Why last season was a success and Wenger can lead us to the title again

We were playing with a squad depleted by many long term injuries — we suffered the 5th most injuries (231 days lost) in the League — which prevented the rotation and resting of players (contrast with Leicester only 76 days lost). We lost key players like Wilshere, Cazorla, Walcott, Ramsey, Oxlade Chamberlain, Alexis, Coquelin and Welbeck for long periods which meant it was difficult to field our best XI when we most needed to and establish some consistency in our line up and strategy - contrast again with Leicester who managed to play their best XI with much greater regularity.

Petr Cech cited long term injuries to key players over the crucial run-in period as the main reason that we failed to win the league

“I thought we did so well most of the time to be able to cope with that, but unfortunately in the end we lacked a bit of energy in February and March when we dropped points. This is where the difference was made.”

The case for a winter break to allow the players a period of rest is strong but this issue of long term injuries is a problem that Arsenal has yet to resolve despite having deployed many additional resources to the subject in recent years.

Our opponents adopted high intensity and sophisticated 10 man, defensive strategies particularly at the Emirates and sought to exploit our desire to play and entertain the supporters with positive, attacking football and to stoke up frustration in front of a fickle and high expecting Arsenal crowd. Every team does that at the Emirates now – even Barcelona. We struggle to deal with it.
The cycle went: Home game expectation > play attacking football > opponents park the bus > tension mounts > crowd unrest grows > away team breaks late to score > crowd gets angry > pressure builds > home game expectation increases. Unfortunately, this pattern of play at home had a very damaging impact on our chase for trophies.

From February onwards in addition to the pressures we playing every match with the burden of being expected to win the title (and the FA Cup) and being labelled chokers if we slipped up. The effects of this pressure were most noticeably severe on the form and confidence of our 3 main strikers - Giroud, Walcott and Alexis - who suffered a sort of collective ED in front of goal.

The old maxim that the impact of referees decisions even themselves out over the season is not valid and did not help our cause in the title race. A forensic assessment of the filmed recordings by father and son team (Hypothetical Premier League) of every match played in the Premiership and the critical decisions made by referees shows that Arsenal would have finished top of the League (4 points more than they got) and Leicester should have been 2nd (9 points less than they got) if the use of video evidence had been used to review important decisions.

Hypothetical Premier League

Leicester were awarded by far the most penalties in the League – 13, which is approximately 3 times the league average of 4.3 - whilst the Arsenal have been awarded only 2 penalties all season – the second least number in the league and are the only team in the league not to have been awarded a penalty at home! Given that we seem to spend most of our games in and around the opposition penalty area this seems a curious stat. 

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