Good morning, TSFers! Cannon Fodder is making a triumphant return – 2 days in a row! We can build on this! Hopefully I have the ideas and stick-to-it-iveness necessary to keep it going. Let’s bring back the comments and get our community buzzing again now that the season is underway.
Leeds United 1 – Everton 0: the Toffees were poor, which makes me a bit nervous about picking them as a darkhorse European places contender. But let’s not overreact to one match. Leeds were energetic and controlled the play.
The match-deciding handball call on James Tarkowski was a dreadful one. He was penalized for having arms.
As to the title of today’s CF, I wanted to try something. After every match, any number of people share interesting, relevant (and irrelevant) statistics from the game. Here are a few that stuck out to me as jumping off points for discussion:
- Arsenal played the fastest and most direct they’ve played in the past three years. Per James Benge, the Gunners advanced towards goal at 2.-2 meters per second, 55% quicker than their average pace over the last three seasons and 16% faster than the fastest game in that stretch. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Arsenal’s pass completion rate was 72% compared to the about 84% they averaged last season.
- Martin Ødegaard covered the most distance of any Arsenal player. Martin Zubimendi covered the least. This season, FotMob has all sorts of running data from the Premier League available.
- Bukayo Saka has just one goal and zero assists in his last fourteen Premier League appearances for Arsenal
Thoughts on any / all of that? Have you seen any interesting stats post-United?
