As Santi Cazorla this past week, once again, went under the knife to fix a relapse in his achilles injury, any remaining Gooner hopes of a late season title challenge were crushed. In contrast, Chelsea’s fortunes soared on Saturday with another seemingly routine win over Swansea. To be honest they could have been on the backfoot if Swansea was awarded a fairly obvious penalty midway the second-half but the PGMO decided otherwise. It is now fair to say that, barring a Liverpool-like implosion, they will win the 2016-17 premier league (PL) title. Despite my red tinted lens, that possibility does not even register on my telescope. As matters now stand City, Spurs, Arsenal, United and Liverpool are in a desperate battle for the other top-3 positions which will grant entry into the Champion’s League.
Despite my early optimism, especially after the club overcame a bad start and went on a 14 game unbeaten streak between August 20th and December 10th last year, amassing 33 points or a 2.35 points per game (ppg), I was less confident after Santi Cazorla pulled up lame at Ludogorets in the Champions League fixture and was ruled out of the following PL game with Middlesborough on October 22nd. Initially the club seem to manage well without the little midfield maestro, scraping draws with United and Spurs and banging West Ham 5-1 last November, but that was only flattering to deceive. The unbiased data always speaks the cold, hard truth. Seventeen (17) games in the PL without Santi and the ppg has fallen to 1.76, a mind-blowing 25% drop. Most striking, Arsenal was 1st place in the league Arsenal on October 20th, and today the club is battling for 4th with City.
In spite of the power and clarity of the data, we continue to have fake news or better yet fake analysis by pseudo experts in the mainstream media, blogs and podcasts pouring blame on Arsene Wenger for the recent run of bad results especially the heavy defeat to Bayern Munich in the Champions League. But at last there are a few in the mainstream media who now acknowledge what I have blogged on at least three (3) occasions over the past year, Santi Cazorla is the key to Arsenal and he is virtually irreplaceable.
First, on October 24, 2016 the Telegraph’s Charlie Eccleshare did a piece which had as its headline:
“Arsenal’s draw with Middlesbrough underlines why Santi Cazorla is the player Arsene Wenger cannot do without”
Later on December 2nd a follow-up by Eccleshare was published with another bold header:
“Santi Cazorla injury will derail Arsenal’s season – unless Arsene Wenger does something drastic”
Well the data is in and Arsenal’s season is badly off the tracks. Even though the Guardian’s Barney Ronay flowery language is often aimed at the literary cognoscenti, he was straight to the point:
“With Cazorla in the centre Arsenal are a different team. Mainly they’re a better one, his presence above all defensive and stabilising, a leadership role. This season Cazorla has started 10 games, with eight wins and two draws. Arsenal have kept five clean sheets with him in the team, compared with four in 20 League and Champions League games since his injury. In the last five years Arsenal have beaten Chelsea, Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool and Tottenham just once without their most resilient ball-hog in the team.”
It is noteworthy that Ronay identifies and recognizes something that many of us at Positively Arsenal, especially our friend When We Were Boring, have emphasized. Santi is the technical leader of this team. None of this abstract, data-free nonsense that the current team and players lack guts, which is simply the reactionary shibboleths of a past era when apparently Nobby Styles was the proof of leadership by emerging from games bloodied and toothless as if he had been in a 15 round boxing brawl (Readers who don’t know of Nobby, should Bing him up).
For those who so easily forget what Santi brings to the table in big games like Bayern, turn your minds to three-four months ago in Arsenal’s champion’s league game away to PSG. In the words of Ronay:
“Just as it is unlikely any English team will see a better all-round performance this season than Cazorla’s outflanking of that powerful Paris Saint-Germain midfield in the second half in Paris last September, scuttling about, holding the ball in tiny spaces and driving the game back Arsenal’s way like a plucky little snowspeeder patiently winding its guy rope around the legs of the imperial walkers.”
I quote these well published journos simply to affirm what I seem unable to sufficiently convey via the data; Santi is the key to the Arsenal way of playing and, at least for now, is irreplaceable. To the contrary, some of my friends at PA urge and I paraphrase: “Stop belabouring the point, Shotta, we have other midfielders who can compensate.”
Can they truly compensate? Recently I did an analysis of the season-to-date Squawka PL performance data of all the Arsenal midfielders and it was a revelation. To make it easy for mobile devices I will break the table in 2 parts.
Top-4 Avg Performance Score
| Ozil | Cazorla | Iwobi | The Ox | |
| Avg Performance Score | 27 | 25 | 22 | 18 |
| Total Appearances | 22 | 8 | 21 | 21 |
| Shot Accuracy | 50% | 67% | 47% | 43% |
| Avg. Pass Accuracy | 87% | 91% | 87% | 82% |
| Avg. Pass Length | 15m | 16m | 14m | 17m |
| Avg. Chances Created | 2.68 | 1.25 | 1.14 | 1.10 |
| Avg. Goals Scored | 0.23 | 0.25 | 0.14 | 0.10 |
| Avg. Defensive Actions | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Avg. Duels Won | 53% | 28% | 55% | 53% |
Bottom-4 Avg Performance Score
| Xhaka | Elneny | Coquelin | Ramsey | |
| Avg Performance Score | 18 | 16 | 16 | 11 |
| Total Appearances | 19 | 12 | 21 | 12 |
| Shot Accuracy | 23% | 0% | 14% | 29% |
| Avg. Pass Accuracy | 89% | 92% | 88% | 90% |
| Avg. Pass Length | 18m | 16m | 15m | 16m |
| Avg. Chances Created | 0.84 | 0.25 | 0.62 | 0.83 |
| Avg. Goals Scored | 0.05 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Avg. Defensive Actions | 3 | 1 | 4 | 1 |
| Avg. Duels Won | 45% | 42% | 48% | 52% |
I have already made the point in my last blog that Cazorla is our second best midfielder next to Ozil and is inferior in only one offensive statistic i.e. Chances Created, making him a huge loss as an attacker. In his absence the team is forced to rely Iwobi and Oxlade-Chamberlain as Attacking Midfielders. While Arsenal fans should be extremely happy with the development of both players, the stubborn fact is that at 87% and 82% Pass Completion respectively as well as inferior chance creation stats it is hardly likely they will trouble defenders in much the same way as Santi. Nevertheless they are young players with a high upside and in Arsene they have a manager who is infinitely capable of bringing the best out of them. The bottom-line is neither is really suited for a deep lying role thus the manager is relying on Xhaka, Elneny and Coquelin and Ramsey to perform this function. The fact that they as well as The Ox have sub 20 average performance scores is a telling statistic. Even more troubling is the most experienced in the lot is Aaron Ramsey, but he has had an injury plagued season and his average performance score is a measly 11. The data is compelling; Arsene may have 6 injury-free midfielders but he is starved of another quality attacking central midfielder. (Note to StatDNA and the scouts in planning for the 2017 transfer season.)
I am no tactical expert and I have no advice to give the manager. He, I am sure, is more aware than all of us of the scale of the challenge he faces and the experience to prevail. For example on February 7, 2015, Arsenal lost to Tottenham 2-1 and fell to 6th place in the league with only 42 points. In the next 14 matches the club went on a run of 10 wins, three draws and one loss to finish 3rd at 75 points. Switching Santi to that deeper role, in place of the injured Mikel Arteta, was the key to that revival. Surely Arsene will find another internal solution.
Positively Arsenal 
Francesco Totti on in the Rome Derby – 40 years old – made his League debut in 1993 – not a hair out of place.
Ridiculous.
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Real Madrid 3-3 Las Palmas
RM now 1pt behind Barcelona with one game in hand.
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Bale definitely not having his best season after the Euros.
Ramsey and koscileny two stand out players from the Euros back in full training! Happy days.
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What’s worse? The dishonest diver? The cowardly clogger? Or the diving cloggers beloved by the likes of Riley who failed to kick Ramsey out of the England vs Wales* encounter last summer?
*Ramsey didn’t get the same protection when AFC played at home for the first home game of the season
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On the topic of clogging I was genuinely saddened to hear today of the death of former Celtic player Tommy Gemmell at 73, one of the Lisbon Lions, and who delivered my Dad possibly the greatest night in his football life in 1967.
The clip below shows Gemmell scoring the winner in Lisbon against the ferocious Inter side. Men who delivered the crippling challenge with as little thought as twirling a mouthful of spaghetti on their fork. No disrespect to the Italians, it was the way of the world then.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i31RBFSpqbk
The thing you might notice is that Gemmell is playing with his socks rolled down and no shin guards. ( banned very shocked face!!!)
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Fortuntely the celtic players weren’t carded or sent off for holding the opponents shirt or making an everyday trip that you seen all the time.
Thanks for the reminder of what an untilted pitch looks like
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Eddy: I always felt more in common with Spock tbf.
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Only at Anfield;
https://twitter.com/allthatchas/status/837038934874025995
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/mar/02/colin-kazim-richards-corinthians-brazil-racism-football
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Shotta
The data analytics company based in Cambridge (that would indeed be by the River Cam), the company that claims to be behind the success of the Brexit vote and the recent elections in the US have finally made the news here in the UK.
“At Cambridge Analytica we use big data and advanced psychographics to grow audiences, identify key influencers, and move people to action” And win elections too.
Big Data?
Blimey. Well. I never.
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Tis witchcraft Fins
“I do not object to the phenomena, but I do object to the parrot.”
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I hope Stew has set his alarm clock
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Nothing wrong with that parrot, anicol. He survived cold comfort farm, and he never chased the dogs. Good lad!
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Another of my faves Henry – like Clochemerle I read it again every few years and still enjoy it every bit as much. There was also a brilliant audio version of Cold Comfort Farm on BBC iPlayer with Kenneth Williams.
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Fins: Data and data analytics is one the biggest businesses today. One could safely argue that it is the core business of Google and Facebook.They are harvesting the data we so easily surrender to them, sell it and otherwise exploit it. The fact that they are an omniscient Big Brother to the sheeple would amaze even George Orwell.
The alarming thing is our governments and big corporations are using this data to manufacture consent for policies totally our against our interest. Since the 1920s both the American government and corporates utilized the ideas of Edward Bernay, the nephew of Freud, to psychologically manipulate public opinion. Since then those tools have become more sophisticated and devious. “At Cambridge Analytica we use big data and advanced psychographics to grow audiences, identify key influencers, and move people to action” Hmmm.
From an Arsenal point of view it is very interesting how it is now blandly accepted wide and far that changing managers, and if that doesn’t work, changing owners is the route to footballing nirvana. By that metric the Arabs, the Russians and now the Chinese should have long bought out AFC. Who the f*ck cares that it is an English football institution that has brought class and values to professional football.
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Andrew
I thought you’d enjoy the “psychographics” reference!
Those cheeky ancient Greek/Egyption engineers and their magic tricks and illusions (machines) that they placed in the temples, they have alot to answer for!
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Shotts
I once went to a London tech doo daa back when Google Glass etc. was still an exciting toy and an Indian gentleman who worked for Twitter told me that his primary activity was collecting data for the advertising industry (& pollsters?), one of the primary reasons that the platform was invented.
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Mine too, anicoll. There are some wonderful books, and that is one of them. Rural England in a bygone age. fascinating and also an unexpectedly funny take on life.
I missed the BBC audio version – I will go look. Thank you.
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a preview of the bayern game protest, in Chile the protest by fans demanding Alexis leave Arsenal had the massive crowd of ……………………………………………………….5 people turn up.
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Wenger – Freddie could return to Arsenal
Arsène Wenger says Freddie Ljungberg still has a future at Arsenal despite taking up a post alongside Andries Jonker at Wolfsburg.
Freddie, who played 328 times for us, winning two league titles and three FA Cups, took up an ambassadorial role with the club in 2013 and has spent this season coaching our under-15 side.
The 39-year-old has been appointed as assistant manager to Jonker, who also left for Wolfsburg after three years as our academy director. Wenger wishes both men well and thinks Freddie could return to London Colney one day.
“Freddie has done extremely well with the under-15s here,” said the boss. “I was in touch with him constantly during his experience there.
“We gave him permission to go [to Wolfsburg], but with a promise that he will come back if there’s a possibility to come back here. Overall, I think it’s part of his education to become a coach, to have this kind of experience. Hopefully we can use that later at Arsenal.
“Andries has been at Wolfsburg before,” Wenger added. “They knew him and they took advantage of the fact they know him to attract him there.
“Wolfsburg is a good opportunity because they have the third [highest] budget in the league. If you look at their team, their squad, they have very good players, so I think he has a good opportunity there to get them out of the relegation battle and as well to prepare to be their long-term coach there.”
Copyright 2017 The Arsenal Football Club plc. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to http://www.arsenal.com as the source
Read more at http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archive/20170302/wenger-freddie-could-return-to-arsenal#k3dvI6HH6Q5g5sKg.99
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Wenger: “But I’m objective and lucid enough to take the right decision; the club is free to make the decision that it wants.”
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AST @AST_arsenal 7h7 hours ago
AST identifies main risks to AFC next season being 1) No Champs Lge 2) Best players leave 3) Inefficient wage spend
I must say I have totally misjudged AST, I never knew they had such levels of foresight, who would ever have thought that missing out on CL football, or losing you best players, or not being able to pay wages as big as our rivals could be damaging to the club. they are fucking geniuses, I tell you, and no mistake.
None of us on here have ever even come close to thinking getting in CL is important, let alone keeping our better players, and its beyond me how they spotted that having a big wage spend is important. Geniuses, no other word for it.
Well maybe hypocrites is another word for them. All these years so many of their members have been telling us there is no point to being in the CL, and there should be no trouble buying new players, and we have massive wage spend.
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Fresh Arsenal @Fresh_Arsenal 5h5 hours ago
The Arsenal Supporters Trust have demanded “players must prove their worth or be swiftly moved on to generate revenues to be reinvested. Last summer Arsenal spent big but have so far failed to see material on pitch benefits from their investment. The past two seasons have shown new managers can get a lot more out of playing squads and budgets than their predecessors.”
with statements like above, its not hard to see why a gobshite like tim payton is one of their head men.
I have always believed that its best for AFC if we have many shareholders, but the more I’ve seen from AST, the more I want Kroenke to either buy out Usmanov, or partner up with him, and force the buyout of all the minor shareholders. Just so these cunts at AST are consigned to the bin they belong in.
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Ryan @RyanTomes 56m56 minutes ago
Arsène wanted a promise from Ljungberg that he’ll return to Arsenal but Arsène doesn’t want former players at Arsenal because of his ego….
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Neil Brooks @NeilBrooksAFC 2h2 hours ago
Just see the Torres challenge. Eyes for the ball, you have to use your arms to jump and he didn’t want it enough….obviously.
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It’s funny reading shotta and finsbury’s adulation of data because less than 0.1% of the data/polling companies got it right. The election of Donald Trump does not back data as sacrosanct, it does the exact opposite.
The year 2016 is an outlier in many senses:
– Leicester won the EPL
– Brexit happended
– A proud and openly racist & misogynist won the US presidency
All of these wouldn’t have happened going by Shotta’s Almighty data. NONE OF THEM. This should make you less certain about the conclusions you reach from data, not more. Your evidence for the greatness of data cannot be the one of the most famous instances when data failed spectacularly.
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“AST identifies main risks to AFC next season being 1) No Champs Lge 2) Best players leave 3) Inefficient wage spend”
Hold on a minute!
Isn’t the biggest challenge facing AFC always “not winning the PL and/or the CL”?
What am I missing here? I have always been led to believe, by the WOBs, that the only form of achievement that they recognise is either of PL or CL but nothing else.
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I have had my issues with 7am Kickoff but at least he often uses data to back up his ideas. One day after my post he agreed: “Few if any are able to replace Cazorla”
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Boo my good friend,
William Gibson’s Neuromancer, which he wrote in the late seventies whilst hanging out at MIT, is a much admired tome and I appreciate why some of the best British artists of my generation wanted to portray this description of the then future economy (alas the movie never got made)
“Neuromancing”, “psychographical” studies, yes we have enough evidence to appreciate that Gibson was yet another great science fiction writer alongside Asimov, Dick, Ballard etc.
To believe the Trump election was acheived without any strategy or specifically technique is ill considered IMO.
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finsbury,
“To believe the Trump election was acheived without any strategy or specifically technique is ill considered IMO”
Let me get this straight: Are you suggesting that the way to win elections henceforth is to do what Donald Trump did? Because data overwhelmingly shows that that’s not how to do it. The same way data suggests that Watford are highly unlikely to win the PL next season despite Leicester’s last season’s exploits.
Data just doesn’t back your assertion up unless all of a sudden, you want to use 0.1% data to conclude that 99.9% is bullshit. Which makes no sense at all. Year 2016 was a terrible year for data and all those who believe in it.
If you have to go to the 70’s to dig up an obscure figure to make your point, then you have lost this argument because if data backs you up on it, you wouldn’t have to go that far and you will have lots of examples. People win the lottery every year but data still overwhelmingly conclude that you are most like not going to win.
If you want to worship the Almighty data, go ahead but please be consistent.
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The Data tells me there is a game tomorrow.
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Fins: Take a look at how the ideas of Freud were implemented by Bernays, his nephew, and exponentially developed over time by firms like Cambridge Analytica.
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Memory tells me it was the combo between Cazorla and Diaby that destroyed Liverpool during that stand out performance. Although my memory may be confused i think it was the day that Santi scored his first goal for the Arsenal as Diaby conducted his own tribute to Redondo.
http://media.gettyimages.com/photos/mikel-arteta-celebrates-the-2nd-arsenal-goal-scored-by-santi-cazorla-picture-id151145074
Arteta is trying to say something there!
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Chinese Super League opening game drew in the crowds
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Boo,
That’s not what i suggested. If you think Gibson is an obscure author then i guess we’d best leave it there.
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finsbury,
Do you know Wole Soyinka or Ngugi wa Thiongo? They’ve written hundreds of books and one of them won the Nobel prize for literature. My not knowing Gibson takes nothing away from the validity of my point.
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The 12th Man @_The12thMan 13h13 hours ago
Head injuries that twitter has sympathy for:
– Ryan Mason ✔️
– Hector Bellerin✖️
– Fernando Torres ✔️
Trying to find a connection….
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anicoll5 & PG,
Do you know why I can’t “like” comments. It’s what I do here most of the time and I’m being deprived of that pleasure.
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Footballers eh ?
https://twitter.com/chgrand666/status/836487020168036353
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I am afraid I don’t Boo – for some odd reason your comments also keep ending in the spam bin.
We ‘enable’ the like buttons and at our end that is about as far as we can take it – the buttons are not user specific.
I remember a few months back someone else had this problem and the best I could come up with then was checking your browser was up to date, and/or trying it in another browser – what browser do you use ?
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Boo, I did not even attempt to invalidate anything that you had written.
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Fins: Diaby and Santi vs Liverpool. Wow. How time has flown. Thanks for the memories.
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Shotts
The by the numbers gentleman once suggested that Capoue (at Watford) was The Answer (to CM) and also once suggested getting shot of Rosicky (before he returned to torment Tottenham).
Some of the critiques people have written above could be directed at some of his thoughts/musings.
Xhaka was also a stand out CM from the Euros, if he manages to survive the transparent efforts from the pgMOB I have high hopes for him.
Ignoring the strange and incredibly unbalanced calls that we have all predictably witnessed , very few players, as in hardly any, come to the PL from another league and have first seasons like Cazorla and Alexis (that both were experienced by that stage obviously helped)
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-38971750
This article came out just after our thread and musings following then Bellerin concussion – he should be ok and back to his sharpest now, I don’t think he was right to play the next match after Chelsea not least because of the lack of training but there are other considerations such as confidence etc who’d be a manager eh?
certainly it’s easy to understand how and why elbows to the head area following a twenty yard sprint have been considered as fouls in football for a long time.
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Sanogo is back
Arsenal FCVerified account @Arsenal 2h2 hours ago
Our #AFCU23 team to play Tottenham: Martinez, Jenkinson, Debuchy, Sheaf, Bramall, McGuane, Nelson, Malen, Dragomir, Willock, Sanogo
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GeoffArsenal @GeoffArsenal 2h2 hours ago
West Ham v Chelsea official website right now. Thought Arsenal had the most expensive seats in the World.
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