First Thoughts: Arsenal vs Brighton
My raw reaction on the final whistle to Arsenal's post Christmas visit from Brighton
Going through my big picture thoughts, some positives, and some negatives.
Main Takeaway: The tide is turning on the chance creation, even if the finishing is still a bit cold
One of the worries this season has been chance creation. This is a bit of a continuation of last season where Arsenal dropped from 91 goals to 69 and were on pace to match that again this season.
Arsenal only scored two here (well technically just one but still had two goals here) but it felt like this was a match where they left goals on the field.
My expected goals model put this at just under 2 xG (but a newer model I am testing out put it closer to 2.3, hopefully more on this as I continue to test it out) but it did have a few situations that left you wondering how the ball didn’t end up in the back of the net.
This comes on the back of Arsenal creating 3.1 xG against Crystal Palace (also somehow not scoring a goal, needing an own goal to get on the scoreboard).
After a bit of a lull in chance creation against Everton and Wolves, plus a not spectacular outing against a 10-men Chelsea, it hasn’t been the hottest period for Arsenal creating chances.
This isn’t too unexpected given that Arsenal were still bringing back players into the team from injury but there was a tinge of worry here.
I have to say that seeing this, especially the first half and final 10-15 minutes here, coming on the back of the Crystal Palance I am feeling much more comfortable about this team’s ability to create chances.
Nearly across the board this comes out as one of Arsenal’s strongest days attacking with the most shots taken in a League this season, while putting 7 on target and generating lots of possession around the Brighton goal.
This is another 20+ shot day on the back of Arsenal taking 25 against Crystal Palace.
We’d all love to see the ball rippling the net more, but as a person that really tries to focus on process and being able to do things that have long term positive signals for goal scoring, I am quite happy to see this.
You can come away with this wishing that Arsenal had a killer in the box (that was kind of the idea behind Gyokeres but alas…) that can finish more of these chances but overall, Arsenal have been a very good finishing team under Arteta.
There has been just 1 season where Arsenal have scored less than their expected goals since Arteta took over.
Even in the season that they were under it is basically matching expected with 60 goals scored from 60.5 expected and it would also push to more than expected if you added in the own goal that the team generated.
Since Arsenal have become title contenders and among the best teams in Europe, the team has been consistently one of the better performers for turning expected goals into actual goals.
Arsenal have left goals on the field the last couple of matches and that is frustrating but thankfully it hasn’t hurt them in the results, and we can instead take this as a positive that the chance creation is starting to pick up.
