ARSENAL II. Discuss.

Comments made during Tuesday’s post made me think.

What was apparent is that many of our Senior Squad players get very little serious game time. Perhaps the odd twenty minutes here and there, or even the odd game, but certainly never a consistent run of games in competitive matches.

I looked up The German League, and discovered a team called Dortmund II fiddling about in their third division.

Not sure, but believe the Spanish do the same.

Anyway, how about an Arsenal II? Yes we’d have to enter at the bottom as did Wimbledon AFC, but in a few years there would be eleven finely turned out Gunners playing the Arsenal Way in perhaps the third division here. So long as we could ensure free movement of labour between Arsenal I and II, then players like Callum and The Ox would surely benefit.

Any thoughts? Not a totally original idea, I know, but hey.

Written by mickydidit89

Here is the 2016/17 squad as listed on Arsenal.com

Attack                                                             Age

1          Chuba  –           Akpom           –            20

2          Joel      –           Campbell       –            24

3          Olivier –           Giroud            –            29

4          Serge   –           Gnabry          –            21

5          Alex    –           Iwobi              –            20

6          Alexis –           Sanchez           –            27

7          Yaya    –           Sanogo            –           23

8          Theo    –           Walcott           –           27

9          Danny –           Welbeck         –             25

Average age of Attackers                             = 24.0

Defence

1          Gabriel –           Armando de Abreu-      25

2          Hector –           Bellerin            –           21

3          Calum  –           Chambers        –           21

4          Mathieu –         Debuchy          –           30

5          Kieran –           Gibbs              –            26

6          Carl     –           Jenkinson        –           24

7          Laurent-          Koscielny        –             30

8          Per       –           Mertesacker     –           31

9          Nacho  –           Monreal           –           30

Average age of Defenders                            = 26.4

Goalkeepers

1          Petr      –           Cech               –          34

2          Emiliano –        Martinez         –            23

3          David  –           Ospina            –            27

4          Wojciech-        Szczesny        –             26

Average age of Goalkeepers                          =27.5

Mid-Fielders

1          Santiago-         Cazorla Gonzalez –       31

2          Francis –           Coquelin          –          25

3          Mohamad-       Elneny          –              24

4          Alex    –           Oxlade-Chamberlain-    22

5          Mesut  –           Ozil                –            27

6          Aaron  –           Ramsey           –           25

7          Jack     –           Wilshere          –           24

8          Granit  –           Xhaka             –            23

Average age of Midfielders                             = 25.1

Here are my thoughts…………..

OFFENCE.

From an attacking standpoint we obviously lack a cutting edge and if we are to have any chance at all of winning the PL that is a situation that cannot be ignored.

Both Walcott and Welbeck are injury prone and we cannot continue to wish and hope that they will suddenly be injury free and become our saviours. Theo Walcott has had ample opportunities to show his worth but constant injuries have delayed his growth or he simply does not have the overall skill set required. Danny Welbeck has shown tantalizing glimpses of his ability (especially for England) but can we afford to constantly hope that he will become injury free?

Giroud and Sanchez are both top class internationals and while neither had a stellar 2015/16 both should and will remain as an integral part of our squad.

We have five younger players in Akpom, Campbell, Gnabry, Iwobi and Sanogo; while they all show good potential only Campbell and Iwobi have made an impact in the first team.

Should we sell some of these players and then replace them with players who can convert the chances that our midfield presents them with? Or do we continue to wait and wish and hope that things improve?

We desperately need to solve this dilemma.

DEFENCE.

Looking at our defence I see two issues one is of age and the other being coverage. We have four players Debuchy, Koscielny, Mertesacker and Monreal who are 30 plus while this is not very old for their positions they will undoubtedly need to be replaced in the not so distant future. With both Debuchy and Jenkinson on loan last season we were left with only seven players to cover four positions and that minimized the opportunities for rotation.

Our main pairings in 2015/16 were Koscielny and Gabriel at CB with Bellerin and Monreal as our FB’s – that left us with just Chambers, Mertesacker and Gibbs as our back ups for the four positions.

This leaves several questions:

• Should Debuchy and Jenkinson remain on our squad?
• Will Chambers fulfill his potential?
• Is this Mertesacker’s final season?
• Do we need to have eight defensemen on our squad?

GOAL.

This is one area where it appears we are in good “hands” with Cech as our number one and Ospina, Szczesny and Martinez as our current and future coverage.

MID-FIELD.

Injuries continue to plague the careers of Wilshere, Ramsey and Oxlade and last season

Sanchez, Cazorla and Coquelin were also out for extended periods. Elneny had an impressive first season in the PL and we have an unknown quantity in our new signing Granit Xhaka.

Take away the injuries and we look to be in a strong position especially with the additions of Elneny and Xhaka.

1) Should injury prone players be replaced?

2) Are we force fitting players into the wrong position?

3) We have 17 players to cover only 6 positions – are there too many?

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

Premier league squad rules prevail in the selection of a team and to the best of my knowledge these are the rules that apply.

Premier League squad rules

1. A club cannot have more than 17 foreign players who don’t fall under the ‘Home Grown Player’ status.
2. A club can name as many U-21s as they like, even over and above the limit of 25 players.
3. To qualify as a home-grown player, a player must have been registered with any club tied to the Football Association or Football Association of Wales for at least three whole seasons or 36 months, all before they turn 21. However, it does not have to have been in one continuous stretch.

GunnerN5          

KISS is an acronym. It stands for Keep It Simple Stupid.

There is an awful lot of sense in this, and I often employ it to navigate me through what can appear, at first glance, to be tempestuous waters. We’ve all heard the “it’s not rocket science” term bounded about, but you know what, that’s not difficult either. Think about it. I just did.

Business plan for rocket mission. Raise loot. Employ scientist for the wiring and stuff. Find someone good at bending metal into cylinders and tall pointy cone shapes. Secure take off location free from great crested newts and butterflies. Box of matches.

So. Managing a football team.

Some may say coming second in the League is good news. Not me. I say there is much improvement needed on the back of a treble, let alone coming second. So what’s needed? Well, as always, best to look upwards, and there we find Leicester City. Ok, now what the hell did they do that was ten points better than us, and what can be done?

1. Manager.
2. Wow, what a job. Now this really is a cushy number. There must be 100 odd paid football managers in England, and I doubt fewer than a handful could string more than a couple words together. If my wife came to me and said “we’re going out to a dinner party and you’re sitting next to a football manager”, I’d be sick, stay at home, and watch Jeremy Kylie. What I’m getting at is Ranieri was pretty rubbish, arrives at Leicester, then wins the League with a bunch of farmers. No tactical genius at work here, that’s for sure.
3. Footballers.
4. Arsenal has better footballers than Leicester City, and more of them. Fact. So what happened? Leicester tried harder more often.
5. Injuries.
6. They kept their key players fit. We didn’t.

KISS : The Solution

1. Motivation. Get a Leader and only players who have demonstrated fight
2. Rotate. Unlikely we will win all four comps.
3. Be ruthless. Cruel to be kind. You cannot keep everyone happy all the time. They need to deal with it and not sulk.
4. Same as last summer. We need three First XI’ers. Make the money if you have to. Maureen did at Chelsea. Flogged Mata, bought Hazard. Won League.

Finally, remember the rocket analogy. Get one, and remind players where it will go if they don’t pull their weight for the full 90. Don’t forget the matches.

written by MickyDitIt89

West Ham 3 – 3 Arsenal

Possession %

39.1 – 60.9

Total Shots

19 – 11

On Target

7 – 6

Off Target

7 – 3

Corners

7 – 4

Managers:-

“You never know what can happen. You have to look behind us, clubs are chasing us and we have to be serious and focus. When you see the game that’s one of the places you feel guilty you dropped points.”

Arsene Wenger

“We have a few players who are capable of bending a ball really well. If they put the ball into the box it is up to Andy.

“I told them before that we expected to have time and space on their flanks.”

Slaven Bilic

Man of the Match:- Andy Carroll

Player Ratings taken from the Daily Mail

Ospina 6

Bellerin 6

Koscielny 7

Paulista 6

Monreal 5

Coquelin 5.5

Elneny 6.5

Iwobi 7

Welbeck 5

Ssnchez 6

Özil 5.5

So there are the stats. if you’re an Arsenal supporter obviously we should have won but if you’re a Whammer you know you edged it and probably should have got three points.

Either way it was a fantastic game of football. For the purists we scored three beautiful Arsenal goals and were undone by an Andy Carroll that we should be able to defend against and that on another day could have seen two yellow cards and not been on the pitch for his third goal. Bitter? Moi? You bet.

The best bit was Arsene throwing all the attacking players onto the pitch at the end in search of more goals. Love it when he does that 🙂

Stats compiled by fgg and comment by peaches

Thinking of going to an away game?

Worried about your safety?

Here’s some top tips to get the most from your away day adventure.

Do your research. Take some time to visit the oppositions blog sites and get a feel for how the home team are doing. That way when you finally arrive at the ground you will be well versed in the local banter and you will be able to judge the mood. If you can find a blog that allows guest writers then you can even test your knowledge by writing a paragraph or two about the home teams current events.

Wear suitable clothing. Avoid anything associated with Arsenal. Top tip: buy the home teams shirt before you go and wear that. You could even get a matching scarf to blend in further. So you don’t feel like you’ve wasted your money, get the shirt signed by one of the popular home team players and hang it on your wall. That way you will have a souvenir of your great away day adventure.

Mind your language. Take a few weeks to train yourself to talk to the locals. When you’re talking about the opposition with the home fans use the words ‘our’ and ‘we’ to replace ‘your’ and ‘you’. For example, instead of saying ‘your left back is shit and you are going to get hammered’ say ‘our left back looks tired and I’d be happy with a point’.

Learn the songs. Before you go make sure you research the home fans songs and memorise them. Derogatory songs about Arsenal are especially valuable. During your trip you should visit some of the home fans favourite pubs and join in with a good old song song. This way you’ll have great memories to take back with you.

Buy tickets for the home end. You’re wearing the outfit, you’ve got the banter, and you know the songs, so why not go deeper undercover and sit in the home end. To make sure you don’t get exposed as the great Arsenal fan you are you should also think about cheering when the home team score. You could even go one step further and hug those around you when the ball flies past the Arsenal keeper.

Leave depressed. This is no time to celebrate an Arsenal victory. Moan about the referee and wait outside the stadium to throw things at your fellow Gooners. Top tip: The scarf can be a useful tool here as you can use it to cover your face so as to avoid getting recognised by your friends. Once home make sure you visit the home sides blog again and join in with the depressing breakdown of the match. Maybe offer to write a match report to round off your away adventure in style.

Finally, do it all again. You can never start researching early enough so ignore the midweek home game and get ready for your next away day adventure.

Stay safe Gooners.

Written by fgg

How would you begin to compare the teams at the top of the Premier League in terms of attacking efficiency? The team with the most points is the most efficient? Yes, of course, but let’s suppose we drill down to individual players and find a means of comparing them

Let’s begin by suggesting that a player getting an assist (yep, many will just say, ‘it’s just a pass’) is on a par with scoring a goal as without the crucial ‘pass’ the goal would not have occurred. So a player who achieves an assist or goal has affected the match outcome. Therefore if we total goals and assists for each player and work out how often these occur per match, we can get a rough guide to a player’s individual attacking effect for his team

Some Terminology

Agp – Actual games played = Total minutes/90

GA/app – Goal & Assist efficiency per app  (Total goals + Total assists)/(Agp)

Next, we could rank a player’s GA/app

Range (GA/app):

0.26 – 0.75 ( goal or assist per app ) (Average)
0.76 – 1.25 ( goal or assist per app ) (Good)
1.26 – 1.75 ( goal or assist per app ) (Outstanding)

If we examine the top 5 leagues in Europe, only 4 players fall into the ‘Outstanding’ range:

(Ligue 1) Ibrahimovic (27 goals, 11 assists, 2032mins, 25apps, 22.58Agp) = 1.68 GA/app

(La Liga) Lionel Messi (22 goals, 11 assists, 2009mins, 25apps, 22.32Agp) = 1.48 GA/app

(La Liga) Suarez (26 goals, 15 assists, 2520mins, 28apps, 28.00Agp) = 1.46 GA/app
(La Liga) Neymar (21 goals, 14 assists, 2336mins, 26apps, 25.96Agp) = 1.34 GA/app

Ibra (soon to be an Arsenal player J ) is playing in the dodgy French League, admittedly, but his stats have been superb throughout his career, so aren’t to be sniffed at.

Not surprisingly Barca’s frontline has the other three outstanding players (therefore we were always going to be on a hiding to nothing against such quality).

Now taking this idea to the Premier League, below is a rough guide on the “Attack – goal & assist efficiency” for the current Top 4 sides in the PL table.

We’ve mainly included those playing fairly regularly (at least 1/3 of total PL matches, i.e. 12 or 13 appearances and more) and only attacking midfielders and forwards.

Arsenal

Midfield

Ozil (5 goals, 18 assists, 2430mins, 28apps, 27.00Agp) = 0.85 GA/app
Ramsey (5 goals, 3 assists, 2218mins, 25apps, 24.64Agp) = 0.32 GA/app
Cazorla (0 goal, 3 assists, 1204mins, 14apps, 13.38Agp) = 0.22 GA/app
Oxlade-Chamberlain (1 goal, 1 assist, 924mins, 22apps, 10.27Agp) = 0.19 GA/app

Forwards

Giroud (12 goals, 4 assists, 1936mins, 30apps, 21.51Agp) = 0.74 GA/app
Sanchez (7 goals, 4 assists, 1746mins, 22apps, 19.40Agp) = 0.57 GA/app
Walcott (4 goals, 3 assists, 1288mins, 22apps, 14.31Agp) = 0.49 GA/app
Campbell (3 goals, 2 assists, 866mins, 16apps, 9.62Agp) = 0.52 GA/app

For interest

Welbeck (3 goals, 0 assist, 276mins, 5apps, 3.07Agp) = 0.98 GA/app
Iwobi (1 goal, 0 assist, 123mins, 6apps, 1.37Agp) = 0.73 GA/app

Brief Assessment

Mesut has tended to carry to team to some extent.  The otherwise unproductive midfield has been a huge disappointment. Santi has played in the deeper role to be fair, but Rambo and the Ox have not given us anywhere near the threat they are capable of.

Our forwards have generally struggled to contribute. Giroud has the best stats but as an out and out centre forward, you would probably expect that. Theo and Alexis have struggled to hit a decent run of form and Joel has spent much of his pitch time defending.

Leicester City

 Midfield

Albrighton (1 goal, 7 assists, 2440mins, 31apps, 27.11Agp) = 0.30 GA/app
Dyer (1 goal, 1 assist, 227mins, 12apps, 2.52Agp) = 0.79 GA/app

Forwards

Mahrez (16 goals, 10 assists, 2468mins, 30apps, 27.42Agp) = 0.95 GA/app

Vardy (19 goals, 8 assists, 2723mins, 31apps, 30.26Agp) = 0.89 GA/app
Okazaki (5 goals, 2 assists, 1638mins, 29apps, 18.20Agp) = 0.38 GA/app
Ulloa (3 goals, 3 assists, 684mins, 23apps, 7.60Agp) = 0.79 GA/app

Brief Assessment

Leicester City have produced amazing conversion rate stats with Mahrez & Vardy giving standout performances throughout the season. Ulloa has proved a super sub with high figures for low performance numbers. They seem to have little of the ball, allow the opposition plenty of shots, but convert an abnormally high number of their own chances.

Tottenham Hotspur

Midfield

Alli (7 goals, 9 assists, 2128mins, 29apps, 23.64Agp) = 0.68 GA/app

Eriksen (6 goals, 9 assists, 2312mins, 28apps, 25.69Agp) = 0.58 GA/app
Chadli (3 goals, 2 assists, 869mins, 22apps, 9.66Agp) = 0.51 GA/app

Lamela (3 goals, 5 assists, 1852mins, 28apps, 20.58Agp) = 0.39 GA/app

Forwards 

Kane (21 goals, 1 assist, 2741mins, 31apps, 30.46Agp) = 0.72 GA/app
Heung-Min Son (2 goals, 1 assist, 856mins, 21apps, 9.51Agp) = 0.32 GA/app

Brief Assessment

Totteringham seem to have found a balance, with everyone chipping in. Even those we may have previously regarded as reject such as Chadli and Lamela have performed fairly well.

Manchester City

Midfield

De Bruyne (5 goals, 9 assists, 1556mins, 19apps, 17.29Agp) = 0.81 GA/app

Silva (2 goals, 10 assists, 1678mins, 22apps, 18.64Agp) = 0.64 GA/app

Toure (6 goals, 5 assists, 2037mins, 26apps, 22.63Agp) = 0.49 GA/app
Navas (0 goal, 4 assists, 1639mins, 26apps, 18.21Agp) = 0.22 GA/app

Forwards

Aguero (16 goals, 2 assists, 1785mins, 23apps, 19.83Agp) = 0.91 GA/app

Iheanacho (3 goals, 1 assist, 414mins, 20apps, 4.6Agp) = 0.87 GA/app

Bony (4 goals, 2 assists, 1030mins, 21apps, 11.44Agp) = 0.52 GA/app

Sterling (6 goals, 2 assists, 1792mins, 28apps, 19.91Agp) = 0.40 GA/app

Brief Assessment

Aguero is class as we all know. De Bruyne’s injury seemed to wreck any chance City had of winning the title everyone thought was theirs. Iheanacho has excellent figures like Ulloa’s.

How about the stats of some of the other players who’ve had good seasons in the Prem?

Would they make a good shopping list of Premiership-ready purchases for the summer?

West Ham

Payet (8 goals, 8 assists, 1952mins, 23apps, 21.69Agp) = 0.74 GA/app

Liverpool

Firmino (8 goals, 8 assists, 1570mins, 25apps, 17.44Agp) = 0.92 GA/app

Everton

Lukaku (18 goals, 6 assists, 2514mins, 29apps, 27.94Agp) = 0.86 GA/app

Watford

Ighalo (15 goals, 5 assists, 2567mins, 30apps, 28.52Agp) = 0.70 GA/app

Chelsea

Costa (11 goals, 6 assists, 2017mins, 24apps, 22.41Agp) = 0.76 GA/app

Written by JM