Tuesday Cannon Fodder: repetitious
Yesterday at 09:00 AM
Good Tuesday morning, TSFers. I awoke to an email from people up the street that a pipe had burst at one of the fire hydrants and part of our road was now a lake. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to have affected our water. Good thing the county lifted the "please use less water because lots of pipes are bursting" advisory yesterday / this morning.
I hate to sound like a broken record, but every day, there is more and more evidence that Arsenal's struggles this season are mostly attributable to negative variance. Take the stat below about injuries. I defy you to find me a club that could weather a similar hit without seeing a dip in form and results. Where would Liverpool be without Mo Salah? Look at what has happened to Manchester City without Rodri! If you take the best players off the pitch, especially lynch-pin ones that make everything tick and drive play, the football suffers!
Last season Arsenal's four most used players besides the center backs were Rice, White, Odegaard, and Saka. This season Rice has gone from playing 91% of the team's minutes to 70%, White 87% to 39%, Odegaard 86% to 51%, Saka 82% to 67%. It's not a mystery why they're slightly less good!
— John Muller (@johnspacemuller.com)2025-01-13T12:32:39.706Z
More recently, the finishing variance has taken a turn for the worse. In the replies on BlueSky, Scott and Adam (the other Cannon Stats guy) reveal that last season, Arsenal finished third in the Premier League on xG:G and that right now, Arsenal are fourth on that metric — basically, there isn't anything in the stats to suggest that the Gunners are particularly poor at finishing.
Arsenal's finishing slump has hit at the wrong time Looking at Arsenal's xG over the last few matches, the whole season, and if this is a systemic problem with Arteta
— Scott Willis (@scott.cannonstats.com)2025-01-13T18:31:00.808Z
Injuries and negative variance aren't particularly satisfying answers. As humans, we want to find actionable items and problems to fix. There's a need to feel in control of our outcomes, and we're not that good at accepting when things are out of our control.
I'm going to skate past the fact that Arsenal's outcomes are always out of our control as supporters — I recognize there is a transference / armchair GM thing going on.
Data, facts, and posts like this do suggest that it's not time for large-scale changes at the club. Nothing is fundamentally broken or being done in such a way that it is hindering success. The process is correct. The underlying numbers are good, especially given the injury situation, and they're great when guys are healthy. This is a really good team, fully capable of winning trophies. Unfortunately, they haven't yet. Given enough bites at the apple, they should.
