Arsenal’s home form this season has been as impressive as their away form has been terrible, so why is that?

Overview

In 2017/18, Arsenal’s home form has been almost perfect.

In 21 matches, they’ve won 16, drawn three and lost just two. Even the first deafeat, 3-1 to Manchester United, was fairly unlucky. David De Gea had the game of his life, equalling Premier League records for saves in a match.

The second was a meaningless result against Östersunds FK, which didn’t stop the team progressing to the next round.

The three draws weren’t exactly poor performances either.

The 2-2 against Chelsea hinged on a very soft penalty awarded to Eden Hazard, and the equaliser in the 3-3 against Liverpool should never have made it past Petr Čech.

The 0-0 against Red Star Belgrade was the worst of the lot, but it was a match Arsenal didn’t need to win.

Meanwhile, their away form has been the opposite story.

In 20 away matches, Arsenal have won six, drawn five and lost nine.

Of those matches, it’s very hard to point to any good performances. There were a couple of impressive starts in Europa League games, such as BATE Borisov and Östersunds FK, but arguably that was down to the quality of opposition more than anything else.

In the Premier League, you can only really argue that the win at Everton was an impressive performance, and that one still required the team to come from behind after conceding a poor goal.

So what are the reasons for Arsenal’s contrasting fortunes home and away?

Arsenal’s inconsistent attacking lineup doesn’t make enough chances

Perhaps a large contributing factor to Lacazette’s individual struggles is the team’s inability to consistently create for him in away matches. That, in turn, is thanks to the lineups Arsenal have put out in those games.

At the start of the season, Mesut Özil, Alexandre Lacazette and Alexis Sanchez looked like they could form a formidable front three.

For one reason or another, they didn’t start an away match together until that aforementioned win over Everton.

After that, another month and a half went by before Wenger picked them all again. In fact, the trio only started three away matches together in total until Sanchez left for Manchester United.

At home, that wasn’t nearly as much of a problem.

Other than the games against Leicester City and Brighton, all three players appeared in every league match at the Emirates from the start of the season until the match against Crystal Palace on the 20th January.

That consistency in attack led to more chances being created, more goals, and better results.

Hopefully now Sanchez is gone and Özil’s injury problems have cleared up, he should be able to form a new trio with Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.

If they play together home and away, that should make a difference.

The psychological impact of the two runs

After the first few games, where results were largely influenced by the previous and next factor, the media immediately started to pick up on the pattern. Every matchday the talk was about how few goals Arsenal had scored away from home, or the limited number of wins.

That sort of thing gets in your head.

Similarly, the fact that the team know how strong they are at home has a similar effect. That extra bit of confidence helps with putting chances away, staying focused and switched on at the back, and showing a bit of fight when necessary.

Arsenal keep falling apart in the same way defensively, conceding late goals after getting into good positions. Again, the regularity of that occurrence is going to get in the players’ heads, and it’s also going to give their opponents the belief to keep going.

Now that Arsenal have a new striker to help ease the pressure on Lacazette, and a new attacking setup, the team needs to break out of those patterns and find some defensive solidity as well.

Hopefully they can get a new run going away from home, and for now the best way to do that is by taking things game by game, starting with Brighton on March 3rd.

Lacazette is much more comfortable at the Emirates

Alexandre Lacazette is still going through a settling in period with Arsenal, but it’s clear he’s finding it a lot easier to play at home so far.

His last goal away from home came back in early November, against Manchester City.

He also scored a couple of weeks earlier in that Everton win, but that’s it for his away goals this season.

The goal against Manchester United, the assists against Liverpool and Tottenham, the deflected pass for Granit Xhaka’s winner against Chelsea, all of that happened in home matches.

For whatever reason, he finds it much easier to play at the Emirates.