Differentgame Handbook of the Premier League 2017-18 League Champions (13 times): 1930/31, 1932/33, 1933/34, 1934/35, 1937/38, 1947/48, 1952/53, 1970/71, 1988/89, 1990/91, 1997/98, 2001/02, 2003/04 FA Cup Winners (13 times): 1929/30, 1935/36, 1949/50, 1970/71, 1978/79, 1992/93, 1997/98, 2001/02, 2002/03, 2004/05, 2013/14, 2014/15, 2016/17 Manager: Arsene Wenger Home Ground: Emirates Stadium, London Nickname: The Gunners After 22 years it’s goodbye, Arsene... It was a difficult season for Arsenal. The team finished 6th in the league – it’s worst position for over 20 years. During the season, Arsenal lost two great attacking players in Alexis Sanchez (who went to Man Utd), and Olivier Giroud (who went to Chelsea). You can see from the table below that those two guys took lots of shots. Arsenal needed to replace them to keep scoring goals. Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang came to the club and did just that. End of an era Player Shots Total xG Goals FKnT xG Corner xG DFK xG Pen xG Head xG The main problem for Alexandre Lacazette 67 12.41 14 0.46 0.79 0.00 1.56 0.44 Arsenal was in defence. Alexis Sánchez 86 10.67 9 0.35 0.44 1.09 1.56 0.97 For a team aiming to be Olivier Giroud 45 7.73 7 0.23 1.36 0.00 0.00 2.85 in the top four places in the league, The Gunners Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang 30 6.68 9 0.00 0.86 0.03 1.56 0.14 simply let opponents take too many shots Aaron Ramsey 54 6.37 7 0.36 0.71 0.00 0.00 0.41 against them – enough Alex Iwobi 45 4.21 3 0.08 0.32 0.00 0.00 0.06 to expect to concede 46 goals. The team ended Danny Welbeck 31 3.85 5 0.18 0.09 0.00 0.00 0.97 up conceding 51 goals! Mesut Özil 39 3.62 4 0.00 0.01 0.53 0.00 0.09 It cost manager Arsene Granit Xhaka 65 2.79 1 0.04 0.11 0.52 0.00 0.00 Wenger his job. The new boss is Spaniard, Umai Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain 47 2.63 3 0.04 0.06 0.00 0.00 0.09 Emery who joins from Nacho Monreal 22 2.38 5 0.22 0.98 0.00 0.00 0.61 Paris Saint-Germain. Alexandre Lacazette As you can see from the pitch graphic, the France striker took most of his shots from inside the penalty area. You need to do this if you want to score lots of goals. This is because of a concept or idea called ‘expected goals’ or xG for short. A shot from really far out is less likely to go in the net than a shot from a couple of metres away from the goal line. The data company Opta have been collecting every action taken by players on Premier League football pitches since 2009. We can there- fore go back in time to see how often each type of shot from each position on the pitch has resulted in a goal. For example, 77% of penalties have been scored. That means every time a player takes a penalty he is awarded 0.77 xG. A header from 5 metres away and in the middle of the goal has been scored 24% of the time. That means every time a tries one of those he is awarded 0.24 xG. A shot from outside of the penalty area 22 metres away from goal goes in the net just 2% of the time. Therefore a player taking one of those shots would be awarded only 0.02 xG. You can add up all the xG numbers from the shots a player has taken in a season to see how many goals the average player would have scored. You can see from the table on the previous page that Lacazette could expect to score 12.41 goals from all of his shots last season. He actu- ally scored 14. This means he was better than the average player at shooting! If you look at the pitch graphic on the right, you’ll see why it would be difficult for Granit Xhaka to score lots of goals. Breaking down different types of chances In the table you’ll see lots of weird headings like FKnT xG, and DFKxG. What do they mean? Good question... FKnT xG—this is expected goals from shots that come after free kicks and throw ins have been taken Corner xG—this is expected goals from shots that have come after a corner DFK xG—this is expected goals from free kicks where the taker has shot directly at goal Pen xG—this is expected goals from penalty kicks the player has taken Head xG—this is expected goals from headed shots Look at the table again. Olivier Giroud (left) is excellent at heading the ball at goal. Nacho Monreal’s xG at corners is better than most of Arse- nal’s attacking players, even though he is a defender! Arsenal Squad: *now left the club Goalkeepers: Petr Cech (Cze), David Ospina (Col) Defenders: Hector Bellerin (Spa), Laurent Koscielny (Fra), Sead Kolasinac (Bos), Calum Chambers (Eng), Shrokdan Mustafi (Ger), Nacho Monreal (Spa), Rob Holding (Eng), Per Mertesacker (Ger), Konstatinos Mavropanos (Gre) Midfielders: Granit Xhaka (Sui), Mesut Ozil (Ger), Aaron Ramsey (Wal), Jack Wilshere (Eng), Ainsley Maitland-Niles (Eng), Mohammed Elneny (Egy), Henrik Mkhitaryan (Arm), Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain* (Eng), Francis Coquelin* (Fra), Joe Willock (Eng) Forwards: Alexandre Lacazette (Fra), Alex Iwobi (Nig), Alexis Sanchez* (Chi), Danny Welbeck (Eng), Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (Gab), Olivier Giroud* (Fra), Theo Walcott* (Eng), Eddie Nketiah (Eng) Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s most creative of them all? Unfortunately for Arsenal it’s the man on the left, Alexis Sanchez. Who left in January! The Chilean has been the best creator of chances for other players in the Premier League for the last two season. The final pass leading to a player taking a shot is called a ‘chance created’. If the player receiving the ball scores a goal, the player who passed it to him is awarded an ‘assist’. Just like with expected goals, we can look back in history to find out how often each type of pass from one place on the pitch to another led to the player receiving the ball scoring a goal. Check out the examples below. If a player in the middle of the penalty area passes to another player in the middle of the penalty area and the player receiving the ball shoots, on average that results in a goal 22% of the time. The player who made the pass gets 0.22 xA. If a player out wide crosses the ball into the middle of the penalty area and the player receiving it takes a shot you likely to get a goal 12% of the time. The player creating that chance gets 0.12 xA. Creating chances good chances for your team mates is really important if you want your team to score! Mesut Ozil Fortunately for Arsenal, they also possess the second most creative player in the Premier League over the last two seasons! His name is Mesut Ozil. Arsenal’s most creative players this season are listed in the table. We only count passes from normal or ‘open’ play. We have not count chances created from free kicks, throw-in or corner situations. Aaron Ramsey managed to assist 8 goals when he was expected to only assist around 3! What are Expected Passes? Expected Passes (or xP for short) tells you how likely it is that each type of pass will be completed successfully. A simple pass like the one here between two players in front of their own penalty area will be successful 99 times out of a 100. It’s xP value is therefore 0.99 Complete this type of pass and it won’t move your rating up much at all. Mess it up and your rating will be hit hard as it should be easy! A pass like this one is much more difficult to complete. It will only be successful about 58 times out of 100. It’s xP value is therefore 0.58 You can add up a players xP over a whole season to see how many passes he would be expected to complete successfully. This can then be compared to how many passes he actually did complete. This gives you a rating for each player’s passing overall. It’s Nacho ball… it’s Mesut’s You can see that Nacho Monreal made 1572 passes, could have expected to complete 1333 of them successfully but actually made 1436 successfully. It’s helpful, however, to include a pass difficulty rating. It’s scored from 1 (the lowest) to 5 (the highest). Monreal’s average pass difficulty was rated at 2 – not that difficult. The real star of the show here is Mesut Ozil. He completed way more passes successfully than expected too, but his average pass difficulty was 3 – higher than Monreal’’s. In fact, Ozil (left) is the best passer in the Premier League. You’ll also see that Arsenal’s goal- keeper Petr Cech (right) makes the list. Most keepers have a pass difficulty rating of 5 because they smash most of their passes a long way into the opposition half.