Why Arsenal Stumbled This Season

I’ve been planning to do a bit of analysis recently, but I haven’t really had the time, not that I have the time now, but anyway, now is as good a time as any, right?

We were doing so well this season, and then it seemed to fade away in March, heres why.

Graphs courtesy of Arsenal Stats Centre

The blip you see here on games 10 and 11 was where we drew 2-2 at home to Man U and then 1-1 with Liverpool away.

The first League loss at Middlesborough came after a 3-1 loss to Sevilla away, then Aston Villa away 2-1. Then Newcastle away 1-1 then middlesborough 1-2. 4 fatiguing away games, but we still bounced back. We lost top spot on Game 29, then Game 30 was Chelsea where we slipped further behind.

I spent a bit of time on Excel and knocked up these spreadsheets to take a closer look at what happened.

Games Where We Scored First In Yellow.

So It seems it all went wrong around the FA Cup result, we lost top spot after drawing at Wigan, having surrendered a 5 point lead to Man Utd.

The Champions League results against AC Milan were a bit of a blip. The players probably were a bit more focused on these games than the games against teams like Wigan and Middlesbrough, they would also have been drained after the huge effort they put into those games.

After Sagna’s injury at Chelsea we surrendered a lead and then conceded two at Bolton, and lost the lead in the next 4 games. This maybe shows how weak our defence has been since he went out injured.

At home we only drew during this period, but we only scored first there in the two games at Liverpool, the rest we all had to equalise.

So in 13 games we went out of all 3 big competitions, but not by much. We are as good as any team in Europe, just things didn’t go our way. The confidence of our young squad was affected, but by no means did we collapse, the results don’t show the full picture.

Problems for us were:

• Defensive Errors – This was what cost us so much in the last few games, all the goals against Liverpool and Man U in the last 4 games were silly mistakes from a lack of concentration. The way we have conceded goals in the last 13 games has been horrendous, I suspect some of it has to do with confidence but concentration is needed.

• Lack of cover in squad – The squad was thin this season and with little cover for wingers and few experienced defenders or strikers we were predicted to struggle. We did very well and showed our potential, but the tiredness has shown through in the last month and we have made costly mistakes. I’m not calling for many new signings, just one or two really experienced players who can bolster the squad, maybe three if we need a goalkeeper to replace Jens!

• Bad luck with injuries – This follows on from the last point, we lost Van Persie when he was on form early in the season, then Cesc went out while on form and hardly scored since, we lost Rosicky who is key on the wing for the large part of the season. Eduardo suffered a horrific leg break, which had a psychological impact, and meant we lost a key striker who Wenger said “would be like a new signing” for us in the new year. We lost Toure, although Big Phil filled in well. Finally we lost Sagna, which exposed our defensive problems further and we had to play Toure out of position where he was pretty dodgy.

• Bad luck on Key decisions – I’m not blaming our failures this season on this but looking back, there were some key ones, such as at Birmingham – Last Minute debatable penalty given = 2 points dropped, Liverpool in the Champions League, we didn’t get a penalty for the foul on Hleb, Toure did not foul Babel – but penalty given.

I am not slating our players, Wenger, or the club, I think almost every player has given a huge amount of effort this season. Wenger was right at the beginning of the season when he said we could achieve. We have made an achievement, just in the way we played this year.

We should aim for second place now, this is possible, we are only 4 points behind Chelsea after their 1-1 with Wigan.

After the season is over I hope Wenger looks to strengthen the squad a little and keeps the players we have together. Next year will be a good year if he can do that!