Claudius You’re building ideal scenarios in a bubble. We don’t play in a bubble
Each game is an individual bubble. I don’t need to look at the bigger picture to identify issues in our own game and approach. It’s not easy, I wouldn’t suggest otherwise, and I don’t have the answers; that’s Arteta’s job. Similarly as to how it is easier to defend than attack, it’s easier to spot a problem than it is to sort it. That’s why I’m posting on a forum and Arteta is on £10m+ a year.
I’m not building ideal scenarios, I’m pointing out areas we do not do things to a particular high level. We do them better than the rest of the league, absolutely, but not particularly greatly.
Claudius It’s like saying oh consumption of my beer brand is down so our beer company is terrible without actually acknowledging that beer sales globally are down due to a soft economy, shifting consumer habits, and health conscious trends.
Similarly, you can’t isolate Arsenal from the overall football trends. Scoring is down. Open play scoring is way down, and set piece scoring is way up.
Beer consumption analogy doesn’t stack up. We have a much more controlling say in what we do and how we do it than a global beer company does on the demand of its customers. The trends are undeniable to act as if we don’t have agency within them and are bound to be swept along in the flow of them is ridiculous.
In any case, with your beer consumption analogy, I posted the league wide numbers above. The last two years were high scoring outliers but this year has only really reverted to that goal scoring levels of 22/23 and before. And against that our goals scoring still falls short. Same goals in the league, someone is still scoring them so defences aren’t that much tighter overall, it’s just not us scoring as many as we did before. Interested on your take on that?
I’ve not looked at the stats today so I’m interested to know your numbers, but I don’t think we are top 3/4 in the league for open play goals and chance creation/xG. Shows the great impact of set pieces but you’d expect league leaders to be at the top of those charts. If open play scoring is down and set piece scoring is up across the board as you say, then it would be more more proportionate across the board and wouldn’t see us have such a variance compared to the other teams.
And I’ll say again, scoring across the league is down on the last two years, not the years before that. It’s misleading the say the drop in goals this year and last is somehow new territory that we are adapting to.
