numbers inserted in.
Agree with others that 1.57 feels surprisingly low compared to the perception of how 1 sided it was. The ten minutes prior to the 2nd perhaps wouldn’t have registered a lot on xG but the goal felt inevitable such was the territorial dominance and incisive play.
Did anyone see the understanding between saka ,Ben and Odegaard is better compare to xhaka,zinchenko and martinelli?
We need to improve that area!
I think a big part of that is that Xhaka and Martinelli can’t match Odegaard and Saka’s quality of passing under pressure. Their strengths lie elsewhere. Tactically, those three on the left seem to work better together than they did even just a few games ago, both offensively and defensively. That said, the collective contributions yesterday of Saka, Ben and Odegaard would be hard for any team in the world to match.
This, plus the trio is actually a quartet with Partey nearby when the others need to reset.
To get the equivalent combos on the left you need the striker drifting by, which is why Martinelli has recouped his pre-WC form since Trossard came in (Eddie couldn’t do this job).
They had a total of 55 blocks, interceptions, and clearances and we had 17. Sometimes I think that number tells you more than xG about who should have won the match (and usually who did win the match).
I’m curious what Martinelli’s xG is, if he’s on 13 goals and below the 8.1 xG of Jesus and Odegaard who are on that particular leaderboard. Pretty impressive outperformance of at least 5 goals over xG!
4-1eira, woah oh, 4-1eira, woah oh.
Small detail but I would try and use a more traditional red for arsenal (see colour used on arseblog #cf2e2e). The colour used in the graphics is closer the the Palace claret red colour than our traditional red, so it wasn’t immediately obvious which colour represented them.
That caught me off-guard as well.
I agree with you tbh – looking at it after your comment. Appreciate the feedback!
Great read as always.
We’ve scored 4+ goals six times now – or does the Villa game not count because of the hilarious Martinez OG?
Loving the new format! Well done to whoever at Arseblog scouted this Ollington lad