As we approach kickoff of the Arsenal vs. Wigan game this afternoon, I thought I’d take a quick look back at the Gunners’ season and when the data says the season may have turned around.

It’s well documented that Arsenal got off to one of the club’s worst starts ever, but gradually they have come back and are currently in third place.  With five games remaining, their magic number over Spurs and Newcastle stands at 11 and 8 over Chelsea.

“Magic number” is a phrase we use in the States, particularly with baseball, “to indicate how close a front-running team is to clinching a season title (or third place and a Champions League automatic qualifying spot in Arsenal’s case). It represents the total of additional wins by the front-running team or additional losses (or any combination thereof) by the rival team after which it is mathematically impossible for the rival team to capture the title in the remaining games.”

Many people point to the goal below by Bacary Sagna when Arsenal were down 0-2 against Spurs on 26-Feb as the turning point in the season.  (Pardon the poor quality; it’s all I could find on YouTube.)  I must say that I love the way Sagna took the goal, followed the ball into the goal, picked it up, ran it to half field and all but said “I’m sick of this!”  The entire attitude of the team seemed to shift on this one goal.  I get the chills every time I watch it.

Again, I have no doubt about the attitude shift at this single moment, particularly after back-to-back poor results against AC Milan (Champions League) and Sunderland (FA Cup).  But looking at the data for the EPL only, one particular match stands out as the turnaround point..the 7-1 thrashing of Blackburn, whom Arsenal somehow managed to lose to during their early season swoon.

Below you will see four chart, all which highlight this 7-1 game.

1. Points Trend – the upward trend of full-point matches clearly starts with the Blackburn match
2. Points vs. Possible – Here, you want to see a flat green line, which indicates full points are taken from the match.  Look at that long run of results that starts with the Blackburn match.
3. Table position – What an ugly start to the season!  There was a recovery for a few weeks 1/3 of the way into the season, but another string of poor results began with the 0-1 loss to Manchester City.  But the run of results beginning with the Blackburn match, combined with a significant dip in form by Spurs, has pole vaulted the Gunners into 3rd place.
4. Score vs. Result – This is a simple scatterplot. The darker the bubble, the more results for that score.  Excluding the 2-8 drubbing at the hands of Manchester Units, Arsenal have lost every match, bar a 0-2 defeat by only one goals.  This indicates that they have been in every match, but haven’t been able to score late to turn the result around.  But look at our wins, the scores have been tremendous with a but more than a 4-1 average score.

Touch wood that Arsenal will hold on to third place, and please, please, please RVP, sign a new contract!

Another weekend has passed by and another totally lackluster effort from my beloved Gunners.  I knew they were in deep, deep trouble when they scored so early in the game and of course it was Robin Van Persie with another classy finish.  This makes three games I can think of where Arsenal scored really early and couldn’t hold on.  Surely there were other occasions as well.

Miraculously someone other than RVP scored later in the game (Theo Walcott), but when the final whistle blew and there were few chances created, I began to ponder what could happen if RVP gets hurt (some might say when instead of if).  Arsenal’s dependency on RVP has been staggering this season.

I created the viz below based on club and squad stats from ESPN Soccernet for EPL games. 

Here’s how I designed it and what I’ve observed:

1. Anything in red = Robin Van Persie
2. The dotted lines represent the averages over the 11 seasons
3. There’s no stat that measures effort, desire or heart.  Thankfully, I guess, or the Gunners would be at the bottom of that table.  They play so gutlessly at times!
4. The primary team stats are shown on the upper left for the last 11 EPL campaigns.  This provides a nice little recipe for what you need to do to ensure you tumble right down the table and out of the Champions League qualification spots.
   
   Fewer Goals For + More Goals Against = Lower Goal Differential = Fewer Points per Game = More Losses = Tumble Down the Table = No Champions League!
   
   In other words, if you can’t score and you can’t defend, you won’t win.  Seems pretty simple to me.
5. Arsenal is 21 games into the 2011-12 season and only one player has more than five goals.  All other years had at least four, with the exception of 2003-04, but Thierry Henry had an exceptional season, scoring 30 goals or 41.1% of the teams’ goals.
   
   Click on a year and you’ll be taken to another page that list the stats for they players that scored five or more goals that season. 
6. I charted scoring rate (goals per game) vs. % of total team goals.  This give us a way to measure a player’s total scoring importance to the team.  Guess who the outlier is at the way upper-right.  Hover over any point for more details.
7. The bottom three charts show the number of goals, % of team goals and scoring rate for the top scorer for each season. Again, hover over any bar for more details.

As I had thought, RVP is scoring a never before seen percentage of the team goals (45%). What more proof could Wenger need that he must bring in some reinforcements?

You might say that Arsenal depended heavily on TH14 during their glory years as well, but he had a much better supporting cast, as evidenced by the number of players with five or more goals.  Plus Henry was nearly always fit, while RVP has proven to be very brittle over his tenure.

You can also look at GAA during those same years.  Arsenal was truly a “team” back then, now…not so much!

What Arsenal needs to do to turn things around is pretty simple: score more goals and defend better.  Personally, I don’t think the backline is as bad as it appears.  I blame the outside midfielders for lack of effort and not tracking back to support the defense.  If they’re going to be that lazy, they better at least score some goals. 

What Arsenal needs is another consistent goal scoring threat.  While I love Henry, I don’t think he’s the answer, especially since he’s only on loan.  A long-term solution is needed.  I fear without another formidable striker, the Gunners could easily finish outside the, gulp, top 8!

If you love soccer, then it’s likely that you follow the EPL.  My favorite team?  ARSENAL!  Did you see the incredible goal by RVP Saturday against Everton? You may never see better technique and now he’s only one goal behind Thierry Henry’s team record for goals in a calendar year.  Please Lord, keep RVP healthy for a full season!

And if you love soccer and you love stats, then check out Soccer by the Numbers. Chris Anderson writes many quality posts and recently he blogged about points and relegation.  I wanted to take Chris’ ideas a step farther.  I needed a richer dataset than what Chris was able to provide, so I downloaded the final tables (i.e., standings) from the EPL back to the 2001-02 season from ESPNSoccernet. You can download the full dataset here.

I borrowed (or is it stole?) Steve Wexler’s technique for providing instructions (hover over the EPL logo to see what I mean).  There’s lots of interactivity in the viz, so first check out the instructions, then start clicking around. 

Answer this: How many teams have qualified for the Champions League with a negative goal differential?  Who were they? What else can you tell me about the team(s)?  Post your answer in the comments.