The Perfect Pitch

So another week, another two victories. What can you say about our 7-0 win over Slavia? Seventh Heaven? The Magnificent Seven? Arsenal in Theoven Nil Rout? Heh, and all this from same media that said we won’t finish above 5th just two months ago.

I think sports journalists just really don’t know what to make of this Arsenal team. At the beginning of the season, it was easy to brand us as the one “Big 4″ side that will drop out of the top 4, and make way for their other creation, Top Four Tottenham (haha, I bet Sp*rs fans would even settle for being Bottom Four Tottenham right about now). It’s a story that they could run with to sell papers, so that’s what they did.

Now, Arsenal are winning game after game, and journos have split into two camps about us. Those that say that we are the new Invincibles despite us not having gone anywhere near winning anything yet, let alone do it unbeaten. And then there are those that seeks to belittle our little run by saying we’ve only played easy teams (and then go on to say “but they can only play the teams put in front of them” so to cover their arses in case we do beat the “hard” teams). Both camps are right and wrong though.

As I posted two weeks ago, yes, we’ve had the easier fixtures compared to the other sides. Most of our games are at home, and we’ve played bottom of the table teams more often than not. But at the same time, we’ve also played back to back UEFA Cup champions Sevilla, albeit at home. And we’ve also played 3rd placed Man City, 5th placed Portsmouth and 6th placed Blackburn, but again only Blackburn away from home and we didn’t win that one (thanks a lot, Jens). Tottenham, West Ham and Steaua Bucharest away, while looking like easy games against poorly performing teams, have traditionally been hard games for us. Even Bolton is usually not a straight forward victory for us, although we never seem to lose to them at home. It’s like us versus Reading last season - we beat them twice, but the other “big” teams failed to do so. So does that make them an easy team or a hard team? They were certainly easy enough for us. This is why you can’t just say, this team is top or bottom of the table and therefore it should be a hard or easy game. The easy games are the ones you win easily, the hard games are the one that you don’t - no matter which team you are up against. All you can say is that we’ve had a more generous fixture, but the teams we have beaten so far are the same types of teams we dropped the most points to last season.

As for football from another planet, it only matters if we end up winning something at the end of it, because beautiful football and no trophies is still a failed (and ultimately, frustrating) season. To be honest, apart from the 7-0 and a few selected games, we haven’t played as good as I know we are capable of. Even last season, some of the football we played were the best I’ve seen, but the result didn’t always reflect the performance. In fact, I think we played just as well against CSKA Moscow last season at home as our 7-0 from Tuesday, and we didn’t even score a single goal in that game. We’ve always been creative, but end product has been inconsistent. This season, we’ve been very clinical without being overly creative at times which just goes to prove that the result, not the performance, is everything. So no, this is not the best Arsenal side ever, but it’s definitely more efficient than last season’s team.

Anyway as the media would say, our next two games will determine our season. Our first real tests. Games that will decide our chances for the title. Pundits have already said they will only back us to win the title if we can beat both Liverpool and Man Utd. Really? You mean if we beat all the easy teams like you say we have so far, and then beat the two hardest teams and our main title rivals, then we might have a good chance to win the league? Wow fellas, don’t stick your neck out too far. I’m going to expand on that and say that if we win all our home games and then win all of our aways games, we just *might* win the league!

Another round of boring international football is over. England are looking more and more unlikely to qualify for Euro 2008. Henry broke Platini’s goals for France record. And of course, tons of injuries for a host of players, and not just Arsenal ones.

For Arsenal, Senderos has a back problem that may rule him out for 2 weeks. Gallas was said to have suffered a set back in training for France, but did play 90 minutes for the French in midweek. Rosicky was left out of both matches for the Czech Republic and looks unlikely to start for us this weekend. And the most disconcerting news of all was what looked like a very nasty knee injury for Van Persie which may rule him out for 4 weeks to several months. Fuck!

International football sucks because it consists of teams limited by nationality and played by a bunch of people who haven’t really played together for much time. For other sports, this may be fine, but for a competitive team sport, it just takes the competitive and the team element out of it. This is why it is boring and this is also why the level of football on show is so low that you wonder if a second division club team might just be able to beat the national team. About the only thing that gives International games some excitement is the patriotic fervour that it may stir and give matches a bit of an edge, but that’s just a breeding ground for nationalism and racism (see Easter European football “fans”). And don’t even get me started on International friendlies (also known as money generating events for FIFA - and don’t get get me started on FIFA, also known as …).

Anyway, thank goodness club football is back (albeit minus the players injured during International week, such as Terry, A. Cole, Robben, Van der Vaart, Anelka, Mellberg, Nuno Gomes, Nicolas Burdisso, Van Persie, Rosicky, Senderos …).

Well Arsenal looks to stay top of the league for another week and a bit due to international (zzzzzzzz) football. A lot of Arsenal fans will feel that we’ve had a somewhat lucky start to the season, with some easy games and most of them at home. Man Utd and Liverpool fans will point out this fact too to say that we haven’t been really tested so far. I would have to say that I agree partially, but to say that we haven’t been tested is a stretch. We’ve already played the 3rd, 5th and 6th placed teams, 2 at home, 1 away. But our fixture appears to be easier than the other two team’s, I will admit. An easy start is the best, it allows you to build confidence while still warming up to the new season, and by the time the hard games come, you will be ready for them - I believe that it’s these little differences in luck that help teams win trophies, but only if the team manages to take advantage of the luck and win the hard games too.

As a stats freak, I thought I would get an Excel sheet up and to scientifically determine just how easy or how hard our fixtures are compared to the other two teams. Boring? Blame it on the international break then.

First of all, I take into account the opposition’s current league position, and find the average position of the teams each side has played. For the record (and lower is better), Arsenal’s average opposition league position is 12, Man Utd 10.78 and Liverpool 11.63. Not a huge difference to be honest, but it does support the claim that we’ve had the easiest of fixtures.

Next, I take into account the home and away status of these games, halving the opposition’s league position if our 3 teams are playing them away from home, while keeping it the same for home games. (Let’s call this “LPHA” for future reference) This produced (again, lower is better) an average of 9.88 for Arsenal, 8.44 for Man Utd and 9.38 for Liverpool. Again, we’ve had the easier fixture when home/away status is accounted for, although it’s close between us and Liverpool.

But simply playing hard teams does not a great team make - the actual result of the games is probably the most important aspect. It’s no good to play easy games and lose or draw them all (us last season), and it’s easily no good to play the hard games but not pick up 3 points. So finally, taking into account 3 points for each win, 1 points for a draw, and 0 for a loss, and then adding to these bonus points based on the opposition’s league position and home/away status (the formula is “21 - LPHA“, so playing Derby at Home will give you 21 - 20/1 = 1 bonus point, where playing Man City away will give you 21 - 3/2 = 19.5 bonus points). This produced an average of 13.88 points per game for Arsenal, 14.17 points per game for Man Utd and 13.63 points per game for Liverpool. If goal difference is then taken into account as a measure of performance (basically add “GD / num. of games” as a bonus point to the average points just calculated), then Arsenal has 15.5 points per game, Man Utd 16.68 and Liverpool all the way back at 14.88.

The table below summarises these stats:

So to summarise. Man Utd have had the harder games and have gotten the results despite their poor start. Arsenal are not too far behind in second with the easiest set of games, but more points per game than Liverpool even if you take into account the difficulty of the games. And when goal difference is accounted for, the difference between Man Utd and Arsenal is almost negligible, but Liverpool fall further behind.

But what does this all mean? Nothing really. Well, it does highlight that the difference in fixture difficulty isn’t as great as some would claim, it’s not as if Arsenal have been playing bottom of the table teams at home, while both Man Utd and Liverpool have been battling teams at the top away. Arsenal are 2 points ahead with a game in hand, and that’s probably the most important statistic right now. With Arsenal’s first “hard” fixtures coming soon (Liverpool away, Man Utd at home), the situation could be completely different by the end of these games. And of course, the most important statistic is the one that is marked “points” at the end of the season. Time will tell …

The mini-crisis over at Chelsea has me thinking about what makes a football club successful. The story that Mourinho not being able to buy the players he wanted and forced to play certain players provides a striking contrast to how things work at Arsenal, where nobody interferes with Wenger on any footballing matters.

The more I think about it, the more I think of a painting. Imagine an artist who is told to paint a masterpiece, but is told by the patron, who is not an artist at all, that he can only use certain colours, can only paint one specific subject matter and then to top it all off, can only use a certain brush stroke. If the artist was talented, then he might still paint a good painting, but the patron is not satisfied with merely a good painting - he had ordered a masterpiece. And pretty soon, artist and patron part ways.

At Arsenal, Wenger is the master painter. He alone chooses the subject matter, what colours he wants to use, the brush stroke and everything else related to the painting. His patron is happy to sit back and let the master do his work, and their reward is the ownership and enjoyment of masterpieces. However, Wenger is not simply satisfied to be ‘just’ a master painter. He wants to re-invent how paintings are made in the first place, to find new colours, new brush techniques, and while some of the earlier experimental works were not quite up to standard, you just know that a masterpiece, possibly his best yet, is to come.

The master painter has enemies too, at home and abroad. One of which wants to impose some kind of nationalistic view on how a painting should be composed, to perhaps use colours that best represent the country, rather than the best colours for the painting. Perhaps French paintings should only contain red, white and blue in equal portions, maybe only orange paintings for Dutch masters, and green ones for the Irish. The Mona Lisa shall have red hair, a white complexion while wearing a green dress. Will this advance art as we know it, or will it simply bring down the level so that even average paintings can masquerade as masterpieces.

Okay, enough with the metaphors.

An important game on the weekend. I know some will say it’s only Sunderland, and that we’ll put 3 or 4 past them. I said before Derby that the game could turn out quite differently than what was expected, but I was wrong. But I just don’t think Sunderland will be easy to beat, not with Roy Keane as their manager. I’ll settle for a narrow win, thank you very much. The Mancs and Red Scousers, hopefully, will drop more points before we play them, and we will hopefully pick up 6 points before then too. We need to build up a big enough buffer for when we do drop points - and December in particular looks very tricky.