Arsenal, a team of noughts and crosses

Time after time Arsenal swung the ball into Tottenham’s box; time after time their rivals emerged unscathed. Forty-four delivered from wide, zero goals — for Arsenal and Arteta, it’s becoming a game of noughts and crosses.

This is not a freak incident or an anomaly. Arsenal put in 33 crosses in last week’s recent defeat by Wolves. Speaking after the game, Arteta attempted to frame that as a positive. “I think it’s the first time in the Premier League that we put 33 crosses,” he said. “I’m telling you that if we do that more consistently we are going to score more goals. If we put the bodies we had in certain moments in the box, it’s maths, pure maths and it will happen.”

After the derby defeat, Arteta’s maths does not appear to add up. Arsenal have now accumulated the third most crosses in the Premier League with 225. When it comes to crossing accuracy, they rank 18th, finding their man with just under 17 per cent of their deliveries. This does not appear indicative of an effective strategy, but Arteta seems unrepentant. “In terms of the performance they did everything that I asked them to do,” he told his post-match press conference. “We played the way I believe we had to play this game.

“A cross doesn’t just mean an aerial cross. We penetrated the penalty box on numerous occasions. If we generate that every week we will win football matches. At the moment it looks like we need to do a lot to win football matches.”

He is right on the definition front. Opta defines a cross as “any intentional played ball from a wide position intending to reach a team-mate in a specific area in front of the goal”. The Athletic understands that Arteta’s intention is not to make crossing the focus of Arsenal’s attacks — more that he regards crossing as an indicator of a good attack.

Nevertheless, the numbers do not make pretty reading for Arsenal’s manager. Arsenal’s tally of 44 crosses in a single game nudges them ahead of Fulham (vs. Aston Villa) and Sheffield United (vs. Wolves), who had previously both managed 43. It is not the sort of exalted company Arteta’s Arsenal are aspiring to keep. On all three occasions, the teams firing endless crosses into the box lost without scoring a goal.

That’s not altogether surprising. Crossing is often a sign of a team chasing a game. In his talk at the 2017 OptaPro analytics forum, data scientist Garry Gelade pointed out that “crossing decreases after a team scores a goal, and increases after a team concedes a goal”.

The Czech economist Professor Jan Vecer put together a notorious study in 2014 which indicated that teams who cross less score more goals. Gelade’s incorporation of game state, however, suggested that teams don’t score more goals because they cross less — they cross less because they score more.

The north London derby could not have illustrated that theory more perfectly: a team in the lead sat deep, and Arsenal were allowed to take the initiative. While Spurs locked off the central areas, Arsenal were allowed to progress on the flanks. Crosses steadily became an inevitability — 20 open play crosses in the second half as opposed to 12 in the first. However, it is worth pointing out that this isn’t something Arsenal were forced to do by one specific opponent — their inability to play through the centre is making it a modus operandi.

Gelade studied the effectiveness of almost 34,000 crosses over three Premier League seasons. Of those, 666 created a goal within the next six seconds. Crucially, he found that the success of “crosses” varied wildly depending on whether they were chipped or driven, and according to the position from where they were executed.

Crosses delivered in the final 18 yards of the field, for example, were up to three times more successful than those delivered from deeper. Driven crosses also tended to be more effective than floated crosses. The Athletic has examined every cross Arsenal made against Tottenham. In open play, just 25 per cent of their crosses were drilled, with many floating towards the back post. Some did not make it that far — 34 per cent of their crosses from open play failed to beat the first man.

Arsenal are not the first team to make the mistake of leaning too heavily into crosses. In 2011-12, Liverpool produced 787 crosses in the space of a single season, leading to just six assisted goals — and that was despite having added specialists like Stewart Downing and Andy Carroll. The irony of Arsenal seemingly adopting this policy having long since sold Olivier Giroud, a conventional target man who feeds on crosses and is now flourishing at Chelsea, is lost on no one.

According to Gelade, that Liverpool side encountered two problems: first of all, it made their attack predictable for opponents. Secondly, their emphasis on crossing meant that crosses were typically delivered too early. They swung them in from deep positions, rather than progressing into the final 18 yards before delivering from wide.

Arsenal fell into this trap against Tottenham. Thirty-one per cent of their open play crosses were looped in from further than 18 yards out. This habit increased in frequency as the game wore on, with Kieran Tierney particularly guilty of looking for early deliveries. No player crossed the ball more frequently in open play than Tierney (10). Only eight players in the Premier League have lost possession more times than the former Celtic man (176). In defence of the Scotsman, you may ask what options he had ahead of him.

Set pieces were a particular disappointment. Willian took eight corners, and only in the one instance where he went short to Dani Ceballos did he find an Arsenal man.

If Arsenal’s tendency to cross while chasing a goal in the final stages of the game is perhaps understandable, their decision to use this approach in the first half is certainly due examination. Both Tottenham goals came from disappointing deliveries from Hector Bellerin. In the 13th minute, he played a poor cross from an awkward position, deep and narrow. It was cleared by the first central defender in the penalty box, Eric Dier. Fifteen seconds later, Tottenham had the lead.

Shortly before half-time, he played a side-footed cross behind Aubameyang and the ball was intercepted. Fourteen seconds later, Kane had made it 2-0. The blame can not be entirely on the crosser, even if a poor delivery is effectively a concession of possession. Attacking involves a degree of risk. The most disappointing thing for Arteta will be how poorly his team coped with the resulting counter-attacks.

There were, however, some “nearly” moments for Arsenal from wide areas. Bellerin did find Lacazette for a header at the near post which Hugo Lloris palmed away — one of Arsenal’s two attempts on target. Another second-half cross just evaded the Frenchman, who might have reached it had he continued his run. Another looping cross from Tierney found Aubameyang for a header from which he should have done better. Arsenal appear to be working on ensuring more players arrive in the box, which might enable them to profit from the chaos crosses can create.

The conclusion seems to be that crosses are not in themselves bad, but that it’s an issue if they’re your primary route to goal. There’s also the question of suitability. The two clubs either side of Arsenal in the Premier League crossing rankings are West Ham United and Sheffield United — teams with notable aerial threats like Tomas Soucek and Oli McBurnie. Lacazette and Aubameyang have been in the Premier League since the 2017-18 season, and between them have scored just seven headed goals. Bizarrely, Arsenal are actually crossing more since moving Aubameyang into the centre-forward role. According to Opta, they averaged 16 crosses a game when he was playing wide. That’s now shot up to 39.5. Admittedly, this is from a small sample.

The reason Arsenal are resorting to crosses is that their build-up play is too slow, meaning they inevitably come up against massed ranks in defence. There is an Opta stat for “fast breaks” — “an attempt created after the defensive team quickly turn defence into attack winning the ball in their own half”; essentially a counter-attack. Tottenham have made 10 such breaks this season; Arsenal just one.

Rather than a feature of a functional attack, Arsenal’s crossing habit looks like a symptom of a dysfunctional one. It remains to be seen whether Arteta continues to pursue this path. Gelade’s study of Premier League data found that it takes an average of 45 crosses to score a goal. Perhaps Arsenal’s manager thinks they just need that extra one.

(Photo: GLYN KIRK/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)