Arsenal have had an easy schedule, so what?

Arsenal have played the easiest schedule over the first four matches but does that really matter?

There has been a bit of hand-wringing about Arsenal lately, the one I care the least about is the celebration stuff. Players celebrating wins and enjoying playing is fine with me. This is a team that is starting to come together, with a crowd that is very obviously behind them, with good vibes all over. That's fun, winning is fun, celebrate it while you can because life is full of bad things so have fun (or don't whatever) when the good things happen.

The other thing is that Arsenal haven't played anyone tough yet and that their place on top of the table is only because of that.

To that I would say yep, but also so what?

This isn't College Football where Arsenal get to go pick who, when and where they will play. They can only play the teams that the schedule has placed in front of them. Yeah, Arsenal's schedule has been easy in August but we knew that when the schedule was released.

Here is my rankings for each team's strength of schedule through four weeks, this is based on the team ratings that power my projection model. 100 for this would mean that a team has played a schedule that is "average" quality with higher numbers showing a harder schedule.

Arsenal has played the easiest schedule on this measure, having played the 10th (away), 11th (home), 20th (away), and 17th (home).

Arsenal have also won all of these matches and done so in a pretty convincing fashion with 1.4, 2.7, 2.2, and 2.3 expected points from those matches with an xG win all of them.

Getting points from this fortunate run of matches was always going to be key and Arsenal have done a great job at it. My minimum expectation from this run was more than 10 points and the team has already done that with a very strong chance at making it 15 from 15.

Having an easy run of matches and NOT picking up points is where you run into problems. I look above and think Liverpool are probably kicking themselves for only having 5 points from this run of matches and Aston Villa have noise-dived on how good I think they might be with just the three points from the second easiest overall schedule.

I do not think that about Arsenal, who have taken full advantage of their schedule putting a bunch of points on the board that you don't have to give back just because they were against teams that might not be great.