Brentford 0-1 Arsenal: The Debrief
Getting away with it? Zinchenko comes back into form. Saka makes an impact.
Arsenal went top of the table with this win. Kai Havetz scored his first non-penalty goal. Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, and Tottenham all dropped points.
In the end it was a great weekend, even if getting there wasn’t always easy. Let’s debrief after an important win.
Brentford 0-1 Arsenal: The Graphics
Getting away with it?
As I was getting ready to leave the house yesterday I published out the stats graphics on Twitter and I put the comment “Arsenal get away with one” as my one-line assessment of things and that got people a bit riled up.
I understand when you look at the game this wasn’t a smash-and-grab type match just look at the stats:
64% - Possession
74.6% - Field Tilt
48 - Deep touches compared to 19
33 - Zone 14 touches to 11
34 - Touches in the box to 15
Most of the match was played in the Brentford half with Arsenal doing their trademark control but it wasn’t easy. I thought Brentford came out and effectively pressed Arsenal, with 8.5 passes allowed per defensive action which is the third-highest Arsenal have faced this season (only Tottenham and Newcastle have pressed Arsenal more this season).
In buildup Arsenal didn’t have it easy, they completed just 76% of passes in their own half, being forced long 17% of the time and completing well below the expected pass completion.
We are so used to seeing Arsenal’s players in the buildup phase put up big pass numbers with big completion percentages and excellent efficiency compared to expected but that was not the case here.
Ramsdale - 52.9% with 79% efficiency (100% is completes as many passes as expected, with a lower number meaning completing fewer)
Gabriel - 77.1% with 93% efficiency
Saliba - 79.2% with 100% efficiency
Tomiyasu - 82% with 105% efficiency
Zinchenko - 89.9% with 113% efficiency
In this match, Arsenal did not get big progressive distance from the backline, and that needed more dropping deep from the eights and a more effort needed to get the ball into the dangerous locations.
That translated into Arsenal NOT facing a massive low block for the entire match. This goes against what Arsenal have faced most of the season and the standard complaint.
This was a game with an effective press making buildup hard, and then a very competent midblock that limited access into dangerous locations. Arsenal did spend a lot of time in the final third, but they were not able to do so quickly.
The passing in the final third struggled to turn the control into danger. The 281 touches in the final third are the second most Arsenal have had this season but they turned that into just 34 touches in the box and just 15 shots (12 from open play).
Arsenal’s 3 best chances in this match all came from headers as well, that’s not bad in and of itself, but it does make it harder to score.
Overall this was not a match that made you think that the attack, which has struggled to click all season was fixed.
So when I said and say Arsenal get away with one this is what I mean. Brentford are a very tough team to face, they look like an excellently coached and prepared side. They came in with a plan to not just sit deep but to actually disrupt Arsenal and I think with a plan to see if they could force an error.
There is a lot of discussion about well if you ignore the errors Arsenal made this was a very good performance but I think that is a bit like saying well if you ignore hitting the iceberg, the Titanic captain did a great job.
The two sequences that resulted from errors were HUGE scoring chances. It took some very good awareness to make two goal-line clearances and a bit of luck that those didn’t turn into goals.
The first error from Ramsdale in my model turns into a goal 80% of the time for Brentford (Opta has it at 45% of the time and I think my model is closer to ‘true’ in this case). Bryan Mbeumo has the goal gaping to him (and perhaps actually could have squared it) and Yoane Wissa gets a bit unlucky with the rebound taking a tough bounce on him.
That is getting away with it.
Later Zinchenko is caught on the ball and that turns into 3 shots for Brentford with the sequence worth 40% chance of being scored (Opta has it at 42%). It again takes a goal-line clearance and the rebound turns into a tough shot for Arsenal to keep the ball out.
That is getting away with it.
Adding in that Arsenal didn’t have overwhelming chance creation to cover for those mistakes, many times if you play this type of match back this is Arsenal ending with 0 or 1 point. I am very happy that it ends with Arsenal getting 3 points and even if it was lucky, you don’t have to give the points back but if Arsenal are going to contend for a title, they need less of these type matches.
Zinchenko remains the key man
79 - Pass Attempts, 1st among all players with 71 Passes Completed
113.2% - Pass Efficiency, 1st among all players
8 - Final 3rd Entry Passes, 1st among all players
8 - Progressive Passes, 1st among all players
5 - Box Entry Passes, 1st among all players
2 - Key Passes
0.35 - xA
1 - Shot
2 - Progressive Carries
4.5 - Fields Gained with ball progression
1 - Tackle
2 - Interceptions plus blocked passes
5 - Ball Recoveries
2 - Aerial Duel Won
50% - Aerial Win%
0.57 - Goal Probability Added, 1st among all players
After some time where it looked like he might not be in the plans as an automatic starter, his performance over the last couple of games has shown that writing him off might have been premature. He came back into this match as the key ball progressor and held his own on defense. It is important to Arsenal that he is playing well.
Saka has an off day but still delivers
0 - Shots
0 - Dribbles
16 - Times lost possession
For long stretches of this match, Saka looked ordinary. He was double and triple teamed and it really limited his ability to impact the match. But you can only do that for so long as he is able to cut in and provide the winning cross for Kai Havertz. I think that is one of the things that really separates him from other players and makes him so valuable to Arsenal.
How do you calculate the % chance of the shot being a goal? How does Opta do it, if know?
Thanks for a great writeup.
One of the things that happened a lot in our buildup was Odegaard as a pivot. He has been doing it from time to time but he seemed to do it more systematically yesterday. In the first half, when we got to the final third, the rotation in the RHS was complete and Saka would occupy the right half-space, tomi wide and Odegaard in MF.
I wonder if Odegaard's numbers being better was also a reflection of him getting more on the ball in a better situation because of these changes? In attack he was often mirroring Zinchenko, and both of them ended up with a lot of attacking value added from similar sources.
Saka seemed to be heavily influenced by this rotation, and that can be seen in the graph with how little stuff he was able to do from the half space (and the ones he did he actually started the play from wide despite playing against 2-3 opponents). Meanwhile, many people expected Trossard to do better than others on the left half space, but he was barely able to play the game.
Which to me shows again that it's a systemic issue. The half space players are useless in possession and that makes the attack very disjointed. Hopefully Arteta figures out a way to improve this stuff and the team uses the cross to Havertz more often.