SP*RS 0–1 ARSENAL: BY THE VISUALS
SP*RS 0–1 ARSENAL: BY THE NUMBERS
38 – Premier League games played by Declan Rice last season. He started in 37 of them. Martin Ødegaard featured in 35 league fixtures, while only William Saliba accrued more league minutes than the missing key midfield duo.
Yet before kick-off, a bullish Mikel Arteta refused to use their absence as an excuse and watched as his depleted Arsenal squad claimed their third successive derby win at Tottenham for the first time since 1988.
As expected, we were more than happy to let Sp*rs have the ball. During the first 45 minutes, Mikel Arteta’s side completed just 96 passes. That’s the fewest passes we’ve completed in the first half of a Premier League game in over two years – since the 86 that found a teammate against Newcastle back in May 2022.
By the end of 90 minutes, we’d had just 37% possession. Yet Tottenham failed to register a big chance. At the same time, opponents Arsenal were awarded two and recorded a higher expected goals total despite taking eight fewer shots, as Mikel Areta’s plan played out perfectly.
2 – Arsenal’s two lowest possession averages (on record) in a Premier League game against Sp*rs have both come in 2024. We won both.
467 – Completed passed by Tottenham, with just 11 (2%) of those being played into our penalty area.
38 – Passes attempted by David Raya (joint first for Arsenal!), with his 25 passes completed ranking third in Arsenal colours. His pass completion percentage of 66% was somewhat expectedly only better than three outfield Arsenal players who started (Gabi Martinelli, Kai Havertz, and Jurrien Timber), having launched 22 long passes, which made up 58% of all his passes.
On Raya – I thought his distribution looked a bit off with the first two punts up field but he just got better as the game went on and is a big part of our defence now. A defence that is the best in the league.
26 – Crosses played by Sp*rs, with just 7 finding a teammate and only 4 resulting in (relatively tame) shots.
I thought our defensive principles were displayed at an exceptional level during Sunday’s derby. We tracked runners inside and out, kept every outfield player tight to their man, stayed strong in challenges, and blocked passing lanes. This prevented Tottenham from playing their game, leading them to resort to spamming crosses, which were effectively dealt with by Gabriel and Saliba.
8 – Clearances by Gabriel (first overall). Kudos to Kai Havertz, who finished the game with five clearances.
Arsenal’s man of the match, Gabriel, also blocked two shots, made two successful tackles from three attempts without committing a foul, and recorded two interceptions.
15 – Shots for Sp*rs, with five taken from outside Arsenal’s area.
0.7 – xG registered for Sp*rs; this is just the third time under Ange Postecoglou they’ve been held to 0.7 or fewer expected goals.
0.05 – xG per shot for Tottenham. The lowest Sp*rs have registered under Postecoglou.
3 – Three of Arsenal’s last four Premier League goals against Tottenham have come from corners.
3 – Only three players have scored more headed goals for Arsenal than Gabriel’s 10 league goals in Premier League history: Giroud with 27, Wright with 14, and Adebayor with 12.
0.17 – xG for Gabriel Martinelli’s chance in the 19th minute. Regardless of whether you think he should have passed to Saka, it’s clear he’s working his socks off and doing everything right up to the point where he needs to make a decision in the penalty area. Gabi needs something to go right to boost his confidence, and hopefully, he’ll regain the form he had from a couple of seasons ago.
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Following the home draw against Brighton before the international break, we needed to secure a result against our North London rivals, especially with a trip to the Etihad scheduled for this coming Sunday. Going there without Rice, without Ødegaard, and missing Zinchenko, Calafiori, and Tomiyasu was never going to be easy. However, if you watch the game back—away from the intensity of the occasion—it’s pretty evident we were hardly troubled, and the numbers suggest little difference.
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Sources: my own database, Opta, fbref, @Orbinho threads feed
It’s so nice to watch a game and enjoy it while the opposition has the ball, because our defence plays so good!
Who else saw Nwaneri’s smugness on the ball? A self assured footballer… extremely quick feet too….can probably start behind a base of Rice and TP…..we need to control games irrespective of injuries…
The moment we scored I knew we could shut them out it was beautiful.
I do still feel frustrated about Brighton. That 100% record would have been so sweet.
But then I suppose we have to remember that there is a world where Gabriel’s goal against on Sunday is disallowed for a push.
I suppose it’s worth acknowledging when we do get just a bit of luck with a decision too.
In my head it’s a bit easier to deal with if I think “ah well, one went for us and one went against us. C’est la vie.”
How dare you offer us balance. Be gone with you
I’m trying to start a new chant in the terraces…
“Causality seems to even out over time” to the tune of “you’ve only come to see the arsenal”
Not sure it scans great…
I like it 😂
“Spamming crosses”…that’s the best summation of the game. They were toothless… And the best part is we have suckered Impostercoglu and Son and the rest of them into thinking they were really good and just unlucky when we could have played another four halves and they would have never scored.
The out of possession stuff was glorious and it will level up with Rice and Merino in the team. Scary, but not for us, etc etc. On a less celebratory note, our play in possession left much to be desired. Tottenham played a canny, commited hybrid look with what looked zonal at first, but quickly jumped us man to man further up the pitch. That’s why it looked like we just couldn’t keep it in their half. I think we really missed Odegaard knitting everything together, not just for his individual quality but because he’s just been everpresent. At times… Read more »
Assuming you can handle a little humour: “I think we really missed Odegaard knitting everything together”, thanks captain obvious…
I’ve never heard Son give honest post game comments. It’s only ever excuses and phony grievances. Such a crybaby but what else should we expect from a team of losers!
Why is no pundit talking about the fact that when we scored both Saliba and Ben white were being held with 2 arms wrapped around them. Had we missed that chance would they have had the balls to say maybe, we should have a penalty for two obvious fouls once Saka took the corner?
Winning ugly sometimes is the best deal 🤝🤝
Saw some numbers on Jorginho
19 passes
Won 3 of 8 duels
Gave ball away 9 times
I’m still of opinion him and TP did a great job for us with their positional awareness stopping passes coming through the middle. Kudos to both of them.
He also ran further than anybody else.
1 – number of great teams in North London.
Ditto Greater London!
Welcome back! Really enjoyed these last season and before, so great to see them return for this season.
The 0 big chances created for them vs 2 by us is quite a telling stat for me. And tells something that xG (which I like) misses. You can create an xG of 1 by having lots of low value shots, say 20 with an xG of 0.05 each. Or you can by creating two or three big chances. Seems like on Sunday that lot did the former and us the latter.
Thanks! Yeah the whole running everything off my own database took me way longer than I anticipated, but I’m more or less there now.
Appreciate these posts a whole lot. helps give bigger picture along with the watch and basic stats we see.
Also, love the ‘pashun’ to get this done. hitting the core values.
I think there might be a typo in the first table.
You note “Arsenal were awarded two and recorded a higher expected goals total despite taking eight fewer shots” and “this is just the third time under Ange Postecoglou they’ve been held to 0.7 or fewer expected goals”, but the table has Tottenham at 0.77xG and Arsenal at 0.73.
Great spot, cheers! The xG was 0.7 vs 0.74 in our favour. The table at the top is being run from a SQL query that’ll need amending. While it’ll definitely be better in the long run, there may be a few errors along the way, so I appreciate anyone spotting them. I’ll update it when I get home.
That first picture, duels won (104% total) and ground duels won (133% total) percentages don’t make sense
I did wonder about that, too. I’ve got it as follows:
Tottenham Arsenal
60(45%) Duels won 73(55%)
46(44%) Ground Duels won 58(56%)
14(48%) Aerial Duels won 15(52%)
No probs! I only queried it, because everyone else seemed to have us at a higher xG, so when I saw theirs higher in that table I wondered how, ha.
Thanks Jon. Could you do an analysis of goals per corner by different teams. There’s lots of talk about how great we are at corners, but the fact is we win loads of corners through dominating the final third. But how efficient are we at converting a corner into a goal, compared to other teams. It would be interesting to know.
more depth with inswing vs outswing, near vs far post etc please