Alexis Pen

After the match Wenger was upset that Alexis took the pen saying “Santi was down to take it, I don’t know why it did not happen, they have pecking order, it was not planned for Sanchez to take it. I want to know what happened and for it not to happen again. Overall anyone can miss a penalty, we have to accept that.”

We do have to accept that, but we also need to accept that Alexis has never scored a single penalty in any match he has played for any team. He has scored during a penalty shootout, most notably the panenka for the winner in the Copa America final, but penalty shootouts are not exactly the same as penalties.

Alexis doesn’t take many penalties. I’m limited in the data I have available but I only see two penalties taken in any League, Champions League, or Chilean matches in his career. Both of those were taken while playing for Arsenal, both missed. Kindly correct that data in the comments.

Both penalties were also telegraphed to the keeper. For his miss against QPR, pictures show Vargas pointing to his right, exactly where Sanchez shot and where the pen was saved. And against Hull today Robertson also told the keeper which way to dive and got it correct. Strange, though probably coincidence.

Santi Cazorla is Arsenal’s number one penalty taker and he has scored 8/9 in his Premier League career. Lukas Perez has scored 4/5 penalties he has taken in all competitions according to Whoscored.com and Giroud is 7/10 both for Montpelier and Arsenal according to the same source. Whoscored doesn’t include cup ties and Champions League qualifiers and so may not be complete.

It’s early in the season but Arsenal look to be the beneficiaries of the Premier League’s new focus on penalties. Arsenal have already been awarded 4 League penalties and have scored 2 in their first 5 matches of the season. I can’t find anywhere where a Premier League team has been awarded four penalties in their first five matches. But then, penalty stats are notoriously difficult to find so I could be wrong. Please kindly correct in the comments section.

Arsenal dominate from start to finish

Before the Livermore red card Arsenal enjoyed huge superiority over Hull, taking 12 shots to Hull’s 2. Arsenal got 8 shots in the 18 yard box, 1 in the six yard box, and 3 from distance. Using a simplistic expected goals measure I get a 1.27 to 0.22 dominance in the first 40 minutes.

In the period after the penalty, Arsenal took their foot off the gas a bit and (if we don’t count the xG for the penalty) only managed an 0.92 expected goal. Not a huge drop but well controlled considering the fact that Hull’s only shots after the red card were from distance and generated negligible xG numbers.

Removing penalties, Michael Caley put Arsenal at 2.9 for the match with Hull 0.2. That’s considerably different than my measure of 2.08 to 0.26. I will only add that xG is a measure of how dominant a team’s shot selection is and not how many goals a team should have scored and also that xG in small samples like per game or on a player basis is pretty inaccurate but that is to be expected.

Either way we measure, Arsenal dominated from start to finish and especially dominated in the period before the red card.

Xhaka

Arsenal only scored 4 goals last season off shots from distance. That was 2nd worst in the League behind three teams who scored 3 goals from distance (including the champs, Leicester). That was also a nadir for Arsenal in terms of goals from outside the box, down from 9 the season prior.

Wenger doesn’t put much emphasis on distance shots and encourages patience. Shots from outside the box are low percentage chances in the range of 3%. But damn the maths! Fans love a long shot, don’t we?

Xhaka is a bit of a long bomb specialist and has taken 69% of his career shots from outside the box (again, we are using Whoscored.com and they only include Champions League and domestic leagues). Ironically, he’s only scored 3 goals from distance off 138 shots, or 2%. He’s scored 7 goals off 57 shots inside the 18 yard box, or 12% conversion, which is slightly better than average.

Still, who would begrudge him a shot like that?

Xhaka likes the ball

As soon as Xhaka came on he took control of the ball. He finished the match playing just 24 minutes but managed 49 touches with 46 passes. If we prorate that number over a 90 minute match, he would have led all players with 173 passes in that match. I checked the Premier League stats and Granit Xhaka leads all players (who have more than 200 minutes played) in passes per 90. He is averaging 92.6 passes per90 this season.

One thing this highlights is the fact that p90 stats are hugely misleading. No, Xhaka would not have had 173 passes in a game.

Another thing this stat highlights is the fact that when playing against 10 men and with a player of Xhaka’s quality, playing against a team that is tired, and frankly a team that is Hull City, Xhaka can be a hugely dominant passing midfielder.

I looked at this particular match and one thing stood out to me: that if we look at touches per minute and passes per minute, Xhaka got a ton of the ball in the final 24 minutes of the game. Xhaka has been a dominant midfielder for the last few years of his career and combined with the tired legs of Hull, this isn’t a surprise but I do wonder if part of the reason why Wenger is squeezing Coquelin into the midfield is to make sure that Cazorla and Özil get enough of the ball?

Özil led all starters with 110 passes against Hull, Cazorla led all starters with 142 passes p90, but if you look at the touches per minute (TPM above) and passes per90 (PP90 above) Xhaka dictated play when he came on. Unless Arsene plays Xhaka as a left midfielder (and hey, he’s got Coquelin playing between the lines so let’s not rule anything out) the Swiss is going to dominate possession. So, my question is how does Wenger fit his best three midfielders (Özil-Cazorla-Xhaka) on the pitch at the same time and still make sure that Özil and Cazorla can dictate play?

Odds and Ends

Özil led all players with 110 passes and 68 of them were in the Hull final third.

Coquelin was 3rd on Arsenal with 37/38 final third passes.

Snodgrass won 6/7 dribbles all of them down the right against Iwobi (2/4 tackles), Monreal (3/5 tackles), and Coquelin (4/7 tackles).

@7amkickoff

All stats via Opta

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