The problem with a Thursday column – which I chose, so don’t read this as a complaint – is that by the time my day comes around, everyone has digested the weekend’s games and started thinking about the next one (but this will be so timely for those mid-week contests, right?). Most people have gone ahead and said what they’re going to say about Sunday’s game against Tottenham, but I had a few thoughts myself that I wanted to share.
There were some interesting and opposing claims about the contest, which I think ultimately say more about the fans making them than they do about the match itself. It was a poor performance; it was a gutsy performance. It was a wasted opportunity to go top; it was a good point to stay level with City. It was a point gained; it was two points lost.
Really, I think there’s some merit to all of those points. Arsenal kind of failed the eye test for large parts of the game, but the advanced stats that I’ve seen indicate that they didn’t play too badly, and actually had the edge in overall play. A lot of folks will point to Giroud’s misses as opportunities lost, but there were a couple of close calls on the other end as well.
I was far more confident that the team would get the winner than I was worried that they would concede a second. To me, it felt like a winnable game, which makes me feel both better and worse about the outcome.
But here’s the point I want to address in a bit more detail. I saw someone else mention this (sorry for failing to give credit) and I agreed with it at the time, and the point was essentially that Tottenham played about as well as they could and, despite missing so many players that Arsène Wenger was forced to play a left back as a left-winger while chasing the game, all that Spurs could manage was a draw. I believe my exact response was, “Fully healthy, we’d (Arsenal… yes, I’m one of those) hammer them.”
And while I believe that statement to be true, I think it’s a little unfair. Injuries are, as you clearly know, part of the game. Teams who suffer fewer injuries are better positioned to fulfil their full potential, whatever that may be. Despite claims to the contrary, Arsenal are not simply unlucky in that department. They are systematically poor at avoiding injuries. It’s true; I ran some rudimentary analysis of the past five years’ worth of injury data and Arsenal have lost the second most games due to injury (Newcastle lose on average two games more per season).
In fact, over the past five years, Arsenal have lost more than the average number of games to injury every single year, and not by a little. Their best season relative to other teams in the league was 2012/13 when they merely lost 58 more games to injury than the average Premier League team. Remarkably, the side is on pace this season to lose only 51 more games than average to injury (though I imagine those numbers will look a little different in a few weeks).
Obviously, those injuries matter, but I don’t think as supporters we should be able to so glibly dismiss performances simply because they were affected by injury. It seems that there is something about Arsenal over the past five years (at least) that lends itself to more injuries than we might expect. It could be training methods. It could be overuse from either lack of squad depth or a simple failure to rotate properly. It could be that the team has signed players extraordinarily prone to injury. What it doesn’t seem to be, however, is luck. Again, just based on some basic analysis that I won’t bore you with, it is unlikely that the club has just hit a bad streak with injuries. Your eyes are not lying to you.
So while it may be true that with a fully healthy squad Arsenal are substantially better than Spurs this season. In fact, I’d bet they are. But, Tottenham’s ability to stay about as healthy as an average team this season (they usually do poorly in this area also, but not as bad as Arsenal) is important, and could make them a threat to both the top four and the unthinkable (finishing above Arsenal). If they do, it may well be due in some part to their ability to keep their best players on the pitch, something the Gunners have struggled with.
