Learning from all of Arsenal's draws in 2024/25

Arsenal's draws last season were the difference between second and a title. What caused them to have so many and what needs to change to fix that this season?

A draw isn’t losing but it is rightly described as dropping points.

For a team with title aspirations a draw is nearly as bad as losing and the difference in those two points is massive. You can feel this intuitively because when one of the title rival’s draws that feels like an opportunity to gain ground and not something that is a solid result (most of the time).

Arsenal lost just four times last season, that was the fewest losses of any team in the Premier League. That is also fewer than the team had in during the 2023/24 or 2022/23 seasons, but they still ended up winning 15 and 10 fewer points than those seasons even though they managed to be harder to beat. The four losses were the same as Liverpool had who won the League and the difference between the team was that Liverpool was able to convert those potential draws into wins, while this last season Arsenal couldn’t.

The dropped points in the matches where the points were shared made the difference.

This is typical of the Premier League Champions, the average team that has won the Premier League has had just 7 draws over the course of the season.

This has become even more the case in the recent era where the Champions have pushed the points totals into the high 80’s or even more. Liverpool’s 9 draws last season were an outlier in recent times and goes to a bit why they only won 84 points this season which is the lowest winning tally since Leicester in 2015/16 (who also had 12 draws). In the eight seasons from 2023/24 to 2016/17 the winners have averaged 93.6 points and just 4.4 draws, with no team drawing more than 7 times.

The Champions will lose (well all except for one team that is) but almost without exception they will turn the marginal matches that could be just one point into three. With the competition as stiff as ever for the coming season there is little reason to expect that this trend will subside.

This last season, 9 out of Arsenal’s 14 draws came after they had taken the lead in the match (two of these also came in matches where there was 40+ minutes of 10v11 because of a red card and given the distorting nature of red cards these will be left out of the analysis).

Among the Champions League teams this season Arsenal had by far the lowest rate of turning leads into three points, with the other four team’s converting nearly 80% of their leads into wins while Arsenal had a rate that was barely above the league average of 65.2%.

The big issue with Arsenal this last season was that the team struggled to add on when they took the lead. Overall compared to peers they were just pretty good in this +1 winning game state.

Arsenal ranked 6th for xG created and 8th for goals scored while winning by one goal last season. Defensively they ranked just 4th for xG allowed and a bit concerningly, they ranked 11th for goals allowed while winning by one goal last season. Looking exclusively at goals shows this shortcoming quite starkly.

Some of what we are seeing here with just the goals scored and conceded, was almost certainly some bad “luck” with more goals allowed than xG allowed but the overall performances are still something to dig much further into to understand.

Two of Arsenal’s draws this season were with a nil-nil scoreline, where the game state never changed and the final four draws this season had the team recovering a point from a losing position¹.

A quick related aside that I want to highlight before we come back to draws, there without fail an outpouring of dread when Arsenal go down in a match, with the feeling that the team won’t be and has rarely been able to recover back. The numbers overall for these situations compared to peers and the league average suggest that is perhaps a bit misplaced.

First, Arsenal under Mikel Arteta have just not been a team that falls behind in matches. Over the last three seasons they have faced a deficit just 33 times in 114 matches. That is the fewest of any team (Man City have 39, Liverpool 53) over that span and that was the same last season where Arsenal fell behind just 11 times last season.

Secondly, the team has been quite adept at recovering points from these tough losing situations. Last season they were able to earn at least a point in 8/11 matches from losing positions (the second highest rate in the League) and this ability has held over the last three seasons where they have converted the 33 deficits into points 18 times, earning 1.2 points per time going behind compared to the league average of 0.7².

While falling behind in matches is never good for maximizing points, this was not the problem for Arsenal last season and their total number of draws. The team should continue to avoid falling behind but the overall approach when losing does not show it’s self as an issue that should be a concern.

Let’s dig deeper into how things looked in those matches where Arsenal drew.

Arsenal’s draws in context

A good place to start here with this analysis will be looking at the high level and compared to the matches Arsenal won or lost to see if there are any major things that jump out at us.

These stats exclude the red card matches against Brighton and Manchester City.

The first thing that is obvious is that for a draw is that the attacking numbers are not as good as when the team wins. This is not a surprising outcome, but the difference is clear.

• Shots drop from 16.2 to 13.1

• xG drops from 1.9 to 1.4

• Open Play key passes drop from 10.2 to 8.1

This drop off in attacking numbers is exacerbated in the drop off in finishing. In matches that Arsenal won last season they scored 2.5 goals per match from 1.9 xG (2.1 post shot xG) and 5.8 shots on target compared to 1.2 goals per match from 1.4 xG (1.3 post shot xG) and 3.9 shots on target in the matches that they drew.

Some of this tautological, where goals scored/finishing is the explanatory factor for why a team will draw but there is still an issue here where the attack was not nearly as good. The team lost a shot from fast break/transition play in their draws compared to wins, and two shots from general open play patterns while being able to generate roughly the same number of chances from set plays.

On the defensive side of the ball the performances are not drastically different between winning and drawing.

• Shots allowed are slightly lower when points are shared with 8.3 compared to 8.6

• xG allowed is solid regardless but a bit worse when drawing at 1.1 compared to 0.8 when the team wins

• Transition defense is a bit worse when Arsenal draw, going from 2.3 shots per match to 2.0 for direct/fast break shots allowed

Teams against Arsenal in the matches where they drew or lost don’t have anything special with the finishing or lack thereof when they drew or lost either, 1.2 goals on 1.1 post shot xG in the draws compared to 0.6 goals scored on 0.6 post shot xG in the matches Arsenal won.

Looking at the stats that measure style/tactics, the numbers remain very consistent regardless of the result with the differences looking quite marginal between when the team wins and draws.

• In Arsenal wins, they have a bit less possession at 54% compared to 60% in draws, they played at roughly the same direct speed towards goal (1.9 yards forward per second in possession while winning compared to 2.0 yards forward per second in possession while drawing) and had the same number of passes per possession at 8.5 vs 9.0

• Arsenal have more field tilt when they win with 71% compared to 67% in draws but have more total final third pass attempts (more possession) when they draw.

• The share of where the game is played between the defensive, middle, and attacking third is basically the same between wins and draws.

• The mix of pass types attempted, and completion rates are very similar regardless of result.

• In matches where Arsenal win, they have a slightly higher passes allowed per defense action (PPDA is a measure of pressing, a higher number here corresponds with less pressing and the opposition being able to complete passes easier without disruption) at 10.1 compared to draws at 8.9 but they have on average a higher average defensive action (sometimes shown as line height on visualizations) at 32.2 yards when winning vs 29.9 yards when drawing.

I don’t think that this is particularly paradigm shifting information if you watched Arsenal last season, the style and tactics didn’t drastically change most weeks and that held when winning or drawing. What did seem to show in this aggregate data was that the effectiveness and execution did vary and that led to the different results.

On the execution/efficiency front Arsenal had the ball in the final third a bit less in the matches that they won, but the touches that they did generate turned into more and higher quality shots (that they also finished at a higher rate).

Now that we have taken a higher-level aggregate view lets go into detail for the different matches that Arsenal drew this season.

Arsenal draws in detail:

Arsenal 2-2 Liverpool