Capital gains

This week our statistician Josh James looks at Arsenal's century of wins over our London rivals.

Arsenal became the first team in Premier League history to win 100 London derbies with victory at Craven Cottage last Saturday.

The Gunners took 195 games to bring up the milestone, and it was their third successive league win against London opposition, following 1-0 victories at Fulham and QPR late last term.

Arsenal are ahead of Chelsea (96) and Tottenham (61) in terms of Premier League derby wins - no other side has reached 50.

Those 100 wins have come against eight different teams, with West Ham on the receiving end most often - 21 of the victories have been against the Hammers, from 34 meetings.

Arsenal's first Premier League derby win was against Chelsea, back on October 3, 1992. George Graham's side triumphed 2-1 at Highbury with Paul Merson and Ian Wright both on target in front of 27,780. Arsenal's capacity was reduced that season while the new North Bank stand was under construction.

That Chelsea result was one of only three derby wins in the inaugural Premier League season, though the fewest wins against London teams in a single campaign was two, in 2008/09.

Arsenal have racked up seven derby wins three times, including in 2007/08 when they triumphed in all but one of the derbies played that season.

Arsenal's overall success rate in derbies is 51.3 per cent. Looking purely at the figures during Arsène Wenger's tenure, the win rate stands at 55.6 per cent - slightly down on his total league win percentage of 57.7.

The Gunners have played at least eight London derbies in each of the 21 Premier League seasons to date, and played as many as 12 in 1994/95.

Olivier Giroud scored yet again last Saturday to take his personal tally of goal in league London derbies to seven.

In fact all of his 13 Premier League goals so far have been scored in the capital - 11 at Emirates Stadium and one each at Upton Park and Craven Cottage.

Giroud is already joint 12th in the Club's all-time leading scorers list for Premier League London derbies. Particularly striking is the Frenchman's ratio of goals against local teams. More than half (53.8 per cent) of his league goals so far have come against London teams - a far higher percentage than anyone else on the top derby scorers list.

Other players who evidently enjoyed the derby atmosphere are Patrick Vieira and Theo Walcott, who scored roughly a third of all their league goals for the Club in these fixtures.

At the other end of the scale, just over 17 per cent of Dennis Bergkamp's Premier League goals came in derby matches.

Arsenal have scored 332 goals in the 195 derbies overall, an average of 1.7 per game, with more coming against Tottenham (72) than any other side.

Arsenal sit proudly on top of the all-time 'London-only Premier League' table, with a record of P195 W100 D54 L41 F332 A189 since the league was established in 1992.

More than a quarter (26 per cent) of Arsenal's league fixtures this season will be London derbies, so it's encouraging to know that Arsenal have the best record among all the London teams for Premier League derby matches.

The Gunners have taken 354 points from derbies, ahead of Chelsea (344), Tottenham (245) and West Ham United (182).

The Gunners are also the top scorers in such matches (332 goals) and have the best goal difference (+143).

Arsenal average 1.82 points per game from Premier League derbies, which is slightly less than the average points they have taken from non-derby matches (1.9 per game).

In all there have been 554 London derbies in Premier League history, which accounts for 6.7 per cent of the total games played in the league.
Arsenal have also taken more Premier League points overall than any other London team - 42 more than Chelsea and 361 more than Tottenham.

Table all-time derbies

Stats correct as at August 29, 2013. With thanks to Opta