For Arsenal to let six goals in, even against the team that many think are favourites for the Premier League title, is disappointing and clearly no good enough. But with Manchester City laying waste to all comers at the Eyihad, most of us were expecting a tough game and probably a defeat.
But in the cold light of day. And those stats do not include a clear penalty being denied to Arsenal, or that two goals were wrongly disallowed for offside. Of course, stats are not everything, and City did cause us big trouble at the start of the match, as well as taking advantage when Arsenal were tiring and chasing the game, but some key stats do jump out.
Possession was almost even, as was the corner count, tackles made, tackles won, crosses made and completed, passes made and completed and interceptions. And you can see that things went well for City because they only had seven attempts on target and scored six goals. Arsenal had six on target, although I assume that the two `offside` goals don’t count, so really it should have been eight, which is more than City.
Arsenal’s shooting accuracy was better, at 55 percent compared to 39 percent, again not including Bendtner and Giroud’s `goals`. And just another little stat to cheer you up about the officials, who did their best, for City anyway. Arsenal had twice as many fouls committed on us, but the ref decided this was a game that he would just let flow, thanks mate.
In conclusion, although Arsenal should have done better, it was a tough game coming right on the heels of another really tough game in Italy with not enough time to recover. So the good looking stats suggests that it was only by fine margins that Arsenal lost. And that makes the heavy criticism of Wenger and the Gunners look a bit unfair.
So have the media, as usual, written Arsenal off too soon?
