xGunners: Crystal Palace vs Arsenal stats preview

Arsenal travel to Crystal Palace, let’s take a look at what the stats say about them.

Team Ranking

My team ranking system puts them right in the middle of things, with the 11th best offense and the 10th best defense.

Where they shoot from

Crystal Palace take a total of 10.9 shots per match. With 4.2 of those coming from the danger zone shots area per match (16th) and that makes up 39% of their total shots. They take 2.1 shots per match from the wide box areas (11th, 19%) and 4.4 from outside the box (13th, 40%).

How they create shots

72% of their shots are assisted

74% of their shots come from open play

12% of their shots are assisted by a cross

18% of their shots come from a fast direct attack

2% of their shots are classified as counter attacks by Opta

2% of their shots follow corner kicks

2% of their shots are assisted by through balls

18% of their shots are from direct free kicks

Who creates their offense

Crystal Palace don’t have a dominate offensive player this season.

They have also really suffered in converting the shots they create into goals. They have a conversion rate of 5.2% with an xG per shot of 0.09, for an efficiency rating of 57% which is the third worst in the league.

They are putting a league average amount of their shots on target (35%) but converting those shots on target into goals at a rate of just 14.7% which is the second worst mark in the league and well below the league average of 29%. Even worse for them is that they don’t create many big chances, just 0.7 per match and they are converting those into goals 14% of the time, well below the league average mark of 36%.

Crystal Palace have the largest left sided bias in the league with 43% of their attacks coming down that side. This makes sense as Wilfred Zaha is the player that attracts the ball and he starts from the left.

Zaha combined with left back Patrick van Aanholt lead the team in offense value added and are numbers 2 and 3 in xG build up. Arsenal’s right sided defenders will need to be on the top of their game in this match to shut down Crystal Palace.

Where they give up shots from

Crystal Palace are allowing 13.6 shots per match (9th most) with 4.9 coming from the danger zone (12th most), 2.3 shots per match from the wide box areas (7th most) and 6 shots per match from outside the box (5th most). They block 28.7% of the shots they face (5th most).

This season they have faced a pretty heavy barrage of shots assisted by crosses at 13.9% (6th most) and 2.4 headed shots per match (9th most).

The overall conversion rate for the teams that they have faced is below what the expected goals would suggest 7.6% conversion vs xG per shot of 0.1 but a good portion of that can be explained with the shot placement of the shots they have allowed, 9.5 SP xG vs 9 goals allowed.

How they defend

On defense, they are an active team in racking up defensive counting statistics. They average 46 defensive actions per match (tackles, interceptions, dribbled past, fouls) which is the 4th highest mark in the league.

This busy defense doesn’t mean that they are a pressing team however as they are middle of the pack in passes allowed per defensive action at 8.9 (9th).

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This is my first attempt at pulling the stats that I have readily available for a stats preview. Let me know if there are any other areas that I missed or can expand on.