Today we’ll have Mikel Arteta’s press conference ahead of the Liverpool game and he’ll be asked about the game, injury updates, but also about the current profligacy in front of goal and how he overcomes it.

My hope is that with a glint in his eye he comes out swinging. My hope is that he says things like he said after we had those three defeats at the beginning of the season before last, where he essentially said “this has been the best response I have ever seen” or words to that effect. He talked about how amazed he was about it and although we were all still a little edgy given we were bottom of the league and had lost out first three matches with the press dropping broken cannon images all over the back pages, inside myself I was a little hopeful that what he was saying was true. I was hopeful that a spark had been lit and we went on to beat Norwich and then embark on a decent run that put us in contention for a top four spot.

That’s kind of what I am hoping for today, because I’ve been metaphorically chewing down my nails with concern about our problems we’ve had in front of goal. I know two games does not a season make, but when you have a worry – just like when you are on top of the world – you can use data to project both positives and negatives to amplify your emotions. I’ve looked at our shots on target levels in the last month, I’ve seen our total shots since the beginning of December in the Premier League, I’ve seen how we’ve dominated games in all but score lines, then used it to pull together a narrative of a bigger problem.

What also doesn’t help is when you see stuff like this from the press:

They’ve taken an end of year stat and compared it with the halfway mark in the season, using it as some kind of stick to beat our attackers with. To be fair the numbers don’t lie and if those players have the same first half to the season as they had to the second, I don’t think our defence is going to bail them out by getting us another 40 points minimum, but equally I would be surprised if our attacking players have such a bad second half to the season as they had to the first. I don’t think we’ll get to the same numbers as last season for all of those players; they would need 40+ goals to do that, but I do think and hope they can improve enough in the attacking third to hopefully deliver a good season.

They’ve got 15 goals between them this season and as a team we have 37 in the Premier League. On average that works out at us scoring 70 goals by the season end. Ignoring the points on the board, teams that get around 70 goals generally – based on the last five season’s I’ve looked at – finish between third and fifth. So based on where we are now, you’d say that we do have to change things. But here’s my glass half full outlook today; I think we can all agree that this hasn’t been an amazing final third output in the first half. Most of us believe it can get better. I also think that missing Partey (as I said yesterday) has also impacted us. Let’s not forget Gabby Jesus missed the start of the season and then got injured again so his season has been patchy. Added to this, I think our players are dealing with a new way of teams lining up against them and I think we know our players can perform better than they ave in front of goal, then finally I think Arteta is a smart enough man to work out what we need to do to improve our goal scoring ratio.

So I think that we won’t  – fingers crossed – have as bad an end to the season in front of goal as we’ve had for the first half.

Those four attacking players have 15 goals at the halfway stage. Let’s just say that they will at least get that in the second half of the year. Now, if we were to add an extra three goals to each player as an additional target to hit, that would be 12 goals and we’d be trending at around 82 goals for the season. It would mean each player finishing on:

  • Martinelli = seven goals
  • Odegaard = 10 goals
  • Saka = 14 goals
  • Gabriel Jesus = nine goals (I’ve rounded up to make a combined 40 because the averages don’t quite work)

I don’t think those tallies seem too unrealistic to be honest with you. If we perform the same we did and those players up their conversion rates – maybe extra long finishing drills or something (I’m no expert as you guys know! 🙂 – by just a small amount, then we’re hitting 80 goals. And in fact, when you think about the number of attempts we’ve been getting of late, we probably don’t even need to up the conversion rates, because if we keep getting games where we’re having 20 – 30 shots each game, we’ll hit the target more often than not. At the start of the season we had 15 shots against Forest, 14 against Palace, 18 against United, eight against Everton and 12 against the Scum. That’s a total of 67 shots. In our last five Premier League games we’ve had a total of 94 shots. So we’ve taken an extra 27 shots across the same number of matches! If we can keep that up, then those extra three goals for those attacking players would naturally be converting – by law of averages!

Maybe I’m just using data to make myself feel better, but even if I am, then to be fair it is working. Because I’ve laid out the fact we’re creating chances and having shots, I’ve laid out a fairly low-key additional target to better our season from a goal scoring perspective, then we just need the defence to hold firm as it has at the start of the season. And at the halfway stage this season we’d conceded 18 goals. Double that and you’ve got 36 conceded for the season. If we hit 80 goals and concede 36 then it’s a goal difference of 44. It’s still not quite good enough to win a title if one team goes on a brilliant run and finishes in the high 80s for points, but most teams winning the title on the mid 80s in points in recent years (I had a look at every team hitting 86 points or fewer to win the league)  have been an average of around +46 on goal difference. Most pundits seem to feel the league is open enough to end on that, so if it does then attacking wise it isn’t a mountain to climb.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m using a lot of “If’s” and “but’s” here, but in my head I’m just trying to make the mountain that I talked myself into the fact we were climbing on New Year’s Eve, is not as big as perhaps I first thought.

What do you think?

Catch you all tomorrow.