Stat proves Arsenal are Europe’s best at defending

Arsenal are the best team in Europe at limiting opponents to less than one expected goal, according to a report.

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Arsenal’s win over Chelsea on Tuesday was just the latest example of the Gunners’ resilience at the back.

Though the team conceded 14 shots in the League Cup semi-final second leg, OptaJoe reports that those 14 chances only came to a grand total of 0.68 expected goals for Chelsea. As it turned out, it wasn’t enough to get the Blues off the mark and on the scoresheet.

But that’s nothing too unusual for Arsenal this season. OptaJoe report that Arsenal have kept their opponents to less than one expected goal in 29 of their 38 matches this season.

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That’s a rate of 76%, the highest of any club across Europe’s top-five leagues. No one shuts opponents down quite as often as Arsenal do.

That fact is also evident in the number of clean sheets the team keep. Kepa Arrizabalaga kept his third of the campaign on Tuesday, whilst David Raya has racked up 17.

That means Arsenal’s goalkeepers and defensive unit have denied opponents a goal in more than half of the matches they’ve played (20 of 38).

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That does also mean that Arsenal have conceded a goal nine more times than they’ve allowed their opponent to reach one expected goal.

But that’s not unusual. Even if you only allowed 0.5 xG in every game, you’d still expect to concede a goal every other match. Sometimes people will beat the odds, sometimes they won’t, and it should average out over a large enough sample size.

The point is that Arsenal are better than anyone at giving themselves the best possible chance to avoid letting a goal in. Which in turn makes it a lot easier to pick up points and wins.