Unfortunately for Newcastle, Arsenal enjoyed much success down the opposite flank with Walcott and Sagna linking up well. Much of Arsenal’s attacking came down the right, as shown below. Both crosses for their two goals and many of their other chances came from this side. With both Gutierrez and Santon struggling to cope with the Arsenal attack from the right, it meant that Coloccini often had to come out from his central position to help out, as shown below. This meant that Van Persie was often left alone with Williamson and this proved fruitful for the Dutchman, as he took advantage of this to score his goal a minute after Ben Arfa’s opening goal.
Davide Santon, who only survived for the first half, had a bit of a torrid time and struggled against Walcott. With his time mainly spent on defending Walcott, he had the fewest touches of the ball (13) and so made only 4 passes (although he was accurate with all 4). He lost all three ground duels and his aerial duel as well. As a result, James Perch was brought on at half time as his replacement and faired quite well in the second half.
The much maligned Perch did well to limit Arsenal’s chances down the right. He won 86% of his ground duels (6 out of 7), won his solitary aerial duel and won all five tackles.
Newcastle fail to build on decent start, as Arsenal go on to dominate
Despite playing some tidy football in the first ten minutes that encompassed some good passing and resulted in Ben Arfa’s opening goal – Arsenal then equalised within a minute afterwards and Newcastle never really regained their composure after the Van Persie’s goal.
On the other hand, Arsenal went on to dominate in the passing stakes, as their confidence grew and Newcastle began to sit deeper, especially in the second half. As you can see from the chart below, Arsenal’s passing throughout the team is far superior to Newcastle’s – even from the back, where Szcesny completed more passes than Krul, as he often played the ball short to his defenders – whereas Krul, more often than not in all games, opts to go long with the ball.
More on Page 3: Full passing stats from the game from the 1st XI…
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