Arsenal’s Easy Schedule Thus Far, and the Difficult Schedule Ahead
09. Nov, 2007 
7 Comments
We’re top o’ the league right now and it feels damn good. What makes it even sweeter is the fact that we have a game in hand. So, realistically speaking, we’re top of the league and potentially a point or three ahead of Manchester United, the dastardly cunts. I’ve been thinking about the season thus far, and the season ahead, and trying to figure out what our chances of winning the league are. We’ve definitely got an uphill battle ahead of us.
First, lets look at the quantity of games. So far, we have played 11 games. Of those 11 games, we have won 8 and drawn 3. The interesting thing about these games is that a massive 7 of them have been at home. So, for you math whizzes out there, we’ve only played 4 away games, or roughly 36% of our games away. We’ve played the least amount of away games than anyone else. For the away games that we played away, two of them were in London (West Ham and Tottenham). Of course, we battled against an away crowd, but we didn’t have to travel far for those games. It would be within reason to say that we’ve only traveled then for two games this season.
Now, let’s look at who we have played against. Below is the list of teams we have played, and their current position in the league.
- 2 – Manchester United
- 3 – Manchester City
- 5 – Portsmouth
- 6 – Blackburn
- 7 – Liverpool
- 11 – West Ham
- 13 – Fulham
- 15 – Sunderland
- 17 – Tottenham (hahahaahahahaha)
- 19 – Bolton
- 20 – Derby
If you sample out the positions of these teams and divide by the number of games, it should equal about 10 (the middle of the table). This would represent a fair opposition in games played so far. If the average were less than 10 , the opposition would have been tougher than the average, and the same could be said for the opposite. Our average points of teams that we have played against is 10.72. So, we have had a slightly easier schedule.So, thus far we have had a *slightly* easier schedule than would be expected, and we have played 64% of our games at home. For a team of our caliber (and lets be honest we’re damn good) you’d expect that we should be at the top of the league. If you run these numbers for other teams, it’s not nearly as advantageous.
Now let’s move on to our games ahead. Specifically the next 9 games, which will take us through to the new year. Of those 9 games, 3 of them are at home. That’s right, just 2 of them. And, if you perform the same analysis on the opposition, you get the following.
- 12 – Reading
- 18 – Wigan
- 9 – Aston Villa
- 10 – Newcastle
- 16 – Middlesbrough
- 4 – Chelsea
- 17 – Tottenham (hahahhaahhaaha)
- 5 – Portsmouth
- 8 – Everton
The average position of these teams is 11, which is again a slightly easier position average. However, more of these games are away from home. So, does games away or position in the table matter more? An interesting note here is that Manchester United have 4 of their next 8 games at home, and it’s against considerably easier opposition.
Either way, it is clear to me that the next 8 games are crucial to Arsenal if we are to win the league. We need to take as many points as we can from these games. I wouldn’t be surprised if Manchester United overtakes us for a bit given the schedule, but that won’t worry me. We just need to keep scoring and winning! Come on Arsenal!!!!
Update: Thanks to AC in the comments for mentioning the Chelsea match.. It wasn’t listed on Soccernet.
At last! A good, well-thought out and argued piece. I like your analysis of the games past and future. Reading away will not be easy but if we can stay injury free and if new captain Gallas can continue to provide the right leadership, we should be able to keep up the pressure at the top. Blackburn is not a pushover and I can see Man U dropping some points this weekend. Let’s hope we are able to take full advantage. Go Gunners!
what about chelski on the 16th dec our hardest game villa game is on the 1st it all depends on form etc.. no piont looking ahead as we could lose form or anybody we play could! injuries will also play a part so you can only take one game at a time my fear is we will play a reserve team v seville as we have 3 away games in a week to follow its villa,newcastle.boro and if we lose in spain we will be second in the group,and that will mean we will play either milan,inter,barca or madrid as we cant play english teams our only chance to aviod this is liverpool not winning their group and we get porto etc..
A more pertinent question is-has this Rooney injury come at the right time for United? Given their easier run of games or will they drop points, giving ourselves a timely boost in what is as you rightly said a challenging period. A swift Van Persie return may swing the balance for us.
Good stuff. We really should now do well in away games. But one think that i want to say (which is out of topic) is though we are in better position in the league than last year, our quality and gameplay has gone down.
Fabregas has found goalscoring but the amount of defence splitting passes from him has gone down as well as the clever distribution.
In previous season we were just so good in passing and movement and some of the moves wre the best I have ever seen. The thing previous season that we lack was finishing ability but this season the only game that has shown what we can really do is the game against slavia.
We did play well against tottenham and p[ortsmouth too but after that the games against sunderland, blackburn, west ham and manu were not that good.
Please arsenal show some good football that I know u can play.
Nice article, but you’re made a mistake with your math. We cannot play ourselves, therefore it is impossible to play the team in first place. If you consider the other 19 teams, add up their places (2+3+4+5..+18+19+20 = 209) and divide that by 19, you get 11. Therefore, by this analysis, we have had a slightly **harder** than average schedule so far (besides the home advantage, which I agree is important), and we are coming up on a schedule of teams with is average with respect to quality of opposition. This also makes sense when you consider that we’ve already played, besides Chelsea, all the teams in the top 7 places.
I think a better measure of our performace is to look at how we fared against these teams last year. If I recall correctly, we have two results against us – we won against ManU and Blackburn last year in the respective fixtures last year, but have only drawn them this year. On the positive note, we converted Spurs game from a point last year to 3 points this year. West Ham loss was converted to 3 points. We had lost at Anfield last year, but have 1 point to show there. And I think there were couple more equivalent games where we had drawn last year, but have got the wins this time around.
So compared to last year, we are doing very well and that is a much more useful statistic.
i cant belive someone could actually pick out that Cesc aint providing enough defence splitting passes…to who????Some people are never happy,Ok you acknowledged that he has given goals but to even point out he aint been giving passes is jus plain naivity..incredible!!!i have to say i was very disapointed wiv our draw againt slavia.Berto jus got caught on the ball so easily he didnt offer any attacking impetus yes yes iknow his a defensive midfielder but the guy that took his place drives the team forward,Flamster is on fire although in recent games he has performed below par but not so noticeably enuff to be dropped..Diaby played well??ok he provided our attacking threat but i felt he held on to the ball a bit too long and didnt pass it when that was the best option.alot of the palyers that day were tryna to show Le Boss they could come into the team but they went about it the wrong way by tryna do individually instead of as a team..anyway hping for a good game come Monday..COME ON DA GOONERS