Morning all.
Once a season is over, do you sit thinking, “what if”? Or can you just move on and look forward to a new campaign? After all, history cannot be changed. History is there to be learned from and that’s my hope for the coming season. Arsenal, Mikel Arteta and the players learn from what’s gone on over the last ten months. Find a way or ridding the all or nothing, the very good or really poor performances.
Arsenal finished 5th which isn’t as bad as the media like to make out but because Arsene Wenger was a serial top four achiever, 5th is deemed as failure. Ridiculous really because every club in the Premier League has failed unless they finished in 1st place. I know, it’s not as simple as that, because each individual club has its own target before a new season begins. If Mikel Arteta’s was to to finish in the top four, he failed but if was to take the club back into European football, regardless of which competition, then he’s succeeded. His new contract suggests the board are happy with what he’s achieved so that’s that.
Onwards and upwards….
Arsenal have a section on their website called ‘by the numbers’ which might sound rather boring, possibly because it is but it shows that Bukayo Saka played in every single Premier League fixture with just two matches coming on as a substitute. Staggering really considering his age and how often he’s fouled. On top of that, he played in one FA Cup match and four League Cup fixtures. Now he’s going off with England to play in the Nations League, the first being on the 4th June in Hungary. Whoever thought that was a good idea is bonkers. Did the footballing powers that be not look at their calendar?
| Bukayo Saka | 38 | 1 | 4 | 43 |
| Martin Odegaard | 36 | 1 | 3 | 40 |
| Gabriel | 35 | 0 | 3 | 38 |
| Aaron Ramsdale | 34 | 0 | 3 | 37 |
| Emile Smith Rowe | 33 | 0 | 4 | 37 |
| Ben White | 32 | 1 | 4 | 37 |
| Alexandre Lacazette | 30 | 1 | 5 | 36 |
| Gabriel Martinelli | 29 | 1 | 6 |
Martinelli played 36 too but the number’s gone missing. Lol
June is a hectic month as far a football goes with four fixtures to play but after that, all is quiet until pre-season and Arsenal’s kicks off on the 16th July in Maryland, USA. That’s the date of our first fixture but players will be scheduled to return before then. Personally, I can’t see any of our players who are involved in next months fixtures being on the plane to America. Great for the squad/younger players as they are likely to play more than they might, but hardly ideal for our preparations for the new campaign. It’s the same for every club whose players are involved in the World Cup but Arsenal’s squad isn’t very deep. At the moment anyway.
The club are surely going to sign a striker, perhaps even two.
I’m not a fan of stats and xG in my opinion are two of twenty six letters in the alphabet but, when a team has 589 shots towards an opponents goal throughout a season, one would expect a higher percentage return of goals. Obviously some of those strikes will have been blocked, saved or from distance etc, but let’s be honest here, Arsenal players were missing chances which looked harder to miss than score. Lacazette, Nketiah, Saka, Odegaard and Martinelli – all guilty of spurning opportunities to increase their goal tally. That’s not a criticism, just an observation but next season they should be upping their percentages of shot to goal conversion. Easy for me to say I know but if they want to be the best…… Not Lacazette of course as he’s likely to leave any day soon.
As might Nketiah be considering there’s been no confirmation of his new contract having been signed. If he does depart it’ll leave just Flo Balogun as the only out and out striker with Premier League minutes under his belt we don’t know what Mikel Arteta’s plans for him next season are yet. Domestic Cups and Europa perhaps?
If one looks at the top clubs around the world, they have strikers who score goals as well as having wingers/forward players who add big numbers to their goal count. Saka, ESR and Odegaard’s numbers would look so much better if they were in addition to a 20+ goal scorer in the team but when they’re the only real source of our goals, well, perhaps it’s easy to think they should be scoring more.
Who the club are likely to sign is unknown to but it doesn’t stop the guessing in the back pages of newspapers or NN.
Today sees Arsenal and West Ham going head to head for the signature of Lille midfielder Amadou Onana. He’s 20 years old, Senegal-born and 6’ 6”. Excellent, we’ve needed a bit of height in our midfield for a while….
The Sun however, reckon Arsenal and Newcastle United’s hopes of signing Napoli midfielder Fabian Ruiz have been given a boost after he turned down a new contract offer made by the Serie A club.
The Daily Mail write that Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham are interested in Everton forward Richarlison, who has admitted he is considering his future on Merseyside.
I’ve not even looked at NN yet..
Enough I hear you say. Ok….
Wenger said: that what the national coaches are doing is like taking the car from his garage without even asking permission.
‘They will then use the car for 10 days and abandon it in a field without any petrol left in the tank.
‘We then have to recover it, but it is broken down. Then a month later they will come to take your car again, and for good measure you’re expected to be nice about it.’
One of his better quotes but nothing has changed and you can now add Saka to the list.
I saw the Onana links earlier but as we were linked with another Onana that plays for Real Madrid last window , I could not help wondering if it’s just two plus two making five.
Definitely one of his better comments. It’s crazy that the nations League is going on now when players should be enjoying some time off.
Didn’t realise Shad Forsythe and Paul Akers are leaving in the summer. Two of the last from the Arsene Wenger era?
To no surprise, I am a big fan of xG (and similar) stats.
Obviously they don’t tell the full story, hell, they even tell half the story; but they help you tell that half story in a more interesting, convincing and colorful way.
Regarding the xG stat shows the quality and quantity of chances combined when our players decided to take a shot. Interestingly it’s not a real indicator on Arsenal’s attacking capabilities. It is an indicator of the opponents defensive capabilities, as they allowed our players to shoot. The attacking capabilities are reflected in the execution of these shots.
The “raw” indicator is the conversion rate, which doesn’t take the quality of the chance into consideration, merely divides the goals with the attempts, disregarding if it was a tap in or a ballsy attempt from 40 yards. Unlike the SkySports stat cited by Rico our conversion rate was 7.4% according to TransferMarkt (https://www.transfermarkt.com/premier-league/chancenverwertung/wettbewerb/GB1), but we are at the 11th position nevertheless, which is really low for a team aspiring for silverware.
Fun fact: our best converters are ESR and Holding with 25% each, followed by Nketiah (17.9%) and Gabriel Magalhaes (17.2%). Odegaard’s 13.2% is okay, but the rest of the squad didn’t do too well, Aubameyang, Martinelli, Saka, Lacazette and Pepe didn’t make us proud: they should have scored much more from those attempts they took on. The silver lining here is that Auba is already out (and made a 41% conversion rate at Barcelona, which pisses me off), Lacazette and Pepe are close to leave, so we should expect more from the guys remaining as well as joining.
Anyway, there are some limitations to the conversion rate. From that perspective the xG difference compares the quality of our efforts with the goals actually scored. There lies the more accurate measure of our attacking capabilities: if we score less than expected – not by the commentators, fans or pundits, but by the algorithm supported by machine learning – it means we aren’t too good finishers (or the opposing goalkeepers were playing in an inspired form facing Arsenal). If a team – or person – scores more, it means they are clinical finishers.
FBREF site shows individual statistics on the topic (among others). According to these figures Lacazette was the second worst player on the ‘golas minus xG’ indicator in the PL ahead only of Mbeumo, but slightly behind Werner and Kane being #3 and #4 from bottom. Auba and Pepe are also there with significant minuses. Kevin de Bruyne leads those statistics (with +8.6); our best players in this department are ESR, Gabriel Magalhaes and Odegaard.
it means we aren’t too good finishers
I didn’t need a spread sheet or algorithm to tell me that.
Spot on Potter, the whole thing summed up in one sentence. 😉
PSG are preparing a £25 million bid for Pepe, who has expressed a desire to move on. There is talk that Arsenal will make a £58 million offer for Leeds winger Raphina as his replacement. On transferstats.com the xBS on this happening is 8.76.
( xBS is the bullshit rating)
https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/two-more-london-cabmens-shelters-given-listed-status-55089/
Cicero I doubt very much that Arsenal will be spending £58m on anyone this window, let alone Raphina who good player that he is isn’t worth more than £25m/£30m in my opinion.
I mean if Saliba, who cost us £28m when he was 18 and after three years on loan where he’s become a French International can now be rated at £25.5m (as in the appalling Daily Mail) then I need some Peter style stats to get my head around that!
6’ 6”, born in Senegal, plays in France, is that Patrick Vieira we’re talking about?
I think most of us Gooners are longing for the club to bring in another Vieira, but it’s unlikely isn’t it because Vieira was one of the best players we’ve ever seen in English football history let alone Arsenal history. But if Amadou Onana turns out half as good, if we sign him, then he’s gonna be one hell of a good player and he come from Lille, our feeder club…
Kev, there was a cabmen’s shelter in Warwick Avenue near to where I went to school, I remember passing it on my way home one afternoon it was pissing down as I got to the shelter my uncle Tosher was getting out of his cab he took me in the shelter and bought me a mug of tea and cheese roll then drove me home, we lived Portnall road but at opposite ends. That must have been around 1955. Is it still there?
Yes Cicero it is still there, if you go to the end of the article it tells you of the cab shelters that have got heritage status and Warwick Avenue is one of them.
Up to just before lockdown I used to stop off at Warwick Ave and get a tea and roll before ranking up at Paddington. It used to be staffed by woman who were often the wives of taxi drivers, the food was who,some, reasonably priced and very tasty.
Russell Square is my regular haunt now when it’s open, but I’ve stopped off at most of them over the 33 years that I’ve been driving a cab.
Wellington Place is the only remaining shelter that doesn’t have heritage status, before lockdown it was run by a lovely family who had a whale of a time during the cricket season as it’s almost opposite Lords. Sadly I’ve not seen it open since we returned from the madness.
My father-in-law was a cabby from the mid 1930s to his retirement in the early 70s with a break from 42 to 46 while he was in the army. He was a keen card player and spent a fair amount of time gambling in various shelters until he was called up, but didn’t go back to gambling after the war. My brother-in-law, his son, has his gold badge stashed away somewhere, I’ll have to ask him to show me it sometime.
Russell Square, Kev. I know the spot. I had a great Aunt lived round the corner for years. She used to love sitting in the Square, because her flat had no outside space.
A lovely part of London and I expect rich pickings if you get a fare from one of the many hotels round there. Although I bet you spend most of your days at Euston or Kings Cross?
Sounds like your Father-in-Law led a very interesting life Cicero not least during the War…
Yes Pete, Russell Square is a lovely part of London, I used to be a young postman there back in the 1970’s, delivered to Southampton Row, the southern side of Russell Square and Bedford Place.
I often rank at Euston and Kings Cross, as I do with most of the stations depending on how many cabs are waiting, some turn over quicker than others, if I fancy a break it’s a good place to wait.
Mesut Ozil’s agent insists midfielder will not be leaving Fenerbahce.
Mesut Ozil will not be leaving Fenerbahce this summer, despite his ongoing exclusion from the club’s first team.
Ozil has not played for the Turkish Superlig outfit since March 20, after he was excluded from the squad following a row with interim head coach Ismail Kartal over his fitness.
However, the 33-year-old’s agent Dr Erkut Sogut insists that the former Arsenal midfielder is going nowhere, having only just moved into his custom-built ‘dream home’ in Turkey.
‘He’s more mature now, more relaxed in that sense,’ said Sogut of Ozil. ‘He has two more years on his contract, he wants to stay at Fenerbahce, he doesn’t want to go anywhere.
‘He was always on and off [the field at Fenerbahce]. Mesut wants 90 minutes, like any player.
‘The coach didn’t give him that much time, they had an argument and fell out. But he’s professional, he knows what’s happening and he’s not stupid.’
Kartal’s contract has expired at Fenerbahce, but it is not initially clear whether he will vacate the role of head coach.
The 60-year-old impressed during his short-term stay, lifting the club from fifth to second in the league.
Kartal is not the only individual to take umbridge with Ozil at the club. At the end of last season, the club’s president Ali Koc also took aim at the former Germany international.
‘Ozil wants to play more. From now on, he needs to focus on his game and keep his commercial interests out of it,’ he told Fenerbahce TV. ‘He needs to think about contributing to Fenerbahce.’
Ozil joined Fenerbahce in January 2021, after his £350,000-a-week contract at Arsenal was terminated.
(A little bit of history repeating itself)
So lightning does strike twice
New post up.
I won’t be shedding a tear for Ozil.
Rico, he’s just gonna sit on the two years remaining on his contract whilst he gradually degrades what legacy he has left.