Home runs

This week our statistician looks at Arsenal's home record this season.

Sunday's win over West Bromwich Albion brought an end to Arsenal's eighth season at Emirates Stadium, with a final record of P29 W20 D5 L4 F55 A19.

It's only the 12th time in history that Arsenal have won at least 20 home matches in a single campaign (out of 110 seasons), and four of the previous 11 occasions were also at Emirates Stadium.

After losing their first game of the season to Aston Villa, the Gunners remained unbeaten at home in the Premier League - a sequence of 18 games - which is the second-longest undefeated league run since the club left Highbury in 2006.

Overall Arsenal took 44 points from the 19 league matches, an average of 2.3 per game, slightly above the all-time for the stadium of 2.2 points per game.
It's also more home points than they managed in the 1988/89 (36) and 2001/02 (40) championship-winning campaigns.

Arsenal won five more home games than last term, and conceded the fewest goals at home since 2007/08. In the league Arsenal conceded just 11 in the 19 games, the best defensive performance since 1998/99.

However the 55 goals scored in all competitions represents the joint-fewest managed at home in the Emirates era.

For the fourth season in succession Arsenal played in four different competitions at home, and won four FA Cup matches at home for the first time since 2008/09.

The overall win percentage at Emirates was 69 per cent, compared to 58 per cent for away games this term.

Arsenal had the fourth best home record in the Premier League this season, and - so far - the fourth best away record too.

The overall record at Emirates is now P226 W154 D47 L25, which is a very similar record to the last eight seasons at Highbury (P226 W162 D42 L22).

Arsenal have scored 483 goals in their eight seasons at Emirates, at a rate of 2.14 per game, which is marginally lower than the last eight seasons at Highbury (2.18 goals per game).

However, the defensive record has improved by more than the offensive record has deteriorated: Arsenal have conceded 0.75 goals per game at Emirates, compared to 0.85 goals per game in the final eight seasons at Highbury. Therefore, the overall goal difference at the current home is +313, whereas it was +300 at Highbury between 1998 and 2006.

Olivier Giroud scored the first and last goals of the season at Emirates Stadium, and claimed 15 in all on home turf in 2013/14.

He netted once every 122 minutes on average and now has 26 goals in all competitions at Emirates. Of those, 20 have come in the Premier League; only Robin van Persie has scored more league goals at the venue.

Mesut Ozil became the 50th different player to score for Arsenal at Emirates when he netted against Napoli in October – and in fact all seven of his Gunners goals so far have come at home.

There were 15 different scorers in all (seven of whom claimed a brace) and the 55 goals included some classic strikes, most notably Tomas Rosicky's against Sunderland, Giroud's against West Ham and Jack Wilshere's against Norwich, which was voted goal of the season on Sky Sports Monday Night Football this week.

At the other end of the pitch Arsenal kept 16 clean sheets in their 29 games, including 11 in a 12-game spell between November and February.

That may be due, in part at least, to the side's defensive stability at home - the four players who spent the most time on the pitch were all part of the back five - Per Mertesacker, Laurent Koscielny, Wojciech Szczesny and Bacary Sagna.

Arsenal came from behind to win once (v West Ham United) and earned two draws from losing positions (v Swansea City and Manchester City). They were only behind at half-time three times in the whole campaign.

The biggest victory was 4-0 (against Coventry City) while the most common scoreline was 2-0, recorded 10 times.

The last of those 2-0 victories came against Crystal Palace in February, who became the 71st different side to visit Emirates Stadium.

The average home attendance this season was 59,786 with a total of 1,733,804 through the turnstiles.

Stats correct as at May 5, 2014