THE BIG DATA BLOG – PATH FORWARD IS CLEAR

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Gooooood morning! I’m a bit late to the party today, football is exhausting sometimes, so is writing, tweeting and, podcasting. If I were on Facebook pre-2010, I’d have a text status update that said ‘Humph’ because that’s the sort of attention seeker I am. Talk about first world problems, right?

Arsenal finished the season by absolutely spanking a shocking, shocking Everton side. The scoreline wasn’t flattering, but the goal haul did maybe take the edge off our goalscoring issues this season – but let’s not gloss over the truth.

I’ll be using this incredz article for info.

Without those 5 peachy goals, we’d have finished 8th for goals scored behind United and West Ham. That fact doesn’t distract from the reality of our season, 4th was largely lost for two reasons, the main one being that we didn’t score enough.

I know I am all over the place with xG, but again, but here is my reiteration of when I will use it:

xG + eye test + context

The eye test is that we need a big boy upfront, and the above table is the context.

Our expected goals has us top 4. What is the context for us not matching our xG? We played half a season with a striker in massive decline, we spent the next chunk of the season with a striker that couldn’t score goals, then we finished with a 22 year that started 8 games and hauled in the most goals of all our strikers this season in the Premier League.

Then add the context that we had the 4th most shots in the league and were ranked 12th for conversion. Again, we have a young team and shooting accuracy under pressure is generally a skill that develops with age. Don’t believe me? Look at the top 20 scorers in the league late season and tell me how many are 24 or under. Not many. Look at Robin Van Persie goal stats at Arsenal, he only scored 15 or more goals 3 times in 8 seasons, despite making more than 30 appearances 6 of those seasons. That was with a squad with seasoned vets, in a league that was far, far weaker than the one we live in now.

Now look at the top open play chance creators in the league.

How many of those guys are 23 or under? How about 25 and under? The youngest players in that illustrious list outside our boys are 27 years old. Why does that matter? Because it tells you our kids will get better and we’re on the right path with regards to creativity.

Then we land on this list. Someone was digging me out on Youtube that they had listened to a podcaster debunk the myth of age being a factor when judging a season. Let’s knock that on the head right now because if that’s your view, it is a dross one, that wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny at any level, with anyone who works in football.

Let’s talk about why we are going young.

Firstly, there are two ways to build a super club:

  1. Spend outrageous amounts of money – City / Chelsea
  2. Grow a team of young players with a top coach – Liverpool

Even though City are a gross club, but they have a sustainable approach to the game. They have one style of football. They buy young players at the top of their game. They don’t cycle through a new coach each year, because stability is cheaper and better for success. Boom and bust managerial appointments might be seen less and less at big clubs, particularly with Chelsea moving on from Roman. It’s expensive and with each new manager you have a new list of players they want and coaches they don’t have. City are well run, one of the best, it’s just unfair they can do it with a states wealth funding a smart model

Arsenal don’t have an option on #1.

We could have a crack at buying a load of 27-year-olds that look like Champions League players, but by the time a project makes a big tournament, they have to rebuild anyway because those 27-year-olds are 30.

Big clubs want to move to sustainable models with their football operations, you want to be able to get to the top, then sustain it without mega cash outlays. You also want to make sure that when you do get to the top, you have young enough players to have a Liverpool like spell of success.

We have to take a longer route to the top. Our strategy is a simple one: Buy the best U23 players in every position or bring them through the academy, give them the best coaching possible, keep them at the club by progressing on the pitch, then when you make Champions League, your 23 yrs olds are 25/26 ready to bang and compete for years like Liverpool and Man City.

We are at year one of that project. You can say Arteta has been here 2.5 years, you can say he’s on borrowed time, but the truth is he’s here on year one and the graph above shows you how young we are in comparison to the teams doing the business right now.

Age is a factor. Yes, it’s our choice, but I’ve explained why it’s the only choice. Our young players experienced a lot of new things this season. Firstly, playing with each other, this is a new team in which 5 new players ended up being first-teamers. They had never experienced actually competing and the pressure that came with it. They had never experienced MEGA attention, some didn’t deal well with it… youtube, Twitter, Instagram follower counts blowing up, media expectations, fan expectations, international call-ups, new sponsorships. If you don’t think these things have more adverse impacts on younger people, honestly, you have no clue what you are talking about and you should step out of the conversation.

The final rip from this article is this nugget.

‘Arteta made just 63 line-up changes over the course of the Premier League season – the fewest of any manager.’

Lots of people are looking at the Spurs signings as the key difference between 4th and 5th, that is the defining narrative. But that assumes some things: that there was a player we could have definitely signed that was a difference-makers long-term and we passed on them.

Arteta is the greediest manager in the league, if there was a chance to do something big, he would have. We bid for the most expensive striker in Europe, that is proof intent was there if the talent was.

For me though, the biggest miss of the season was squad management.

Could William Saliba have been a better option than what we had? Could he have stepped into right back?

Could AMN have been treated better and made our 2nd choice right back?

Could we have been better about rotation with players like Tierney, Partey, and Tomiyasu?

Could we have found more goals if we’d given Eddie games from September?

The answer to all those questions is unknown, but I’m inclined to believe that they are all better bets than suggesting Wout Weughorst was a January transfer miss.

The things we messed up this season were not abstract notions of silver bullet players, they were sitting on our payroll and we totally botched the mix.

I say totally, like we didn’t win 22 games (4 short of what we did in our Invincible season), and rack up 69 points. We can all talk about what didn’t happen, but however you cut it, we missed out on a 4th place by 2 points that would have been good enough for 3rd the last two seasons. Spurs spent £70m in January and invested £20m in Antonio Conte… they also had the two deadliest strikers in the league, 28 and 29, who started 35 and 37 games, respectively… a feat that will likely never happen again, certainly not with CL next season, because they are both injury-prone and Champions League games in the early stages require big players. They also ended the season with Own Goal as their 3rd highest goalscorer, they were very, very lucky.

Spurs are a matter for another day, but their fans are in for a rude awakening, especially if Mbappe hires Conte this summer.

I would take where we are in our journey over what they are about the endure next season.

We have the most exciting project in Europe.

We have the most united fanbase we’ve ever had in the post-Highbury era.

Our path forward has never been clearer.

If we get this summer right, we are going right the way back to the top, so mark it on your calendar now.

Ok, now listen to our end of season podcast. It gets a bit spicy, Johnny and Matt were a bit sad, but I perked them up. Enjoy, thank you for being with us all season, we have PLENTY more to talk about this summer. Big Love xxx

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Graham62

Nigel

Grow up!

You can paper over the many cracks, marvel in those 5 extra “peachy goals” on Sunday that Pedro highlights with glee and actually come across as a paid employee of Pedro himself but when other posters ,who have considerable doubts about Arteta and his very dysfunctional methods voice their concerns, they have a right to do so.