After seeing out a comfortable 3-0 win against Swansea City last weekend, we looked at a pretty impressive and valuable stat.
When taking the lead over the last year or so, Arsenal’s record has been impeccable. However, the record when going 1-0 down in a game is very poor.
Since the start of the 2014/15 season, Arsenal have conceded the first goal of the game on 22 occasions and gone on to win just three times, including the first day of 2014/15 against Crystal Palace. We have come back to draw six times, but ultimately lost 13 of the last 22 games we’ve conceded first in.
The other wins came against Anderlecht in the Champions League last season (which funnily enough saw a late Kieran Gibbs goal) and Leicester City in the Premier League this season, but the trend is concerning. Is there a tactical deficiency preventing Arsenal from breaking down more defensive sides, or is something else wrong?
Clearly scoring the first goal is a huge part of our game, and the fact we’ve managed to do it so often this season is part of the reason we’ve started so strongly (information below doesn’t include Tottenham game).
Premier League. pic.twitter.com/qrjetjxDCw
— miasanrot (@miasanrot_com) November 2, 2015
How can Arsenal put things right when behind? We won’t take the lead in every game from now until the end of the season, and few teams will leave themselves as open as Leicester City did after taking the lead a few weeks ago.
Some sort of remedy needs to be found, or we could end up in trouble.