Can Arsenal still make the top four?

The next 13 Premier League games are massive for Arsenal Football Club. Despite finishing in the top four every season since 1997, they are currently four points adrift of Tottenham in fourth position. Arsenal would suffer consequences on and off the pitch should they fail to qualify for the Champions League.

The 2012/2013 season has been, so far, one of Arsenal’s worst seasons under the Wenger era, as the table below shows.

After 25 games:

Season	Wins	Draws	Losses	Points	Position	Final League Position
2012/2013	11	8	6	41	6th	?
2011/2012	13	4	8	43	4th	3rd
2010/2011	15	5	5	50	2nd	4th
2009/2010	15	4	6	49	3rd	3rd
2008/2009	12	8	5	44	5th	4th

Fourth position after 38 games:

Season	Team	Points
2011/2012	Tottenham	69
2010/2011	Arsenal	68
2009/2010	Tottenham	70
2008/2009	Arsenal	72

Looking at the table above, you could assume that at least 68 points are required for a 4^th place Premier League finish. Therefore, Arsenal need to collect 27 points from an available 39. This would be difficult; Arsenal have already dropped 12 points in 2013. Comparatively, Manchester United have dropped 13 points during the whole season.

Arsenal would need a repeat, or even an improvement on their seven game winning streak recorded this time last season.

Remaining games:

Fixture	Date
Sunderland (A)	9th February
Aston Villa (H)	23rd February
Tottenham (A)	3rd March
Everton (H)	9th March
Swansea (A)	16th March
Reading (H)	30th March
West Brom (A)	6th April
Norwich (H)	13th April
Fulham (A)	20th April
Man Utd (H)	27th April
QPR (A)	4th May
Wigan (H)	12th May
Newcastle (A)	19th May

March could be the decisive month for Wenger’s team. With the four point gap, the game at White Hart Lane on March 3^rd will have extra significance. Everton visit The Emirates on the 9^th and a difficult away trip to Swansea follows on the 16^th. These three games are easily losable; this would extinguish Arsenal’s top four hopes.

Although the slightly easier games of Reading, West Brom, Norwich and Fulham follow, the gap could be too large by then. But it is worth remembering that Tottenham threw away a ten point lead over Arsenal last season.

The verdict? If Arsenal drop six points or more during March, then it could be all over. They would then have to rely on winning the Champions League in May in order to qualify for the 2013/2014 tournament. Various large bookmakers have written Arsenal off as 40-1 outsiders.

By Kelvin Jones

Follow me on Twitter! @KelvinJonesss

Statistics from:

www.oddschecker.com

www.premierleague.com

Swansea & Barcelona: How Similar Are They?

The comparison between Barcelona and the club they try to emulate, Swansea, has been done and done to death. Despite that, when I looked at the end of season figures I was startled to find out just how well Swansea performed. In many key areas they matched the big spending EPL clubs punch for punch. Swansea City's squad is currently valued at £60.5 million, which is a whole £10 million below the value of £70.5 million placed upon the squad of the EPL's worst club last term, Wolves. Only one EPL club has a squad which comes in at a price lower than Swansea's, and that is Norwich (who are only valued at a measly £47 million). But they are a success story to be told in another post.

The two trademark features of Barcelona's style of play, to the relatively untrained eye anyway, are insane levels of possession and the much revered short passing game.

Passing

In the 11/12 Liga BBVA season Barcelona completed 23,848 passes of 26,942 attempted passes, to put into perspective Real Madrid only attempted 20,130 passes. So, rather predictably Barcelona achieved the highest past success in their league with 88.5%, 3.5% superior to the next most accurate passers Real Madrid. Now to show you Swansea's passing statistics. With 20,794 passes attempted last season Swansea attempted the second highest number of passes in the league, only 70 passes below the highest passing EPL team, Manchester City. Swansea completed 17,813 of their passes and therefore attained a passing success of 85.7%. Only Manchester City bettered this, and that was only by 0.2%.

Possession

Barcelona managed a whopping 69.3% average possession last season, 10.5% greater than Real Madrid, the obvious second in the list. 33% of Barca's possession was within the opposition half (the highest in their league), 47% was in the middle third of the pitch (also the highest in their league) and only 19% of Barcelona possession was within the restraints of their own defensive third (which is the lowest in their league). Swansea had the third highest average possession in the EPL with 57.6%, only 2% lower than Arsenal who sit atop of the possession chart with 59.6%. Barcelona enjoyed the highest level of their possession within the opposition third when compared to the rest of their league. In comparison to this Swansea had 31% of their possession between their own half, the second highest in the EPL. 46% of Swansea's play was in the middle of the pitch, the highest managed in the league. Hence finally, and pivotally to the point I will conclude on, only 22% of Swansea's possession was in the opposition half. This was the lowest in the entire league.

Conclusion

From the passing statistics it can be concluded, as far as I'm concerned anyway, that Swansea have definitely managed to adapt their passing game to the Premier League, as shown by their incredibly high passing accuracy (85.7%) and number of passes (especially only ever being topped by "rich clubs" with CL experience). Whilst Barcelona topped Swansea by 2.7%, Barcelona have a squad valued at £520 million. So for between an eighth and ninth of price of the Barcelona squad Swansea have managed to achieve percentage figures of a similar ilk to Barcelona's. Swansea haven't yet imitated the "pass the opposition to death" style made famous by Barcelona, shown by the fact that Swansea's number of passes attempted does not stand head and shoulders above the rest of the league in the same way that Barcelona's does. None the less Swansea have certainly made admirable strides in the right direction by placing themselves amongst the best teams of the "passes attempted" list. The 59.7% possession achieved by Swansea shows that, just as the passing statistics do, that Swansea are achieving the closest style attainable within their budget. Budget being the key factor in Swansea spending the lowest proportion of their possession within the opposition half. This demonstrates a key lack of penetration in the Swansea team. It is worth noting that teams such as Norwich, West Brom and Bolton are all within the top ten of proportion of their possession in the opposition half, so it is not a case of Swansea being a "lesser club" and thus not being able to achieve the level of penetration exhibited by Barcelona. It can be stated, with great certainty on my part, that no club team will ever be able to take a group of players as cheaply assembled as the Swansea squad and play as similarly to Barcelona. Brendan Rogers has shown great faith in his players, and I can only see them improving. Testament to his commitment to playing football "the right way" is the fact that Brendan Rogers is accompanying the Spain national team to Euro 2012 in order to observe.

By Alex Pointon

All statistics in this post are courtesy of either www.whoscored.com or www.transfermarkt.co.uk