Did Man U 1-0 Arsenal turn the season?

At the behest of Zach from A Beautiful Numbers Game I have gone back over the data from yesterday’s post and created a rolling or moving average of every game’s results in terms of points per game indexed by match day.

What stood out immediately compared to the graph from yesterday is that you see more of what Wenger talks about when he says that the most consistent team should win the Premier League. Thus, you see that in terms of the rolling average over the entire 38 game series Man U were fairly consistently better than Arsenal and thus deserved the title.

That said, as sports fans we tend to see one or two games as turning points and in the first 16 matches Arsenal and Man U were clearly slugging it out for supremacy but by match day 17 they overtook Arsenal and never looked back. The closest Arsenal would get to United after match day 17 was match day 31 when Arsenal closed the average gap to 0.06. Match day 31 was Blackpool 1-3 Arsenal and the subsequent 2 draws and a loss killed any momentum before heading into the game at home against United that Arsenal won 1-0.  By the time Arsenal had beaten Man U, we had already dropped below the 2 PPG threshold and from there never recovered.

For those of you who were wondering, match day 17 was Manchester United 1-0 Arsenal. Howard Webb was the referee, Arsenal had 17 fouls called against them (United 9), 4 yellow cards (United 0), and in case you’re curious, here’s the chart of the free kicks that each team was awarded.

by Guardian Chalkboards

I’m not saying that there was a bias by Webb in that game, a game which turned the season for Arsenal. Maybe he’s just blind and couldn’t see this kung-fu kick:

Oh hey, did you know that Rio Ferdinand was only called for three fouls all season? That one above wasn’t one of them!

Maybe Webb was just out of position, looking at something else, uhhh… couldn’t see the extended leg? I mean, if you watch the GIF over and over, he’s there in the lower right, looking at the action, maybe he was caught by the glare off Rio Ferdinand’s jersey, or something.

Still, that was just one game and as much as I’d like to just blame Webb for being a dirty, cheating, Manchester United loving cocksandwich I can’t because I don’t have any evidence that proves he’s a dirty, cheating, Manchester United loving cocksandwich in that game and it would be irresponsible of me to level such an accusation. Now, that said, Zach’s articles show that statistically he’s more likely to call games against Arsenal and maybe it’s not just the one game but an average possible bias overall?

The reality is that while we sports fans like to point to one or two games that change the season, the whole season’s average is what matters for Premier League glory. And as I think most of us would agree, and the chart shows, Arsenal simply weren’t good enough, even if Webb had a terrible game.

Another way of thinking about it is looking at Manchester City’s season. They had a terrible time in the mini-League, finishing dead last against the top four opposition. Arsenal, meanwhile, topped the mini-League but it was City who leapfrogged Arsenal for third place because they were most consistent at picking up points against all competition.

And as much as I’d like to point at just one game, there were a number of matches that Arsenal dropped points from. That consistency that Manciti found is clearly something that Arsenal need to learn.

EDIT:

For those who want to see a 5 match and 10 match rolling average, here are those charts as well.

Yes, there was a point this season that Man U won 4 games in a row.

The 10 match average shows even clearer how steep the decline was at the end of the season.

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