QuincyAbeyie I'd imagine that's why we bought more depth this summer.
Yeah. Once we started getting injuries last season, we went on a 68 point pace. This season we're on an 88 point pace. Mission accomplished there.
Brentford vs Arsenal. Saturday 17:30 UK time.
DiabyKungFu Sure, if you think that our points so far this season means that we'll get 88 points if we keep playing this way.
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Your thought process is based on the worst case scenario hence my negativity comment. What if we use this defensive solidarity as a base and push on offensively? That is more likely to happen imo.
Remember the old saying, defences win you leagues. You can have an amazing attack and less than average defence and you will have issues as we found out last season and Liverpool in 2013/2014.
That something is a saying doesn't make it true. The best attack wins the league more often than the best defence, and the team with the best attack without having the best defence wins the league much more often than the team with the best defence without the best attack.
DiabyKungFu We had 1.89 xG/90 last year and we have 1.74 xG/90 this year. This is a noticeable but really not cataclysmic shift here.
We had like 2 or 3 penalties all of last season. We already have maybe double that in the 13 games we've played this season so that's obviously going to skew our xG/90 more towards this season than last.
I like the way we’re playing. Really mature approach and love having physically adept players in the team.
Just feel the attack lags behind the defence in its investment. Our next signings will probably include a star for the attack
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True, but I will say we’ve had more touches in the penalty box than any other team this season. It figures that we will get more penalties.
If teams are going to camp in their box and allow us to play in their final third, one of the potential consequences is that we will have more corners and pens. I get looking at open play xG in isolation, but I don’t think it’s fair to ignore non-open play xG as many have been doing.
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goon True, but I will say we’ve had more touches in the penalty box than any other team this season. It figures that we will get more penalties.
I mean that may be the case, at least this season.
As can be seen above we have the second highest touches in the opposition box and the most penalties. That being said, Spurs currently have the most touches in the opposition box and have not been awarded a single penalty.
Also as can be seen below, last season we had the most touches in the opposition box, even more than City but had 1/3rd of the penalties that were given to them. So it's a bit more complicated than more touches in opposition box = more penalties.
Theoretically speaking having more touches in the box may give you a higher probability of being awarded penalties, however in practice that's not necessarily the case. Fulham, Brentford, West Ham and Leicester were all top 5 in the number of penalties awarded they were 12th, 9th, 13th and 17th in the table for number of touches in the opposition box. Maybe the theory itself has an issue in that having quick breaks into the box may lead to more desperate challenges by opposition trying to keep up with runners around them as opposed to a defender who is part of a set defence facing a team camped outside their box with no real space to play in.
Anyways, my original point wasn't to argue about the theory of what kind of actions lead to penalties etc, as over the last season and the course of this one it's clear that there are factors other than possession in the opposition box which can contribute to winning pens. Rather it was to refute the idea that we are creating just almost as much as we were last season as our xG is only slightly off our average from last year.
That claim doesn't take into consideration that at this point of the season we have been awarded 0.37 penalties per game compared to 0.07 penalties per game last season. That's more than 5 times the amount and will obviously make our numbers seem better this year.
- Our non penalty xG this year is 1.39 and we are in 11th place on that list whereas last season we had a non penalty xG of 1.82, and were in 3rd place on that list.
- Our defensive stats have become much better, with an xAG of 1.08 compared to an xAG of 1.42 last season.
- Overall the xG differential between the two was 3.23 last season compared to 2.48 this season so we are some way off that. In terms of xG differential we were 3rd overall last season and currently in 11th place.
Our position in the table is promising but unless we improve on our chance creation, I fear that it will be only a matter of time until we start to fall adrift. A strong defence can only carry you so far if your attack is not firing.
You don't think losing Partey and opponents adjusting their tactics to employing low blocks and doubling up on our wingers has anything to do with it?
Big Willie you're so negative.
Big Willie Theoretically speaking having more touches in the box may give you a higher probability of being awarded penalties, however in practice that's not necessarily the case.
I agree with this. I don't know the correlation between touches in the box and penalties, but i suspect it to be rather low as there are generally very few penalties per match and therefore a lot of noise/random variation.
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There's the stats for last season vs this season they showed on MNF.
Our metrics from this season are closer to those of the latter half of last season when teams started to take us seriously, rather than the first half when we took the league by storm. We aren't exploiting the centre of the pitch as effectively this season and it's because of Partey's absence. The last time he played, he lofted a ball through the centre to setup the winner against Man City.
Partey was our single point of failure only last year. Now we are top of the table in his absence. I would give credit to the team and management for ensuring we are resilient without him, because we were once half the side without him.
Big Willie agree with this, the goals and chance creation from open play is where I would hazard you would see more of a degradation of the numbers and that is often more significant because the penalty aspect can swing and it's less within your control.
Big Willie You are awesome. Great post
Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert 
Yes, please.