In the crosshairs: Analysing Arteta’s Arsenal attack

Somehow, all old football fashion that looked terrible when I was a child is now popular. The old bruised banana Arsenal kit? Paid homage to with last season’s away kit. Kits with clashing splashes of neon-esque colour? All the rage. Patterns that look like the upholstery of public transport seats and tablecloths? Back. 

Fashion, I’m told, goes in cycles, and we’re now sufficiently removed from the late ‘80s and early ‘90s for its eyesores to be icons. In north London, we’re even seeing the revival of crossing. I expect double denim on the sidelines by summer.

The old-fashioned — many have said Moyesian — approach of Mikel Arteta’s team in the past two league games has attracted a lot of attention. 77 crosses by Opta’s count, 69 by Wyscout’s; whichever data provider’s definition you use it’s a lot. It’s also a marked change from what they’d been doing previously.

Prior to these two matches, Arsenal had averaged just 15 crosses (by Wyscout’s count) per game, putting them right in the midtable on this stat. These two matches alone have shoved them up to an average of 18.55, third-most behind Aston Villa and Leeds United.

The Gunners’ crosses in these matches were not necessarily worse than the average cross. Their completion rate was just over 34%, and over a full season only four teams (Fulham, Brighton, West Ham, Burnley) better that. 

However, it’s notable that Arsenal had a particular area of success (fairly close to the byline on the left) while their crosses from other areas seemed to have a much lower rate of completion.

This could be because, this season, Arsenal don’t generally cross from anywhere other than that ‘shallow’ left wing area. Heat maps more easily show this, with the brightness pretty equal on both flanks for these past two matches, but far more uneven for the ones before it.

It’s not only the crosses where Arsenal’s previous tendencies changed. They completed about as many through balls in these two matches as their average before them, but where they came was much different (see below). It was much rarer for them to be made from deeper positions, although considering the circumstances and opponents this isn’t particularly surprising. Much more significant is the lack of through balls in the inside left channel.

The obvious explanation for this would be the use of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang as a central forward rather than on the left wing. It also seems likely that playing against two teams who defend deeply — both of whom were also defending a lead for over half the match — might have forced Arsenal into a more ‘balanced’ attack.

Whatever it was, Arsenal were blunted. It’s quite common for teams to rack up chances, and therefore expected goals, when they’re chasing games. Arteta’s team managed chances worth just 2.37 xG across the two matches. Even worse for their chances of winning the games, they could barely hit the target with those few chances they were getting.

Looking at this, perhaps there’s some sense in Arteta’s comments along the lines of ‘if we just keep doing this we’ll score’. There’s a parallel universe where their shooters were on a hot streak rather than a cold one, and they might’ve come away with an extra couple of goals which could have changed the complexion of both games. 

But there’s no escaping the lack of creativity given the circumstances. The lack of through balls being made down the left could be a very tangible symptom of this. 

As we’ve seen, there was more to Arsenal’s attacking struggles against Wolves and Tottenham than simply the amount of crosses. This wasn’t necessarily a complete retro revival. Although I still expect to see double denim on the sideline sometime soon.

All the graphics and visualisations in this article use Wyscout data and were produced in the Twenty3 Toolbox.

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