Behind The Numbers: 125 years of Arsenal

As Arsenal prepare to celebrate their 125th anniversary, our statistician Josh James takes a look at some of the overall stats from the Club's history.

Arsenal have used 803 players and played 5,174 matches in their 125-year history.

Of those 803 players, 83 (10.3 per cent) played just once, with more than half (409) falling into the two to 49 appearance bracket. At the other end of the scale, 198 players (24.7 per cent) have so far made it into triple figures, while an elite band of just 20 players went on to play 400 games or more.

Theo Walcott looks set to become the 100th Arsenal player to reach a double century of appearances – he is just six away from the milestone. Leading the way overall is David O'Leary, who played 722 times between 1975 and 1993.

Collectively the top nine appearance makers had 5,289 games under their belts - that's enough to have played every single match in the Club's history between them. Indeed O'Leary himself featured in 13.9 per cent of the Club's total games.

Behind the Numbers

More than half of Arsenal's all-time players (471) found the net at least once, with 205 (25.5 per cent) of the 803 reaching double figures or more in the scoring charts. During the 125 years, Arsenal have scored a total of 8,745 goals, meaning each player netted an average of approximately 10.9 goals in his Gunners career (with a margin of error for own goals).

Bumping up that average considerably are the 17 members of the 100 Club. Just 2.1 per cent of all Arsenal players have reached triple figures, yet between them they account for more than a quarter (26.2 per cent) of all of Arsenal's goals.

Thierry Henry, with 226, is top of the pile, while Robin van Persie (113) is the only current player with more than 50 to his name.

Behind the Numbers

Of the Club's 803 players, 172 (21.4 per cent) of them played under Arsène Wenger. Twenty-five of those (14.5 per cent) made just the one appearance for the boss, though this includes 'active' players such as Chuks Aneke, Daniel Boateng and Nico Yennaris, who may yet add to their tally.

At the other extreme, Patrick Vieira was the only player to break the 400 barrier of games under Arsène.

Our current manager has taken charge of 872 games (16.9 per cent of the Club's total), yet he has masterminded 20.8 per cent of all victories. Also, the team have scored 1,609 goals in that time (18.4 per cent of total).

More than half of his charges (51.2 per cent) have at least one goal to their name with 38 players reaching double figures. Robin van Persie, Dennis Bergkamp and Thierry Henry all netted more than 100 under Arsène Wenger, and between them scored 28.5 per cent of the total under the boss.

Just looking at the current first-team squad (not including those out on loan), each Arsenal player, on average, has played exactly 75 games and scored 9.7 goals each for the Gunners.

Behind the Numbers

Behind the Numbers

Arsenal's game against Everton will be the Club's 5,175th all-time match - they are looking for their 2,428th win.

The vast majority (82.6 per cent) of those matches have been in League football, 8.5 per cent were in the FA Cup (including qualifiers) with European football (which started for Arsenal in 1963) the next most popular competition (4.5 per cent).

The overall win percentage for Arsenal's history is 46.9, broken down as 45.4 per cent for league football, 54 per cent in the FA Cup, 50.6 per cent in Europe and 57.9 per cent in the League Cup.

There have been 15,072 goals scored in the 5,174 games, at an average of 2.91 goals per game. The overall goal difference is +2,418.

To put these numbers into a more modern context, Arsenal's overall goal difference prior to Arsène Wenger's arrival in 1996 was +1,635, while the win average has risen more than two whole percentage points (from 44.7 per cent) over that same timescale.

The first game the Club ever played was on December 11, 1886 – a 6-0 win over Eastern Wanderers in a friendly on Plumstead Common. That result, however, isn't included in these figures below, as it is not counted as an official senior first-team match. The first such match was actually played on October 5, 1889 - an FA Cup First Qualifying Round match at home to Lyndhurst which Arsenal (or Royal Arsenal as they were then known) won 11-0.

Because of interruptions due to the First and Second World Wars, this is the 113th season in which Arsenal have played official first-team football.

A complete list of all 803 Arsenal players will appear in this weekend's souvenir programme.

Josh James also provides the stats for the Arsenal Analysis pages of the matchday programme. To subscribe, or buy online, click here.