Arsenal kept another cleansheet this weekend in the Premier League but they also failed to score again, leaving them with just five goals from seven games – and three of those came against Tottenham!
As Arsenal struggled to create, once again, I couldn’t help but wonder just how bad Spurs actually are that Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal could score three against them.
Three is more than the number of shots Arsenal got on target against Brighton (2).
Arsenal have taken a total of 94 shots this season, which doesn’t sound like a bad number until you realise Brighton managed 21 against us on Saturday alone.
Thankfully, their finishing was abysmal and they, like Arsenal, only managed to get two on target.
Brighton had only managed 64 shots in six games before they played Arsenal.
The game at the Amex to kick off the Gunners’ October was the fourth Arsenal have failed to score in so far in their league campaign and their failure to find the back of the net helped bring up yet another unwanted record – their worst scoring start to a season since 1986/87, 35 years ago.
It won’t surprise you to learn that Thomas Partey, he of some spectacularly bad efforts from range, has the worst shooting accuracy in the Arsenal squad at just 11.1%.
Emile Smith Rowe’s shots-on-target percentage of 66.7% is the best in the squad by a distance. Six of his nine have hit the target, but with only one finding the back of the net he has a goal-per-shot ratio of 0.11.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s is 0.14 while Bukayo Saka’s is 0.08.
Martin Odegaard has been the most clinical, taking just two shots, one of which was a goal, giving him a goal-per-shot ratio of 0.5.
Nobody else has scored and Alexandre Lacazette hasn’t manged a single shot in his 49 Premier League minutes but has two goals in two League Cup games.
Overall, Arsenal have got 26.6% of their shots on target in the league which isn’t actually a bad number.
Liverpool, sitting on top of the league, have only managed to get 30% of theirs on target, but they’ve also had 140 shots, and, as a result of better numbers and accuracy, have scored three times as many goals.