Quick post today because there is very little going on.

First, the injury news for today is pretty grim and we know for sure that Arsenal will be without a proper right back for at least two weeks. Jenkinson’s knee injury is apparently bad enough that he will join Vermaelen, Diaby, and Gibbs as players who are [...]]]>

Quick post today because there is very little going on.

First, the injury news for today is pretty grim and we know for sure that Arsenal will be without a proper right back for at least two weeks. Jenkinson’s knee injury is apparently bad enough that he will join Vermaelen, Diaby, and Gibbs as players who are not scheduled to return until November 5th at the earliest. In that span, Arsenal will play Stoke (h. this Sunday), Bolton (h. Carling Cup), Chelsea (a. cunts), Marseille (h. Champions League), and then the W.B.A game on the 5th (h. PL) will take us to the international break.

This schedule and all the injuries raises three issues for me: 1) Arsenal needs to have a set defensive lineup and stick to it 2) no matter how we solve the right back problem Santos is now got an even bigger target on his back and 3) why play any of those guys who are returning from injury in one game just so they can be called up by their national teams and be injured in some pointless international?

To the first, I’d like to make a humble recommendation. Arsenal don’t play fullbacks, they play wing-backs. I’m not joking when I say that in possession Arsenal play a 2-4-4 with the wingbacks playing interchangeably with the wingers. For example, Santos and Sagna are second and third respectively on this team in terms of accurate crosses per game. Djourou is a fine player but he’s just returning from injury and I have to wonder if he has the stamina to play right back two times a week for the next two weeks? He could do it, if Arsene is willing to modify the system and play more of a 3-4-3 when they have the ball and keep Djourou back while letting Santos go forward.

This will work against Stoke because it essentially turns Koz into a left back and leaves Per and DJ in the center to mop up. I like the idea of Koz playing more on the left side of defense because 44% of Stoke’s forward play comes from their right side.  And you just know that they are going to bomb long ball after long ball down that side at Santos.

Which is point number two. Just like David de Gea, teams are now going to look at Arsenal’s team sheet and see a center half playing right back and an untested  number 11 playing left back and they will try to exploit pace on the left and space on the right. That means the next two weeks are going to be long-ball cross-tacular.

Whatever Arsene chooses I just hope that he’s able to stick with it for a few weeks. This constantly rotating defensive lineup is not good for anyone.

And third, I wouldn’t play any of Diaby, Vermaelen, Gibbs, or Jenkinson against West Brom. What’s the point? Give them an extra couple weeks rest and training and have them ready for Norwich.

Right, the game is on Sunday and it’s another 5:30am kickoff locally. Here in the States the match is only being shown on FoxSoccerPlus (or their online presence foxsoccer.tv) owing to the Manchester Derby. Given the 5:30am kickoff no bar will be open that I know of to play the match live. That means I’ll be watching the game via foxsoccer.tv. As for the weekend’s posts, I’ll do a late post on Saturday which will include my fog of war analysis, and then a By the Numbers post on Arseblog News after the game, followed by a late Good Bad and Ugly after I have a chance to play some football.

That’s it for today, time to get to work for the first time this week. I love me a one-day work week.

Qq

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Why All the Flak on Chamakh’s Attack?

With the close of the transfer window and people writing a host of season predictions, you can’t take three clicks without seeing someone damn Marouane Chamakh as currently useless and unable to participate in the Arsenal team as he once did.  One pundit said he was weak due to fasting [...]]]>

Why All the Flak on Chamakh’s Attack?

With the close of the transfer window and people writing a host of season predictions, you can’t take three clicks without seeing someone damn Marouane Chamakh as currently useless and unable to participate in the Arsenal team as he once did.  One pundit said he was weak due to fasting for Ramadan, showing how shallow sports commentary can be.  On Saturday, one of the wise men calling the match on FSN said Chamakh had not scored in 25 games, since the FA Cup tie against Orient.  Since that match, Chamakh has appeared in 11 matches, only twice as a starter.  But making up a number like 25 games is so much more satisfying, I guess.

The common perception is that Chamakh came in to Arsenal at the beginning of last season with a bang, performed very well for half a season, and then faded significantly, due to whatever reason floats your boat, either a physical impediment or loss of form.

So I took a look, and think that’s mostly crap.  Three words explain why Marouane Chamakh had a good first half and a bad second half last season: Robin Van Persie.

Well, that, plus the fact that Arsene Wenger brought Chamakh in as the number two center forward, behind Van Persie.

Its All About Getting Minutes

Last season’s Premier League proved to be one of two distinct halves for the pair, the first dominated by Marouane, the second by Robin.  In the first 19 games, which ended Dec 31, Van Persie was absent.  The reverse was true the rest of the season.

This chart compares the minutes played be each player in each half of the season, and reports their offensive production from the run of play in each half.  It tells us two things: first, that their seasons were mirrors in reverse.  Second, that both performed consistently in producing goals from the run of play, whether playing a little or a lot.  The fact that Chamakh contributed 3 assists and no goals in his 333 minutes in the second half is no different than if he had produced 3 goals and no assists: its still 3 goals, at his usual rate.

They rarely shared the field, confirming that Wenger’s policy, even though he has spoken about playing them together, was not to do so, certainly for roster allocation reasons, and perhaps for tactical reasons as well.  In the first 19 games, Chamakh started 17 games and the largely injured Van Persie started 2; they shared the pitch only 99 minutes.  In the second half, Van Persie started 17 matches and neither started the matches against Birmingham and Man City in early January (Bendtner did.)  Chamakh started only one second half Premier League match, the last one against Fulham when he joined RVP in the starting lineup.  All told, they shared 269 minutes in the second half.

More detail.  Six times one subbed for the other, the first being in August when Van Persie injured his knee in his first start after the World Cup, against Blackburn.  (This happened again on Saturday.)  In 10 games one or the other came on late as a sub to play with the starter.  Most of this happened in the last ten games of the season.  As Arsenal slowly went south, Wenger put Chamakh on as a substitute in five games.  All in all, the two players filled the center forward position for 36 of Arsenal’s 38 matches, and shared the pitch only 10% of the time.

There’s no question why this happened.  Both are center forwards.  Chamakh is a fine player.  He’s just not Van Persie.  Here are their offensive production records last year in open play in the Premier League:

1. FGE =  Full Game Equivalent – Minutes played / 90
2. Accuracy = Percentage of shots on goal that scored

Robin had a remarkable season, averaging 1.2 goals + assists for each 90 minutes played.  Chamakh’s production was 0.54 goals + assists per game, not as good as Cesc, Arshavin, or Walcott, but 50% better than Nasri.  If both players are fit you select Van Persie every time.

Two other things of note: first, Chamakh’s accuracy was second on the team to Van Persie.  And his minutes per shot was the worst of all the main offensive players.  Is that his failing or his teammates?  Impossible for me to say.  But maybe Chamakh was under-utilized in the Arsenal system when he played.

What About Cups?

One reason you need two good players for each position is because when you compete in 60 matches in four competitions, there is no other way to go.  Games rush in on you so fast, you need good second teamers to fill the gaps, especially on offense.  Nowhere is that clearer than at the center forward position.

Again, it is a tale of two halves, but somewhat different.  Through December 31, Arsenal played 9 cup ties, with a record of 7-0-2.  Chamakh played 336 minutes in 7 matches, with 3 goals and 1 assist, an average of 1.07 goals + assists per 90 minutes.  Van Persie played two games, logged 160 minutes, and struck for one goal.  The three matches which saw neither player start were the win against Newcastle in the Carling Cup and the losses to Shaktar and Braga, in which Robin was still convalescing and Chamakh was clearly exhausted, coming on for the last 18 minutes each time.  How do I know he was exhausted?  Well, he started 4 Premiere League games and an international match in the 17 days between those two losses, so I think it’s a safe bet.

In the season’s second half, Arsenal played 10 cup matches.  Chamakh started 4 and subbed in three more, putting in 340 minutes in these matches in January and February.  Van Persie started 5 and subbed in one.

Interestingly, when Chamakh started a cup tie, Arsenal went 7-1-0.  When Van Persie started a cup tie, Arsenal went 3-0-3.  Those three losses were the exit matches in the three competitions.  In the four matches where neither player was fit or rested enough to start, Arsenal’s record was 2-0-3.

Bottom Line

So did Chamakh go off the boil and never return?  Nope. I think he might have been a bit knackered by the end of the year, given the spate of games he played in November and December, but after Van Persie’s return and a brief rest of a week or two, Chamakh was available, and performed in many cup ties.  When the schedule eased up after the three cup failures, and Van Persie stayed healthy, there was little he could do to get minutes.

This is, of course, all hindsight.  Chamakh was never Wenger’s first choice as center forward and it is likely that he realized he could not explore playing Chamakh and Van Persie together during the months of two games a week.  Van Persie’s injury August 28 against Blackburn kept him from starting for three months and eliminated any flexibility Wenger had sought, though it makes the acquisition of Chamakh a key get.  During Van Persie’s recovery, Arsenal lost the Champions League group competition thanks to two losses when Chamakh did not start.  Maybe this is coincidental, not causal, but a case can be made that had Chamakh been able to start those two matches, Arsenal might have fared better and might have avoided having to play Barcelona when they did.

With some press mentioning that Van Persie wants a freer role up front than he has had, we may see Wenger try to work the two strikers together.

The real loser in all this was Nik Bendtner.  Like Van Persie, he came back from the World Cup injured, yet could not replace Chamakh in the first half when his opportunity to start in the center would have occurred.  Maybe it was his driving, or maybe he didn’t show enough for Wenger to believe he was a confident replacement for Chamakh.  We’ll never know for sure.

Arsenal is entering a part of the season where the team plays games twice a week.  It is for these times that Wenger wants these two center forwards.

Our Chances with Arteta

Hate to be so optimistic, but I think Arteta is a great catch.  Thanks to Opta, we know that over the past five seasons, Arteta created 2.7 chances per game for Everton.  Opta reports only five players created more chances per 90 minutes:  Cesc and Giggs at 3.5, Malouda at 3.1, Lampard at 3.0 and Nani at 2.8.

What encourages me is this:  the other top chance creators played for teams with far greater offensive production than Everton, and while Cesc and Nani are young, Malouda, Lampard and Giggs are not:  chance creators do not have to be the fastest youngest players on the team.  All they have to do is stay healthy.

Jack’s “Persistent Ankle Problem” and Other Injury Blindsides

Tim did a great look at whether Arsenal’s injury experience was out of line with other top clubs (and Spurs) playing in multiple competitions.  One thing I particularly admire is that he looked at it in multiple seasons, knowing that any single season can be a statistical oddity.  Lots more can be done, I’m sure, but regardless of the outcome, one thing I hate is how Arsenal refuses to come clean in a timely fashion about their players’ injuries.  This is not the 18^th or 19^th century, people.  Sports medicine can and does diagnose and treat complex injuries, all of which have definite names, prognoses, and treatments, far more complicated than the word “knack.”  Or “persistent ankle problem.”  It’s an ankle, for God’s sake!  Modern medicine has long, complicated and precise descriptions for every precise thing that can go wrong with it.  How else does insurance know what to deny coverage for?  Gimme a break.

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The perception among Arsenal supporters is that Arsenal tend to suffer more injuries than other teams. This perception is heightened by the recent injury reports for Jack Wilshere, Thomas Vermaelen, and Theo Walcott. Even those reports aside, for many it does seem like Arsenal start every season with one or two key players injured for large [...]]]> The Question

The perception among Arsenal supporters is that Arsenal tend to suffer more injuries than other teams. This perception is heightened by the recent injury reports for Jack Wilshere, Thomas Vermaelen, and Theo Walcott. Even those reports aside, for many it does seem like Arsenal start every season with one or two key players injured for large portions of the season. Last year, Vermaelen came down with a nasty Achilles tendon problem and as such only started 5 matches. Theo Walcott suffered numerous injuries and surgeries over the years. Robin van Persie has averaged 16.5 starts per year over the last two years. But is this just a perception or does this happen with every team?

Method

Using squad stats from ESPNSoccernet.com I looked at Premier League player starts for each of the top six teams from the last two years. For each team, I wanted to create a first team that I felt accurately represented the club’s first choice starting XI and so I tried to pick players based on position.

For every team decisions had to be made as to what constitutes that first choice player in a specific position. Where I needed to make a choice I denoted this by an asterisk.  In some cases this is an up and coming player getting a start (e.g. Joe Hart at Man City and Jack Wilshere at Arsenal) in other cases this is a team who replace players regularly (e.g. Carvalho at Chelsea and most of Manchester City). In each case the player I swapped out was a like for like player. So, for example, Diaby was the player I swapped for Wilshere as they are both somewhat creative central midfielders.

I also stuck only to starts as it simplified collection of the data and was a more accurate measure of first team readiness than starts and subs. For example, Theo Walcott and Robin van Persie both had a number of sub appearances but it could be argued that those subs were returns to fitness rather than fully fit appearances.

I arranged the data by team and then by player and used an average over two years for each player (right column) and then for the entire team for each year and for both years combines (bottom row).

Some of the first choice players might not be to your liking but overall, when you look at eleven players and two years of data, even large differences in the number of games started for one player for one year don’t make much difference in the final tally. Thus if you were to argue that some other player on Liverpool was first choice over Maxi in 2009/2010 and were able to say that this player started 30 games instead of Maxi’s 14, you are still only raising the average by 0.72. This is a significant amount to some, but in no case could I find a player who would fit that criteria.

Data

Interpretation

Arsenal and Man U have the most number of first choice starting XI players who averaged less than 20 starts over two seasons (van Persie, Walcott, and Vermaelen v. Rio, O’Shea, and Giggs).

Robin van Persie’s scoring record when fit is first rate and Walcott was his number one supplier in terms of assists. When it comes to winning games those two players are crucial and between the two of them they only managed 16 starts per year on average. Less than half the available Premier League matches.

Arsenal also suffered from problems at goalkeeper last season with Szczesny only solidifying his position at number one well after the half way mark. No other top team comes close to having the problem at number one that Arsenal suffered.

Man City were the most difficult team to create a first XI for because of a combination of player turnover and the use of some very defense oriented formations for the last two years. In addition, they have an amazingly deep squad and there are a lot of players who got first team starts over the last two years. Many first team starters, like Adebayor, don’t play for the team any more.

Manchester United’s record is the surprise of the bunch but a closer look at the data reveals how they have gotten away with having a similar inconsistent starting XI as Arsenal. For example, Giggs was winding his career down and only averaged 19.5 starts per season, but there they had plenty of players in reserve such as Paul Scholes who didn’t make my list. There wasn’t a history of injury with either of these players which would put pressure on the squad, instead they were being effectively rotated in order to keep the players as fresh as possible.

The other thing that I would say about Man U is that they seemed to miss Rio Ferdinand less than Arsenal missed Thomas Vermaelen possibly because they have quality in depth where Arsenal were employing players like Squillaci who got 20 starts last season.

The one player who might raise the average for Man U is a replacement for John O’Shea. I struggled including him in the team because his low start numbers were more down to Fergie choosing not to play him than injury.

Conclusion

This is my second pass at looking at the data for player starts in order to answer the question of whether Arsenal suffer more injuries than other teams and I’m still left dissatisfied. It certainly looks like there is a core of key players at Arsenal who have consistently been injured over the last two years but there’s also evidence that Manchester United are able to get title winning performances from similar inconsistency. How do we account for this? Squad depth? Managerial ability? Are my numbers inaccurate? How far off?

Also, how do we account for the fact that Liverpool averaged far better than Arsenal in terms of having a consistent starting XI and yet finished below Arsenal in the table for two years running? Player quality? Managerial ability? And how do we measure these things?

As usual, more research needs to be done. Perhaps an examination of the team record when certain key players are out, crossed with other teams and their key players?

Another time.

Qq

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YOU WANT SOME DATA ON OUR NEW SIGNINGS?

Sorry, but it just doesn’t exist.

Well, some stuff exists. For example, I can tell you something useless, like Mikel Arteta scored all of Everton’s goal* this season. That’s right, Arteta scored 100% of Everton’s goal this year. Strike force? Who needs a strike force when we’ve got a goal [...]]]>

YOU WANT SOME DATA ON OUR NEW SIGNINGS?

Sorry, but it just doesn’t exist.

Well, some stuff exists. For example, I can tell you something useless, like Mikel Arteta scored all of Everton’s goal* this season. That’s right, Arteta scored 100% of Everton’s goal this year. Strike force? Who needs a strike force when we’ve got a goal scoring machine like Arteta?

But how about a breakdown on how many through balls Arteta averaged in the League last season? No access. He’s had zero through balls this year and if he’s been played mostly on Everton’s left wing. He’s also made one block in two games.

How about number of key passes from last season? No access. Arteta led Everton in passing % (85) and key passes per game (2), but that was just two matches, one as a sub.

On and on. For a player like Arteta and similarly for Mertesacker the data exists for previous seasons but it’s locked up. Sites like WhoScored.com are wonderful for their presentation of the current numbers but sadly as the new season started, all of the previous season’s data was removed from public view. It exists, it’s just not shared.

I do have some numbers that I was able to run on Gervinho before WhoScored and other places removed the previous season’s data and if you’re curious you can find the comparison between Gerv, Cesc, and Nasri here and the comparison between Drogba, Eto’o, and Gervinho here. The latter could use a more detailed treatment and a good look at the number of shots per goal, games per goal, and different factors could and probably should be compared.

For players who are arriving from smaller leagues, like Park and Santos, the numbers don’t exist at all. There’s so little data for a player like Santos that I tend not to even trust the numbers I have found. For example, St. Andre’s wikipedia page says that he scored 10 goals in 52 appearances for Fenerbahce but his ESPNSoccernet page has no data at all for his last two years of football so how do we know that the wikipedia data is at all factual? Even the official Fener site has no data for their players and the official Super Lig site looks like it was built in the GeoCities era and is about as useless.

The only reliable source I have found for players like Park and Santos is Arsenal dot com. So, I guess we can corroborate the data with Wikipedia and say that we know how many games they have played and how many goals they have scored.  Which brings me to the one statistic that we do know: games played.

I had to scour the web a bit to find out the number of games that Fener and Monaco played over the last two seasons. But other than a bit of difficulty with Fener’s numbers (which I eventually found on a site called footballzz.co.uk) it was actually easy to piece together some data for Arsenal’s new boys and here it is:

In light of Jack Wilshere’s announcement that he will be out for 2-3 months, I also looked at Arsenal’s presumptive starters (and Diaby, Gibbs, and Djourou) who have had the most injuries and placed them in the table along with the 6 new players who I think will get some starts this season.

Gods that’s grim…

Some of this is a tad unfair. Gibbs was not ahead of Clichy in the pecking order at left back. Benayoun was always a backup player for Liverpool and Chelsea over the last two seasons so again, his numbers are artificially low. I didn’t include the Arsenal keepers because in my mind there was no clear first choice keeper until 3/4 of the way through last season.

Djourou, though, is fair because his injury saw him out an entire year two years ago and a lot of last season, which was the season that Vermaelen sat out. Also, would Diaby have been a starter in an Arsenal side that had a healthy midfield? Who knows? Certainly not us, because he wasn’t ever fit enough to put together a run of games that would solidify him as a starting midfielder at Arsenal.

As for comparison, my feeling is that anything under 60% is a problematic number. Chelsea played 53 matches last season, John Terry played in 43 of those or 81%. Drogba on the other hand, only played in 35 matches or 66%. Lampard was missed the most and only played in 28 or 53%.

It’s a bit deceiving to use every match because no player in the world is going to play in every single match. Even Messi only played in 48 of Barcelona’s 62 games last season for a 77% appearance rate. But the other choice would be to pick league matches and see how many of those a certain player is able to play in and compare the whole team to other teams in our same category (teams who play Champions League football).

I didn’t do that this time. Maybe I will later this week. For now, this is what you get.

Enjoy.

Qq

*Not a typo

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You would be excused if you haven’t heard of Mr. Verheijen or if maybe you know of him as “that guy who tweeted something about Gareth Bale.” I admit that I didn’t know who he was until yesterday when I was listening to the Guardian Football Weekly Extra Podcast with James Richardson.

With no other news [...]]]> Raymond Verheijen

You would be excused if you haven’t heard of Mr. Verheijen or if maybe you know of him as “that guy who tweeted something about Gareth Bale.” I admit that I didn’t know who he was until yesterday when I was listening to the Guardian Football Weekly Extra Podcast with James Richardson.

With no other news to cover, they touched briefly on the twitroversy Dr. Verheijen caused when he countered the media claim that Bale was injured in training with Wales on Wednesday. Working with the Welsh side, the good doctor defended their methods saying it couldn’t have happened because Bale didn’t train that day.

Yadda yadda yadda I thought and then the panel went into a brief look at Verheijen’s CV and it was quite impressive. Basically, he’s worked with every successful Dutch manager in the last 10 years or so, including stints at Barcelona (Rijkaard) and Chelsea (Hiddink).

Craig Bellamy has even hired him as his personal fitness coach and claims the man has worked wonders with his technique called “periodization.”

From what I gleaned periodization is simply that you can’t have a single training regimen for every player at a club. Some players, like van Persie and Arjen Robben (he claims) are explosive players and as such benefit from reduced training loads and working on different types of fitness that prepare their fast twitch muscled for load rather than endurance.

The idea of this completely blows me away — not because it exists, but because it’s apparently novel.  This makes me wonder what the training regimen is like at Arsenal? Why is it that Cesc is still unable to recover from his hamstring injury? What caused Vermaelen’s achilles tendinitis? Was it actually a tendon that needed to be removed or was he over training as Dr. Verheijen might suggest?

I need to know! Unfortunately, he’s a big shot guy and I’ve sent him a request for an interview. We shall see what information I can get from here.

The thing is that you look at Arsenal and they currently top the injury list and it seems like Arsenal are perennial injury list toppers. Meanwhile, Gibbs has come down with another injury, Arshavin is being openly called fat and lazy and Arsenal are one or two calf strains away from having zero center backs. In fact, everyone on planet Earth knows that Arsenal need Cesc, Robin, Theo, Song, and Nasri fit the rest of the season if we have any hope of winning the Premier League.

Football v. Football

American football players are often accused of being lazy, out of shape, oxygen huffing, fat bastards and in my experience 90% of that is true. But ask most NFL fans if a wide receiver is fit enough to play for an MLS team and they will almost universally say that they could hands down. These are lean men, whose job is to run, of course they are fit, right?

Wrong.

Chad Ochocinco (yes, that’s his real name) tried out for an MLS team called Sporting KC (yes, that’s their real name) and even after several training sessions was still determined to be unfit to play for an MLS reserve team.

Here’s the video, could someone please get Ochocinco an oxygen mask?

Winning, duh

Manchester United are the most hated company in England. Also, your dog wants steak.

And finally…

Zach over at A Beautiful Numbers Game has more evidence that Howard Webb and Phil Dowd are officiating matches in a way that show extreme bias against Arsenal.

Oh, and this weekend’s referee? 4 Newcastle goals Phil Dowd.

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Prologue

I received a ton of criticism from readers, both here and on Twitter, over yesterday’s post. Most of the people concentrated on the word “context” saying that my numbers were either less important or completely meaningless because they “lacked context.” The other criticism I received was from people claiming that I just hate certain players and [...]]]>

Prologue

I received a ton of criticism from readers, both here and on Twitter, over yesterday’s post. Most of the people concentrated on the word “context” saying that my numbers were either less important or completely meaningless because they “lacked context.” The other criticism I received was from people claiming that I just hate certain players and that I was looking for a convenient way to rip the guys who are unpopular at the moment.

Let me address the latter first; I have no players on this team that I “hate.” None. I have some that I would rather not see play for Arsenal after this Summer but given the fact that Arsenal recently signed them all to new, improved, long-term contracts I can’t see them moving on. I support the players who support the club and as long as they are trying I have no problem with them.

I don’t even hate ex-Arsenal players like Hleb. Hleb was hugely frustrating to me as a supporter when he was with Arsenal. I often joke that I was there at Highbury when he took and scored his only ever shot on goal (against Charlton). Being frustrated with someone, however, is not the same as hate.

The only players I hate are players like Wayne Rooney. I don’t play fantasy football because I could never wake up in the morning and hope that Rooney, Terry, Lampard, Gerrard, Drogba, Ashley Cole, De Jong, Adebayor, or whomever had a great game.

As for the “context” there’s already a context for yesterday’s numbers “the 38 game Premier League season.” Sure, very few modern footballers play all 38 games (as we will see in a minute) but to win the League you need to have your best players play at the highest physical and mental level in as many of those 38 games as they can. If Drogba, Essien, Lampard, Cole, and Cech can only play 10 Premier League games in a season each, Chelsea’s title hopes would be severely diminished.

That said, the questions led me to wonder how our stars compared to others in terms of injuries. Is Robin van Persie actually injured more than, say, Drogba? How much more?

That is the topic today.

Method

First, I do all my own data gathering. I don’t pay Opta to do it for me. I literally comb through the player profiles on ESPNSoccernet.com and put their data into a spreadsheet. That limitation rules out my ability to see what the average number of games played is over all the players in the Premier League. I am simply not going to gather the data for hundreds of players over 4 years to compile an average for a blog which I do for free.

Since that’s the case, I decided to match like for like for Arsenal’s perceived best starting XI. Matching like for like is not that simple. For example, who is Arshavin’s closest player type in the EPL? What team does this player play for? So on.

I settled on picking players who play in similar positions only from title challengers or teams that should be title challengers; Man U, Man City, and Chelsea. I used one or two Liverpool players as well, just because I needed a player to compare and the other three teams didn’t work. Also, I used Gareth Bale because no one, and I mean Jesus himself, is better than Bale.

Positions like Goalkeeper were a snap; everyone knows who the number one for Chelsea has been over the last 4 years. But other positions were a bit more difficult. Right Back for example, who plays right back at Chelsea? Bosignwa? Yes. Ivanovich? Also yes.  Who do I pick?

Well, what I did was used “my gut” in these cases. If I felt like a team like Chelsea didn’t have an established right back, I switched teams until I felt confident that said player was the team’s number one choice in that position. In this case I chose Rafael and Micah Richards and their numbers look strange. A quick glance at Bosingwa and Ivanovich reveals a similar pattern so I don’t think you’re getting numbers that are all that off.

For some of these players that I chose, there was another problem: they haven’t played in the Premier League as long as their Arsenal counterpart OR the Arsenal player hasn’t played long in the Premier League. For example, I chose Berbatov to compare with Robin van Persie. Since I wanted to have the same number of season to compare I went into their history and looked at the number of games played for their previous team(s). Again, this is imperfect in terms of the first metric Average number of Premier League Games per season because, for example, the Bundesliga only plays 34 games per season and the League Championship plays 44.

That’s why the gods invented my second metric Percentage of league games available played. For this number I simply took the total number of possible starts and subs and divided it by the total number of actual starts and subs. This number more accurately reflects a player’s availability regardless of the league they played in.

You will inevitably completely disagree with who I picked and use it to try to prove that once again I hate the Arsenal players and that my post lacks context. But I think that the data stands for itself. Compared to other big name Premier League players Arsenal have a shocking lack of selection consistency in several key areas.

The Numbers

Average number of Premier League Games per season

Almunia: 24
Joe Hart: 28.5
van der Saar: 27.5

Vermaelen (including Eredivisie back to 2007): 21.75
John Fucking Terry: 30
Vidic: 28.5

Djourou: 10.67
Kompany: 29.33
Ferdinand: 17.33

Sagna: 31
Micah Richards: 24.25
Rafael: 13

Clichy: 29.2
Evra: 30.2
Cashley: 27.8

Song: 27
Mikel: 26.67
Fletcher: 27

Fabregas: 29.57
Gerrard: 31
Lampard: 31.71*

Nasri: 25.67
Malouda: 30.67
Nani: 20.33

Arshavin: 23
Tevez: 30
Kuyt: 33*

Walcott: 21
Bale**: 22
Milner: 32.6

Robin van Persie: 20.86
Berbatov: 32.14
Drogba: 27.57

Percentage of league games available played

Almunia:  68%
Joe Hart: 80%
van der Saar: 77%

Vermaelen (including Eredivisie back to 2007): 65%
John Fucking Terry: 85%
Vidic: 80%

Djourou: 31%
Kompany: 85%
Ferdinand: 50%

Sagna: 87%***
Micah Richards: 68%
Rafael: 37%

Clichy: 81%
Evra: 83%
Cashley: 77%

Song: 78%
Mikel: 77%
Fletcher: 77%

Fabregas: 81%
Gerrard: 84%
Lampard: 87%

Nasri: 74%
Malouda: 88%
Nani: 58%

Arshavin: 81%
Tevez: 86%
Kuyt: 94%

Walcott: 58%
Bale**: 59%
Milner: 91%

Robin van Persie: 57%
Berbatov (includes seasons in the Bundesliga): 90%
Drogba: 75%

Conclusions

These numbers confirm several things that Arsenal supporters already knew. First, there are a number of positions on the team with solid first team players who are rarely injured: both fullbacks, both central midfielders, and both wing players (or whatever you want to call Arshavin and Nasri).

Second, that leaves five positions on this team where the first choice players have a history of grave injury (or acute insanity) keeping them from getting the same number of starts as their peers: the keeper,  both center backs, and both forwards.

This problem in the front and in the back matches well with the problems that Arsenal have faced over the last 5 years developing consistency in both attack and defense. Every Gooner knows that Arsenal are a team who can put 6 goals past a team one day and concede 4 the next.

In a sense, the fact that Arsenal are in second place in the Premier League, got to within one goal of beating Barcelona, and made it to the Carling Cup final this year with so many disruptions to keeper, center back, and strikers is a credit to the Arsenal system. You often hear how players at Arsenal are like cogs in a machine and here’s the proof of that comment.

But there’s also a sense that Arsenal do this the most difficult way possible. People who have called for a center half should feel vindicated in that the number prove that Arsenal’s first choice pairing have a history of being crocked (Vermaelen had injury problems before Arsenal). What good is it in having a dominant, vocal, center half who can only play in 65% of your games?

Keeper is another position where Arsenal could seriously use with some stability. Perhaps Szczesny will turn out to be available for 80-90% of Arsenal’s games, though he is out this season with a jammed finger.

And as much as we like to carp on the defenders you simply have to marvel at the fact that Arsenal are such a high scoring team when our number one striker, Robin van Persie, is only available for 57% of Arsenal’s League games. Even Drogba who spends a lot of time in the injury room beats Robin by a huge margin at 75%.

In the end, you have to look at the contract situation for most of these players and wonder what, if anything can be done. Arseblog put a link in his blog today to the players who have recently signed a new long-term contract and the names in there read like a who’s who of the Arsenal walking dead: Diaby, Vela, Denilson, Bendtner, van Persie, Gibbs, Ramsey, Fabianski, Walcott and Djourou. It’s easy to say that Arsenal should sell Diaby and Denilson and buy some workhorse center forward and it’s yet another thing to do that when they are consistently under performing or injured.  Think back to the Senderos saga and how long it took to get rid of him once Wenger decided it was time to go.

How does that lyric go? Love the one you’re with?

*played in all 38 games in at least one season.
**comparison by special request, includes 39/44 games for Soton in 2006/2007.
***Arsenal’s Iron Man.

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Injuries to Arsenal are like peanut [...]]]> The sight of Bacary Sagna pulling Djourou’s arm out of socket on Saturday only added to the pain of losing to the old enemy. In all League games Arsenal have only allowed 4 goals when Djourou is on the pitch proving that Johan has been Arsenal’s most consistent Premier League defender.

Injuries to Arsenal are like peanut butter to dogs and every Arsenal supporter can tell you tales of dread over our injury record during the last 5 years. A fair number of injuries have been because of broken limbs — Eduardo, Ramsey, Cesc, van Persie, and Diaby are all first team players who have had a limb broken during play — and those players have a long road of recovery ahead of them. That is if they ever recover.

During the recovery period, these players take a spot on the roster, they are paid their salary, and as such Wenger often uses their Lazarian return to health as the reason Arsenal won’t sign anyone. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard that once so and so returns from injury he’ll be “likeanewsigning.”

Since the Premier League is the main competition, and the only one where we are guaranteed a set number of matches per season, I used that as my benchmark. Sure, some players are more suited to cup ties but in the long run the total number and average number of League games that a player starts or subs in is a pretty good indication of that player’s total overall fitness for the rigors of playing at Arsenal football club.

So, I looked at all of the current roster’s Premier League starts and subs compared them to the total number of games a player could play in. I threw out seasons that were obviously training years (like Song at Charlton) and focused on the period for each player where they were expecting to get some games. I also looked at each player’s international numbers, just for fun, to see how many international games a player plays in compared to club games.

Here are the results:

Robin van Persie — Robin has played in 146 of 256 possible matches in his career (57%).  Since he got called up to the Netherlands in 2006/2007 he has played 96 games for Arsenal and 45 for the Netherlands. This means that 32% of his total games played have been for country and not club.

Manuel Almunia — Averages just 68% of games available. In his best year (08/09) only played in 32 matches.

Vermaelen — Played in 33 games last year and just 3 this year — 55% average.

Cesc Fabregas — One of Arsenal’s most consistent players, he’s played in 81% of Arsenal’s available League games. That said, before Euro 2008 he played in 91% of Arsenal’s games and only 15 games total for Spain. Since then Cesc has only played in 66% of Arsenal’s League games (69 games) and has tallied 43 games for Spain.

No other players will rate this high a return for country over club than Cesc and Robin.

Nasri — Averages nearly 26 League games a season and just 5 games for country.

Arshavin — Played in 27 of Arsenal’s 28 matches so far this year. Overall had played in 81% of possible League matches.

Song — Best season was 08/09 when he played in 31 of 38 games. Throwing out the season where Wenger played him as an emergency center half for 10 games, he’s averaged 27 games a season for a 78% rate.

Sagna — Arsenal’s Iron Man, has played in 124 of 142 possible games for a rate of 87% and an average of 31 games a year. Oh… and he averages 8 games a year for France, up there with the superstars.

Clichy — Consistently plays almost 30 games a season.

Chamakh — Despite the long layoff has actually played in 23 of Arsenal’s 28 games this year.

Diaby — The mode number of starts that Diaby manages in any given year is 9. He’s been with Arsenal for six years and has had 9 starts in four of those six years. His mode number of subs is 3 and again this number shows up 4 of the six seasons he’s been with Arsenal. Averages just 17 games per season.

Walcott — Even if you throw out the first 19 game season where he signed for Arsenal from Soton and then didn’t play Walcott only averages 21 League games a season for Arsenal. Moreover, his games are split fairly evenly between starts (56) and subs (49).

Eboue — Despite what you might think, never played more than 28 League games in a season for Arsenal. Averages 21 per or just 58% of possible games played.

Denilson — Strangest of all the Arsenal players. Played 37 games in 08/09 but all the other seasons he’s been a bit player. Still, that one season drags his averages up to 53% of possible games.

Rosicky — No surprise that he’s only been available for 50% of the 180 League games possible during his five year tenure.

Bendtner — Big Game Bendtner should be renamed Big Sub Bendtner. Has appeared in 65% of available games (92 of 142) but 57% of those (52 of 92) were substitutions.

Djourou — Johan is actually Arsenal’s least reliable player. It’s a bit unfair because he spent an entire season out with a knee injury and before that wasn’t really a starter but has only managed to appear in 31% of the possible League games in the last three years, with this year his best outing with 16 appearances. Arsenal proclaimed him out for the season but the Swiss FA have said he should be back in time for their qualifier against Bulgaria on the 26th.

It’s all a bit of a head scratcher as to why Wenger would say his season is done and then have the Swiss FA contradict Arsenal. Perhaps this is what healed Johan? (Not Safe For Work)

We’ll never know.

Conclusion

I actually don’t want to draw too many conclusions. Well, except two things.

First, it’s upsetting that Cesc and Robin have sacrificed so much for their country and that it has had such a profound effect on Arsenal and our title chances. I’m happy that they made it to the World Cup final and that Cesc won the World Cup single-footedly I just wonder what those extra 5 games or so might have meant for his hamstring and us beating Barcelona this season?

Second, Arsenal have one of the highest total salary packages in the League and we are paying an extraordinary number of players good money to play FIFA 2011 in the sick ward. It’s odd to me that Arsene Wenger seems to know the perfect time to sell Vieira, Petit, Henry, Overmars, and so on but that he persists with someone like Abou Diaby who is getting paid to start 9 games of a 38 game season. I’m all about giving the kid time to heal from Dan Smith’s brutal tackle but that happened in his very first year at Arsenal. Since then he’s had three seasons where he’s only started 9 games, one season where he started a ‘whopping’ 16, followed by his best ever output — last year’s 26 starts. At what point to you ask whether a player is cut out to play in the English Premier League?

Jack Wilshere has played in every single game that he could this season. Only missing three games, due to suspension. It’s only his first full season but it looks a lot like Jack might be the kind of player who can play 35 games a season for his team. Diaby? Rosicky? Robin van Persie? I don’t know.

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Good morning. As many of you already know Arseblogger from, erm, Arseblog.com had me on today’s Arsecast. I listened to the whole episode this morning and as usual he has some really funny stuff, has some great insight, and also had me on. The only thing I can say is “sorry” to him, he must have [...]]]>

Good morning. As many of you already know Arseblogger from, erm, Arseblog.com had me on today’s Arsecast. I listened to the whole episode this morning and as usual he has some really funny stuff, has some great insight, and also had me on. The only thing I can say is “sorry” to him, he must have spent days editing that interview so that I don’t sound like a complete “pillock” as the English would say.

One of the things that Arseblog and I touched on briefly is the paper controversy over Robin van Persie’s selection to the Dutch national side. As usual with these types of stories, the press leak out dribs and drabs in order to build up the hype as much as possible and so today we have a few more quotes hitting the papers and giving us some more “insight” into how big a dick Bert van Marjwijk really is.

I’ve spoken to Robin personally and he is doing well. He will rejoin training there so I had no hesitation picking him. Has there been any contact with the medical staff of Holland and Arsenal? I don’t know, and I don’t care, because I spoke to Robin personally and I just made the selection and will wait for any comments to come.

The only comments are going to come from bloggers and the press because the reality is that there’s nothing that Arsenal or even Robin van Persie could have done to prevent the call up. That’s how FIFA rules work, the country teams have all the power.

Beyond the part where he says he doesn’t care about the health of the player other thing that’s worrying is that van Marwijk claims to have spoken to Robin van Persie and intimates that Robin gave him the green light. I understand that a player wants to represent their country but at the same time, Arsenal is his employer.

And just to put a fine point on it, in what will be almost exactly a year since Chiellini wrecked van Persie’s ankle (Nov. 14th 2009) the Arsenal player has played 10 games for the Netherlands and only 8 games for Arsenal.

The games played stat is worse if you look at total minutes played: in 12 months, Robin van Persie has played 370 minutes for Arsenal and 821 minutes for Netherlands.

Put aside the fact that he’s only played 18 matches in 12 months, the fact that his employer is only getting 31% of his available playing time is absolutely astounding. And the arrogance of the National team coach to think that it’s right for him to call Robin up after what this player has been through is jaw dropping.

This is an extraordinary situation but it seems to me that there should be a minimum number of games that a player has to play for his club before he can get called up to a national side. And if I were to set that minimum it would be a lot higher than 370 minutes.

The other player who has been called up despite the fact that he has a virus is Andrei Arshavin. Of course, the press tagged Dick Advocaat and asked him what he thought of Arsene’s comments about Arshavin’s call up to Russia and Dick basically trotted out the “Wenger is a moaner” line. Which is disrespectful, but then I don’t expect anything less from a manager who is an apologist for racists and who says things like this:

The fans are the most important thing that Zenit have. That’s why I have to ask them outright how they’ll react if we sign a dark skinned player for Zenit. At least two times a year we meet with the fans. I hope we’ll have an opportunity to talk to them about this racist issue soon.

I’m having a dig at Dick because he called the manager a moaner but in reality, I don’t have a problem with him calling up Arshavin. Sure, I’d rather Arshavin retire from the international game or take a break and get a rest but unlike Robin van Persie, Arshavin has played in every League game this season, played in all of our pre-season games, and.. well, he’s played twice as many professional matches for Arsenal in the first 3 months of the season (16) than Robin van Persie has in the entire last 12 months. Arshavin is a virtual Iron Man compared to van Persie and so, hell, if he wants to play, I’d say let him.

Anyway, that’s all for today. Wenger’s giving his presser right now and video will be available on the dot com in a bit. With the match on Sunday at 4:30 (maybe 5:30 depending on when we end daylight savings in the USA) I’ll do the preview tomorrow and probably a post-match blog on Sunday.

Even I won’t get up at 2:30 in the morning to write a blog. THAT would be crazy. 4:30 am is a much saner hour.

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