Is Arsenal playing too many close low scoring matches?

A bit of a fact check on the number of matches where the margins are close and how that compares to Arsenal's rivals

It is a tough time to be an Arsenal fan online.

With Liverpool flying, it is easy and a bit expected to look at them and wonder what they are doing that is better than Arsenal. One of the items that seems to have been landed on as a current reason is that Arsenal are too controlled and they don’t play with enough risk.

There is perhaps something to this, I have long thought that the dial on how much chaos and how much comfort Mikel Arteta has with playing it close and tight isn’t at the optimal spot.

Much of this is drawn from my time looking at if you had to favor attack or defense, which is better for a team that is trying to win a Championship:

Looking at this, there is almost certainly a strong argument that you would rather have the strongest attack paired with a decent defense vs the alternative of having the best defense paired with a decent attack.

I am sympathetic to the argument that perhaps the balance isn’t right at Arsenal but when you look at the aggregate numbers so far this season it shows Arsenal with the best defense and roughly the third/fourth overall best attack.

You would rather be Liverpool where they have the second-best defense paired with the best attack. Looking at the 11v11 numbers Arsenal’s numbers would be expected to be worth about 84 points over the course of a season and Liverpool’s worth about 90 points.

This is a things aren’t as bad as the people peddling doom make it seem but the people saying this have a point.

There is a gap and Arsenal’s deficiency in the attacking department is dragging them down in the League. It was a risk to come into the season with

Turning back to the original question of do Arsenal play too many matches that are tight. For this I used the handy StatHead lookup tool (if you are interested you can use the code CannonStats and get 10% off an annual subscription) to find matches that were within +/- 1 goal for Arsenal, Manchester City, and Liverpool over the last three seasons.

Times drew 0-0

Arsenal - 3

Manchester City - 1

Liverpool - 5

Times drew 1-1

Arsenal - 6

Manchester City - 9

Liverpool - 7

Times won 1-0

Arsenal - 9

Manchester City - 8

Liverpool - 6

Times lost 0-1

Arsenal - 5

Manchester City - 5

Liverpool - 4

Totals

Arsenal - 23

Manchester City - 23

Liverpool - 22

This is a bit surprising compared the narrative that it would seem that Arsenal have more of these close tight margin low scoring matches but the results over the last few seasons just don’t point in that direction.

Looking at things at a slightly bigger picture and stepping away from just low scoring matches, it again doesn’t seem that compared to peers that Arsenal play more matches that are close (+/- 1 goal).

In fact compared to Liverpool (51) and Manchester City (46) they have had fewer of these matches (44). That has meant a few more big losses than the others but a few more big wins than Liverpool.

Looking at the overall spread here the big differences especially compared to Liverpool are fewer total draws and more 3+ goal wins (21 to 14).

There is perhaps something to the critique of the way that Arsenal are setting out to play and the tactics of Arteta but it does seem that whatever differences it is producing is something on the margins. It is also where things can be won or loss when teams are of similar quality.