1) West Ham

West ham were an interesting team in 2012/13; good at home, absolutely terrible away from home where they were routinely and heavily out-shot. Now, that 12/13 performance away from was, or so I thought, due to West ham being a newly promoted team and thus overpowered by established PL teams. Thing is West Ham's poor shots form has continued into this new season and spread to both home and away form.   This is West Ham's rolling shots +/- and as we can see it's trending in the wrong direction over these first four games. Obviously this chart merely shows West Ham's raw shots numbers, so let's look at the important shots on target information. SoT% = SoT/Total Shots

There is good and bad news. The Good: West Ham's SoT Prevention% is crazy good. West Ham are squeezing the opposition and forcing them to shoot from shitty angles or long distance or areas where shots are likely to be blocked. The Bad: That Sot % for figure is terrible, just horrible and it's going to have to improve quickly before a quirk turns into a trend. League average SoT for % is 31.7% after 39 games. In short, West Ham are being beaten soundly in the shots count, have a poor SoT for % number and are merely surviving up to now due to the SoT prevention number listed above and a 91% save percentage (league ave is 70%). Room for improvement.

2) Performance Of The Week

Tottenham. Crushed. Norwich. Tottenham are an interesting team to watch this year and not just because they acted out a football manager-like spending splurge for some of Europe's best players. Spurs have a fine young manager, a talented and deepish squad and lots of options in the forward/attacking mid department. But the main reasons I find them interesting is to watch how AVB attempts to mash all these pieces together to form a coherent unit and how long will that mashing take? If these new players bed in and learn the attacking scheme quickly then Tottenham will be, well, top 4.  

3) Scoring% & Goals

Earlier today Mark Taylor penned an article titled A Premiership goal Drought which looks at the low number of goals, 74, scored from the first 39 games. I heartily recommend reading Mark's article which prompted the following tweets: On the topic of the final goals scored total at the seasons end.

@TheM_L_G @marktaylor0 Well, I don't think it would be the same. I'd expect it to be about 1-2% lower. — Daniel Altman (@altmandaniel) September 16, 2013

Since it's a hot topic today, I'll go on record as saying there are solid systemic reasons to think PL scoring will drop 5% this season — Ted Knutson (@mixedknuts) September 16, 2013

@altmandaniel @TheM_L_G @MarkTaylor0 I think that a 6% drop has been about the biggest in recent years. — Simon Gleave (@SimonGleave) September 16, 2013

  Ted goes onto list Fergie's departure at Man United, Tottenham fixing their defense and Mourinho's PL return as possible causes. Now, I'm not going to argue with these big beasts who are far smarter than I, but I checked on a couple of year-on-year numbers to see if anything stood out. Shots In 2012/13 there was 9.17 shots on target per game and 27.8 shots per game In 2013/14 there has been 8.15 shots on target per game and 25.58 shots per game. It's clear that 13/14's numbers are slightly down from the previous year, but small samples, variance, quirks and closely fought fixtures can have effects on these numbers. Scoring% League average Scoring% over the course of a season will settle at somewhere close to ~30%. In 2013/14 league scoring% is just 23.27%. Time Spent Drawing (link) I assumed that any increases in the amount of time spent drawing may have led to a lower number of goals scored.There has been an average of 41.2 mins per game so far in 13/14. In 12/13 the average was ~46.5 minutes. Three simple categories, none of them tell us anything particularly interesting given the small number of games played thus far but if pushed I'd say that the big drop of in scoring% is responsible thus far. And we know what happens to scoring%? STill, the drop off in shots on target is curious. New systems, new players and new managers.  

4) Save Of The Week

Gareth Barry take a bow.

5) Newcastle

Oh Newcastle, what is this? 7 points after 4 games, this isn't how it was supposed to look considering the shambles of the transfer window? Newcastle were shellacked in their first PL game of the season as Man City ran up the score and Steven Taylor was dismissed for a foolish elbow in a game that was fairly described as a shambles from Newcastle's perspective.  

  Since that opening day defeat Newcastle toiled against a stubborn and restrictive West ham team, beat Fulham and Villa away. The common theme throughout these three games? The opposition was destroyed by the shots count. In fact, despite that opening day defeat, Newcastle have some of the best underlying shots numbers in the league. Percentage share of the shots count. TSR=Total Shots. SoTR= shots on target. Fenwick=total shots with blocked shots removed.

  All of these numbers are nice and healthy. It makes a refreshing change to have something positive to write about Newcastle United football club. Naturally, some of these excellent numbers will regress over time. But my Lord does it make a difference when a team doesn't have a crippling list of injured key players. Things that are different so far this year: Coloccini is fit. Ben Arfa is fit. Tiote is fit. Krul is fit. Pardew isn't fucking things up. PDO has regressed nicely in Newcastle's favour and the fixture list isn't the most difficult one will ever see. Let's see where Newcastle are after ten games. There'll be no relegation battle this year. Famous last words!

6) Goal Of The Week

Douglas Costa. Golazo

7) City's Away form

There was gnashing of teeth aplenty after Man City drew yet another game at the Brittania stadium but that draw should have come as no surprise. Man City have had fairly pressing issues with away from for some time. In 11/12, the title winning season, Man City managed 34 points on the road and 55 at home. In 12/13 Man City managed 33 points on the road and 45 points at home. Last season Man City's away form was only the 6th best in the entire league. City's shots count was good, their possession was numbers were fine but they just could not score enough goals. These issues have spilled over in 2013/14 with the goal-less draw at Stoke serving as the perfect example of City's ills. A lack of chance creation or variety, no penetration and too little width are just a few of tactical items that need addressing. When Pellegrini was hired as Man City manager I wrote that fixing the away form was priority #1 and to do this the Chilean would have to fix Man City's scoring% on the road. The scoring% sits at 25% through two games but City's style of play and the disorganized feel about the team are causing concern among City fans. Pellegrini needs time to figure the PL out. The players need time to figure Pellegrini out. New manager, new players and new tactics but the same away day troubles so far.

8) Podcast!

Listen to Ted Knutson and myself discuss topics as diverse as Ozil, West Brom, Diego Simeone, Tottenham, Mourinho and Barcelona. <link>

9) Swansea v Liverpool

It should be a pretty fascinating game this evening and it'll be even more interesting if Liverpool fall a goal behind. So far this season Liverpool have tended to score early and then retreat into a defensive shell with limited counter attacking spikes. We have seen so far this season that Liverpool can defend a lead but can they break teams down? We just don't yet. Liverpool's odds to qualify for the top 4 have shortened to 11/10 and although I think they have improved mightily since Coutinho and Sturridge arrived in January I still think it's a tall task to assume Liverpool will qualify for the CL. Liverpool finished with 61 points in 12/13, can they add another 9 or 10 points in order to break the top 4? Possibly. But with Tottenham and Arsenal arguably having strengthened this Summer it remains a big ask, great underlying numbers and all. Swansea are 1.61 win or draw (double chance)  

10) Move Of The Week

This is just a gorgeous football sequence. Rooney marries tremendous vision with flawless execution and the take and technique that was then displayed by van Persie is genuinely world class. Only a matter of inches and the crossbar deny this sequence the goal of the week honours.

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1) Deadline Day

Panic, chaos and overspend. These seem to be three words which most accurately sum up how most clubs operate on deadline day. Smart clubs conclude their transfer business early in the window and tend not to take part in the last gasp dash that was Monday night unless a fantastic opportunity presents itself. The smart clubs try and bring in new players before the season has even begun in order to bed those players into new environments and new systems. But we know this isn't always possible. Most clubs attempt to buy and sell players until the very last day of the window and this means agents are pushing clubs to sign players, and pushing players to leave clubs. This pushing and touting of players probably causes a lot of upheaval and stress at a time when managers and players should be focusing on the match preparation and tactical issues. A solution to the problem of agents hawking players, players becoming unsettled and the division of a mangers time and concentration? Shorten the transfer window and move it back to, lets say, August the 10th. The window closes before any league fixture in the major European Countries has taken place. Agents, managers and players can focus their efforts on the transfer window pre-August the 10th and once that deadline has closed everyone can focus all their efforts on playing football games. We don't need situations like the Bale and Cabaye sit-outs. We need a clean seperation between transfer window and competetive football fixtures.

2) Liverpool's Strong Start

It's been an impressive start to the season for Liverpool. 3 wins, including a win over a pretty toothless Man United team. Liverpool have scored the first goal of the game in each of their first three fixtures and once in the lead have tended to tighten their defensive shape and consolidate their game position. The real test for Liverpool, their new team and the managers tactical setup will come when Liverpool fall behind in a game. DO they have enoug skill, creativity and no little patience to come from behind in games and a positive result? What of Luis Suarez's return, will he help or will he become a distraction for a team who is building nicely without him? Fixtures against Swansea, Southampton and Sunderland may not tell us much about Liverpool's ability to overpower above average opposition but these were the types of games Liverpool sometimes struggled in last term.

3) Fulham

It's early in the season, like, really early in the season but Fulham have not started well. Three points from three games isn't terrible considering Fulham are a poor away side and their solitary home game was against an Arsenal side who feast on weaker opposition. There has been a common theme running through each of Fulham's fixtures so far: they are being butchered by the shots count. TSR shows Fulham's share of total shots. SoTR shows Fulham's share of the shots on target. Fenwick shows Fulham's share of the shots on target & blocked shots. League average is 50 in each of these categories and it's clear to see that Fulham fall well below that league average number. A sub-par midfield, an odd corps of specialist strikers and lack of pace throughout the team could cause Fulham to become this seasons Sunderland (a team who struggled mightily in 12/13 by the shots count). Next up, West Brom at home.

4) Performance Of The Week: Stoke

Mark Hughes won a football match! Yes, that is now two wins from three games and this represents a nice start to what is surely his last chance as a PL manager. Stoke's first win of the season was at home to Crystal Palace who are one of the leagues weaker teams, but Saturday's fixture away at West Ham was a different beast. West Ham had mighty good home form in 2012/13 and I expect that form to continue into this season too. Sam Allardyce team are difficult to play against, they create good opportunities to score and tend to restrict the opposition from doing likewise. Hence way not many pundits fancied this Stoke team, in transition in terms of manager and playing style,, to go and win away in East London. Not only did Stoke manage to take the three points they did so in impressive fashion. Stoke outshot West Ham 15-9 and 5-0 in terms of shots on target. Stoke had more possession, more corners and the final third passes were 130-127 in West Ham's favour. These are impressive numbers from a team who were one of the poorest away outfits in the league last year. It's very early in the season to be drawing any conclusions about manager effects or how a team has overhauled it's style but the 2013/14 season has started pretty well for Stoke.

5) PDC

So Paolo Di Canio had another pop at his players after their 3-1 loss away at Crystal Palace. Di Canio was quoted criticizing his captain John O'Shea, calling the players sending off ''absolutely poor and not acceptable''. But the following quote about Connor Whickham is my personal favourite:  "After one and a half goals against a League One side he is probably over the moon. There is not the right desire, and I cannot change the heart of my players". Now, it's one thing criticizing an underperforming senior pro, but I would question just how sensible it is to lay into a 20 yo striker prospect. It's even worse to criticise the performance of your club captain, who in some circumstances, will be your only true ally in a dressing room that is too painfully used to being criticised in public. We all knew Di Canio would lose his lax control on that temper of his, but nobody thought the public criticism would have begun this soon. Just think for a moment about Di Canio and his charges mental well being after the run of home fixtures. Sunderland's upcoming home fixtures:  Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United, Newcastle, Manchester City, Chelsea and Tottenham. Di Canio could well and truly out of his mind by the time we get to Xmas.

6) Waste In The Final Third

Within the analytics community a lot of recent work has focused on the final third, namely passing numbers, chance creation and shots (distance, location etc). This of course looks closely at the outcomes, but not so much at how teams arriving in these positions in the first place. This then is what we are looking at with City this season as we try to record the first meaningful (publicly anyway) data. Although three weeks in is way too early to draw any conclusions there is an area that we perhaps didn't necessarily account for: how much possession and territorial advantage that the final third brings is wasted. Let's take City this season. City, through three games have had 168 final third entries, yet have lost possession (either turning it over or being dispossessed) 100 times, or 59.52% of the time. Take the other side and City have allowed 72 final third entries but the opposition have lost possession a staggering 50 times, or 69.44% of the time. Contrast this to the number of shots taken (City 37 and opposition 14) and it appears that territorial advantage may not be as valuable as thought. Early days of course and this may merely highlight the value of strong defence. One to keep an eye on as we move through the season.

7) Yaya Toure & Free kicks

7) Yaya Toure & Free kicks

Yaya Toure is a fine footballer, a powerhouse midfielder who roams across the field with authority. One aspect of his game which is not particularly well known is his free kick taking ability. That looks like it may be about to change. This was Toure's free kick against Hull, his second goal from a set-piece situation in three games. Paul Carr digs into some of the background:

In his first 3 PL seasons, Yaya Toure had no goals on direct free kicks. He has 2 in 3 games this season. — Paul Carr (@PCarrESPN) August 31, 2013

He (Yaya Toure) had six shots on direct free kicks in the previous three seasons. via @PCarrESPN

Toure's new found prowess as a free kick taker may have been a skill he possessed all along, it was just that Toure was never given a chance to prove it. Previous seasons have seen Tevez, Balotelli, Silva, Milner and Kolarov all on rotation for spot kick duty. Under Mancini, Toure was never an option yet Pellegrini has seen something in Toure that has forced the managers hand. Toure is unlikely to sustain this excellent free kick conversion rate for the rest of the season but it's mighty nice when a new manager tweaks a system or, in this instance, a free kick taker and having it pay off immediately in terms of goals scored.

8) Man United's Set Piece Puzzler

Manchester United were an incredibly good set piece team in 2012/13 (link), scoring a league high 26 goals. Now, set-pieces are some parts luck and some parts skill. It's nearly impossible to determine the drivers of the set-piece skill, but it may fair to guess that delivery is a big part of it. Hence why it may be fair to say that a good part of Man United's set-piece prowess last term was due to quality delivery from dead ball situations. You can see where I am going with this. van Persie was the main driver of that excellent set-piece goals tally in 2012/13, so why on earth is the same player not taking the primary set-piece's for Man United this season? Robin van Persie's Set-Piece Tally In 2013/14 v Swansea 2 corners, 1 free-kick v Chelsea 2 corners, 0 free-kicks v Liverpool 0 corners 1 free-kick Now, I have no idea how many free-kick situations Man United have had in the three PL games of 2013/14 but I imagine there have been more than two, which is RvP's free-kick tally this term. How about corners? Man United have been awarded 15 corners in this new season with RvP taking just 4 of them. So what the hell is going on, why take a player who was, in all likelihood, the driver of Man United's set-piece magic off of set-piece taking duty? A theory: either van Persie is injured - specifically, a left foot injury - or Moyes doesn't really fancy van Persie as his set-piece taker. Early doors and all, but this is definitely something to keep track off this season. Thoughts?

9) This Ten Points Thing Is Popular, Huh?

We've been running this Ten Points recap/reflection/look back for almost a year now both here on Statsbomb and over at Bitter and Blue, and it has proved one of the popular features on the site. How popular? Take a look around the mainstream media this past week or so: We have The Guardian, BBC, MEN, The Mirror, Independent and ESPN have all offering up their versions. As far as we know (although we are willing to stand corrected) we were the first to run something along the lines of a 'Ten Points...' piece. If you can't beat 'em....

10) Goal Of The Week

Hatem Ben Arfa wins it. The quality of his footwork and his balance was a joy. But it was the importance of the goal that tipped the decision in the Frenchman's favour. Redmond and Yaya Toure were in consideration.

What is the first thing you do when you start a new game of Football Manager? If you’re at all like me, you look for players to sell so you can raise money, especially ones with big contracts. The second thing you do is go shopping for all the young talent (wonderkids) you can possibly find in your price range. (Note: This assumes that you are the type of person who likes a challenge, and takes charge of a League One/Championship side at most. If you just want to control Manchester City or Chelsea, may god have mercy on your soul.) In business terms, you are looking to sell overvalued assets to some unsuspecting sucker and turn the cash from those into undervalued assets that have a strong likelihood to appreciate. By doing so, you create a “wonderkid revenue stream,” which is really useful in both acquiring better players, and later selling those players at large profits. Lather, rinse, repeat. 1)      Sell old dudes. Sell expensive dudes. 2)      Buy young dudes. 3)      Train young dudes well and wait for them to become older. 4)      Profit!!! It sounds kind of silly, but that’s one of the fastest roads to prosperity in the world’s most addictive game/spreadsheet. One of the things you almost never do at that level is take large salaries on loan. The reason for this is simple – unless you think the loan player will get you promoted, you are completely destroying any asset value that money would have. It flies right out the window as a cost and never comes back. Spending that money on one year of player performance is almost always inferior to buying a good player that you can later sell down the road. (There is a middle ground of taking great young players from bigger clubs on loan (their wages are usually reasonable or subsidized by the big club), but that’s not the point I’m after right now.) Why are we talking about Football Manager? Because I suspect most of our audience have played it, and it’s a reasonable analog for running a football club. You have a fixed budget. You have to balance spending on transfer fees and wages. And the point is most certainly to try and win games, but also to increase the value of your club overall. The Curious Case of the Everton Loans Andy Hunter had a piece in The Guardian on Tuesday detailing Everton’s deadline day transfers. The article leads off with this:

The Everton chairman, Bill Kenwright, showed an astute business head as three signings were completed late in the day and the Marouane Fellaini deal delivered more than expected.

Impressive, right? Then it ends with this information:

Everton intend to offer Baines a new contract now the window has closed and, despite making a profit this summer, £2m of the Fellaini fee is owed to his former club Standard Liège while the loan deals for Lukaku and Barry will cost close to £10m. Kenwright, meanwhile, finds himself in the rare position of receiving credit where credit is due.

Oh cool, that’s great business then. You sold Fellaini for £27.5M, and grabbed two strong players for your starting eleven for the next year. They only cost… TEN MILLION?!? Now the fact of the matter is that these are the reported fee and salaries. The actual amounts could be less than these, and I would hope they are. There are also deals like the David Villa one that looks crazy on the surface – Atletico bought him for about 5 million euros – but in reality contain things like first option on Oliver Torres that make them much more valuable. Torres is already incredibly talented at age 18, and virtually guaranteed to be a starting midfielder in Spain’s national team in the future. However, even if the fees/salaries were 75% of the reported amount, the size of them turns a transfer window that was championed as great completely on its head. A club with a revenue stream the size of Everton’s (£80M in turnover) simply cannot pay these types of expenses for a one-year rental. Everton management is delusional if they think the addition of these two players will get them into the Champions’ League. And if that isn’t the result, then what's the point? And Now For Something Completely Different… To illustrate a different way of spending that money, look at the last two transfer windows for Aston Villa. Villa are a club of similar size and stature to Everton, but one that has been through a rough patch recently, caused by years of ridiculous transfer and wage spending crossed with bad managerial choices. Under Paul Lambert, all of that has changed. Instead of buying Premier League players for large fees, Villa focus their efforts on overseas and lower league youngsters. I have no knowledge as to their scouting network or how they use analytics, but I can say that last year’s purchases were excellent, and this year’s crop seem good as well.

For £1M more than what Everton are spending on Lukaku and Barry this season, Villa added five potential stars to their lineup. This isn’t to say that they will all be good – on average about half of all transfers are a probable bust – but they aren’t risking much in the gamble. Their biggest risk came on deadline day, where they grabbed 24-year-old Libor Kozak from Lazio for a rumoured £7M. My guess on this one is that they either decided Helenius wasn’t a good enough backup, or they found a good deal on a player they liked, and get to let him bed in for a year before selling Benteke next summer. [All hate mail and inquiries from Villa fans should be directed to @footballfactman on Twitter.] One of the massive benefits of buying younger players is that basic physiology tells us they are likely to get better. Their muscles and body of males continue to develop until about 25 years old, and age curves for the different positions suggest there will be peaks at 25 for forwards, 27 for midfielders, 29 for defenders, and 31 for goalkeepers. Buying young players who already perform well lets teams naturally benefit from the age curve. Also, because the players are young and the transfer fees are low, they are likely on comparatively low wages. This means that they don’t cost much if you aren’t playing them, and you can resell them fairly easily to other teams/countries if things don’t work out. Compare this to Arsenal’s disastrous last four years of loaning out underperformers again and again because they are overpaid and no one wants to buy them, and you will see what I mean. Overpaid bad players are football’s herpes, destined to come back again and again, right when you don’t want them. Villa are already in a position where they can flip multiple players they bought during Lambert’s first season in charge. For a fee of just under £8M, Christian Benteke made an immediate impact in the Premier League, helping Villa avoid relegation, making Darren Bent and his giant wages expendable, and parlaying one year of performance into a hefty new contract. Given the goalscorer inflation from this summer, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Benteke sell for £35-40M a year from now. Matthew Lowton and Ashley Westwood, both purchased from League One, are other players whose value appreciated dramatically after one year of Premier League action. Villa were never really skint, but their savvy in the transfer market paid almost immediate dividends, both in terms of performance on the field, and performance as a business.  A guaranteed £25M profit from Benteke can then be sunk back into the product on the field while continuing to develop players for the future. It’s a simple philosophy, but one that is correct and hugely rewarding when employed correctly. Back to Merseyside Now compare this to what happened up at Everton this summer.  Selling Fellaini for £27.5M was good business (though not incredible, since Fell is alleged to have cost £17+M initially), as was the sale of Anichebe to West Brom for a rumoured £5-6M. However, Everton’s incoming players leave a lot to be desired. I liked the loan for Delofeu, who was excellent in Segunda last season and should develop into a fine player. The fee and wages are likely nominal, so this move just makes sense. I also like the purchase of James McCarthy for a rumoured £12.5M. He’s only 22 and is already maturing into a valuable player at the Premier League level. After that though, things go bad quickly. First you have £5M spunked on a 29-year-old forward in Arouna Kone, a player who will have zero transfer value in a year or two. Wigan buying him for 3M when they were desperate for a scorer was a good gamble and he produced. Everton allegedly paying twice that price a year later is not.  The verdict is out on Robles, but the fee is low enough and he’s young enough that it’s hard to quibble there. Then you have the reported £10M spent on loans for Barry and Lukaku. £10M to rent two players for a season, when there is no way this team is making the Champions’ League – what’s the point? None of these help the team get younger or add to the asset list of the club. Did Martinez sell Kenwright a bill of goods in getting his hopes up for Champions’ League football? Is Kenwright willing to offset these fairly crazy expenditures with cash injections, something that hasn’t happened before? Compare this to what Villa are doing and it all looks foolish and misguided. In fact, it’s a lot like what happened to Liverpool during the Hicks, Gillett, and then Comolli eras. Money is going out the door on things that cost too much, don’t add enough to the product on the field, and provide no long-term value for the club. Mistakes like this when you have Liverpool’s revenue stream costs you hundreds of millions of pounds and years of lost Champions’ League participation. Mistakes like this at Everton’s level are likely to yield a plunge in performance that takes years to dig out of, especially since the clubs around them (Liverpool, Swansea, Aston Villa, Southampton) suddenly seem really smart.  

By Ted Knutson I do fewer quick hit analysis pieces than I used to do on my old blog, because somehow StatsBomb feels like it deserves longer pieces with depth and breadth of analysis. That said, I just wanted to toss up a couple of thoughts on Arsenal’s transfer window prior to doing the team grades later this week. 1)      Minus that guy (and he's pretty special), it was fairly shambolic. The deals they whiffed on (Higuain, Suarez) were both public and painful. You can argue that signing Suarez would have locked Arsenal out of signing Ozil (who is the better player), but signing Higuain – Arsenal’s clearest area of need this summer – would not. Football is too big and complicated now for one person to both manage the team and hunt for talent, and there’s too much damned money and competition for the best players anyway. Arsenal need to change how they deal with the transfer season going forward or this situation will repeat itself again and again. 2)      Ozil was the best player signed in the window and one that nobody thought was available. The amount paid for him was almost exactly what I have listed as fair value. It is the first time since I have been a fan (1998) that the club have signed an already-developed world talent on the offensive side of the ball. Huge props. 3)      Some noted pundits like Gary Lineker have said they don’t think Ozil really helps Arsenal. Allow me to disagree. While attacking midfielder wasn’t an area of direct need, Cazorla’s best position for Arsenal is likely on the left wing. This gives him space to run and create, and it bolsters what is Arsenal’s weakest area on the pitch (especially with Poldi gone for at least three months). The problem with putting him out there is that Arsenal’s central midfield then lacks an additional creative passer of that caliber. Put plainly, there is no better creative passer in the world than Ozil (Ben did his career per90s here). He has an exquisite understanding of space, his vision is almost prescient, and he has the ability to weight passes perfectly that Arsenal haven’t quite had since Cesc left. He will improve the offense, the counter-attack, and help the team generate better chances against both good teams and packed defences. He can also score goals now, a trait that Wilshere notably lacks. (Champions’ League goals aside, Rambo has a career record of dreadfulness when shooting, so the combination of him, Jack, and deep-lying Arteta means all the goal pressure is on the front three. Ozil changes that.) 4)      Flamini looked better than I expected this weekend. If he plays at anything close to his previous level at Arsenal – and Arsene believes he can or they wouldn’t have signed him – then he’ll be good. I appreciate the desire for a regista like Arteta and Ramsey (now), but in many games Arsenal have definitely missed a terrier in midfield. Flamini provides that in spades and already understands how Arsenal work. They may not be physically impressive, but every one of Arsenal’s current central midfielders can be a feisty ball retriever, which definitely takes certain teams by surprise. 5)      This ties back into point number three. Defensively, Arsenal were actually good last season, minus the Achilles heel of personal mistakes.  They were basically tied for second in shots against, and were second in the league in goals against. The 37 goals they gave up were 12 fewer than the year before, which is a massive reduction. However, defensive solidity came at a bit of a cost, as Arsenal produced the lowest amount of shots per game in at least the last four seasons and probably longer. Their shots on target percentage also dropped slightly, meaning overall goal expectation dropped. Signing Ozil should be enough to boost goal expectation back to where they were 3-4 years ago (a 10% boost). Even if that doesn't happen, his ability to create great chances with movement and passing should also boost the shots on target number. He matters. 6)      Even if the entire squad was healthy, Arsenal needed to sign another forward (even a slightly-less-than-world-class one was required), and another center back, preferably one that was young and talented. Obviously this is Arsenal and thus the entire squad is not healthy, and the inability to find/sign someone acceptable may cost Arsenal something significant. Flamini may prove to be a bit of unexpected genius in the DM role (he really was good when he left for Milan), but the club had money to buy a stud there and whiffed on that as well. Hopefully the lesson will be learned from this summer, and targets for the new financial firepower will be assessed well ahead of time and purchased early in the window. Arsenal improved a little this summer. Their problem is that Liverpool improved a lot since last January, and Spurs spunked the Bale money on all sorts of potential (Lamela and Eriksen are already among the best in Europe and they are only 21). The fight for top 4 spots has never been hotter than it will be this season, which is both exciting and a little worrying if you are a Gooner.

You never can be sure with deadline day deals but it appears increasingly certain that Mesut Özil has become an Arsenal player for 42m Euros. It's a happy ending to a fraught Summer. But Özil was worth the wait. Most of us are familiar with Özil's style: a graceful player, a wand of a left foot and an above average work-rate. But by far Özil's best skill and most dangerous trait is his truly elite passing ability. Almost all neutral fans will agree that Özil will be a fine addition to the Premier League. As for the Arsenal fans, all the collective pain and inertia that the summer window had wrought may suddenly fade from memory with with this signing. Unless I am very much mistaken Özil's signing will be the biggest import transfer in Premier League history at around £40m. And he may just be worth it.    

Career Numbers

Shots and Goals  

  Özil's goals per90 numbers are pretty inconsistent as are his shots on target per90 numbers. This isn't a player who will score a lot, for he just isn't a shooter.   Passes, Assists and key Passes per90  

  Some of these numbers may look confusing but I'll quickly run through them. here is a link to some of Europe's best players in 2012/13 and their per90 numbers (link) Assists per90 Truly elite. Off the charts elite. Ozil is going to create hell for opposition defenses. Passes per90 Good numbers. Key Passes per90 Truly elite Time on Pitch% The percentage of minutes a player actual plays against the total available. I think we have an understanding of the strengths of the player: Ozil is a creator, not a shooter. But his passing numbers - KP per90 and Assists per90 - are truly elite. Yes, there may be a slight Real Madrid boost in effect here, and some of Ozil's numbers may drop a little due to no longer playing in a team that scores 100 league goals a campaign, but this is a player of the highest quality. A game changer for Arsenal in terms of talent and a game changer for for Arsenal in terms of future recruitment of world class players.

Highlights