Coach Fabian Hurzeler has caused controversy when accusing Arsenal of "setting their own rules" and using time-wasting tactics in their victory over Brighton at Amex Stadium. So are these criticisms really justified?
Bukayo Saka's early goal decided the tense match on the southern coast of England, where home fans and Hurzeler were extremely upset with situations that they thought Arsenal deliberately slowed down the pace of the match.
After Brighton could not take advantage of ball possession to score, Hurzeler criticized Arsenal's playing style at the press conference. He said that "only one team is really trying to play football" and called on the Premier League to issue stricter regulations on time-wasting.
Not only Hurzeler felt the match was not attractive. However, statistics show that the picture is somewhat different.
Arsenal's average ball possession rate in the Premier League this season is 55.6%, higher than the league average and only slightly lower than Brighton's 56.1%. This shows that Arsenal is not a team that often yields the game.
How much time does Arsenal really waste?
Before the match, Hurzeler mentioned that The Gunners often take more than a minute to prepare for corner kicks when leading.
According to Opta data, Arsenal is actually the team with the longest corner kick preparation time in the Premier League this season, averaging 44.5 seconds. However, in the match at Amex, if including corner kicks, free kicks and throw-ins, the average time for Arsenal to bring the ball back to play is 31.4 seconds.
This number is only slightly higher than the league average of 30.2 seconds. Opta statistics also show that in 285 Premier League matches this season, there have been 195 cases where teams spent more time starting the second half again.
Even, there are 5 teams in the Premier League that often spend more time than Arsenal in situations to bring the ball back into play, including Leeds United, Newcastle United, Crystal Palace, Brentford and Sunderland.
Meanwhile, Brighton is one of the teams to restart the match fastest in the league, with an average of 26.5 seconds.
The match situation is an important factor
The match context plays a very large role in this issue. The leading team often tends to slow down to protect the advantage.
Arsenal took the lead right from the 9th minute at Amex. This season, they are the team leading in 45.4% of the total playing time in the Premier League - only behind Manchester City. Meanwhile, Brighton only leads in 23.8% of the time.
Although the average delay time of the "Gunners" is not too high, the number of interruptions is quite large. This makes the match trivial and clearly gives an advantage to the team trying to protect the score.
According to Opta, Arsenal has had a total of 59 match interruptions this season - the eighth highest number in the Premier League. However, their total delay time is only 22nd with 30 minutes and 51 seconds.
These numbers show that Arsenal may have taken advantage of tactics to slow down the pace of the match, but it is difficult to say that they exceeded the normal level in the Premier League.
