Arsenal finish a perfect Month
Arsenal go 6 for 6 on wins and concede zero goals in October. Pretty darn good
Arsenal’s start of the season was tough.
The run of matches with Manchester United (A), Leeds, Liverpool (A), Nottingham Forest, Athletic Club (A), and Manchester City, will be the hardest stretch of matches that Arsenal have in the first half of the season.
The flip side and silver lining to that tough start is that it meant that what came after would be relatively soft and present an opportunity for Arsenal to pick up points.
At the start of the month, Adam and I talked about this on the podcast and called this out as the chance for Arsenal to pull clear and show just how good they actually are.
The Next Five: Arsenal's Chance to Pull Clear?
The Cannon Stats podcast is back and the mood in Arsenal land is positive with Arsenal closing the gap on Liverpool while slaying two bogey teams in the process. Things are looking up for Arsenal, while they are looking down for Liverpool who are hitting their first patch of adversity under Arne Slot.
I was hopeful and optimistic, but this month has turned out even better than I could have hoped.
Arsenal have been perfect in the month of October, winning all six matches. This has made the table a very pleasant task to look up with Arsenal sitting atop the standings and started opening up a gap to their title rivals.
Arsenal have picked up 8 points on Liverpool, going from a point behind to 7 points ahead.
Arsenal have picked up 3 points on Manchester City, with them 6 points behind
Arsenal have picked up 3 points on Chelsea, with them 14 points behind
Even more impressive than just winning all of the matches, Arsenal went the entire month without conceding a goal while they scored 12.
Overall, it was 12 to 0 on goals and 13.3 to 4.4 on xG.
All but the latest Brighton match in the League Cup, Arsenal were by far the better team and won in a convincing fashion.
The big story has been the level of defensive dominance that Arsenal have displayed over this run.
59 shots allowed, 9.8 per match with 4 matches where the opposition was held to 10 or fewer shots (the 18 Brighton had pushed these numbers up quite a bit)
11 shots on target allowed, 1.8 per match with 4 matches where Arsenal held the opposition to just 0 or 1 on target
4.4 xG allowed, 0.73 per match with all but one held under 1 xG
Arsenal are running a bit hot right now on limiting goals. Looking at the simulation of goals allowed, coming through this without conceding is roughly a 1% outcome.
Some of this is down to poor finishing by the opposition, but there has also been excellent at blocking shots as well with 19 of the 59 blocked. Arsenal have also done an excellent job of limiting the quality of the shots that the opposition has taken.
Over this run, Arsenal have allowed just 5 shots that have had an xG of 20% or higher.
The beginning of November will continue to present an excellent opportunity to keep the winning run going with very winnable matches against Burnley, Slavia Prague, and Sunderland. The final three matches after the international break (but hopefully with some players coming back from injury) could be a bit trickier with a pair of London Derbies against Spurs and Chelsea sandwiching Bayern Munich coming to the Emirates.