The 2021/22 campaign has drawn to a close, bringing the curtain down on our 118th season of league football, and 29th in the Premier League.
Here are some of the stats and facts from the season.
THE PLAYERS
Mikel Arteta used 28 players during the campaign, handing out six debuts – to Sambi Lokonga, Ben White, Nuno Tavares, Aaron Ramsdale, Takehiro Tomiyasu and Charlie Patino.
Bukayo Saka played in all 38 of our Premier League matches (all but two of them from the start) becoming the second youngest player to go ever-present for us in the competition after Cesc Fabregas in 2006/07.
He also played in our only FA Cup match, and missed just two of our six Carabao Cup games in the campaign, for a total of 43 appearances.
Martin Odegaard was second with 40 appearances in all competitions.
It’s no surprise to learn that Arsenal had by far the youngest squad in the Premier League this season. The average age of our starting XI throughout the campaign was 24 years and 308 days – more than a whole year younger than the next team, Brentford.
Our youngest lineup in the Premier League this season was for the goalless draw at home to Burnley, when the starting XI had an average age of 23 years and 284 days. In fact each of the 11 youngest lineups named in the Premier League this season were Arsenal sides.
| Player | PL | FAC | LC | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bukayo Saka | 38 | 1 | 4 | 43 |
| Martin Odegaard | 36 | 1 | 3 | 40 |
| Gabriel | 35 | 0 | 3 | 38 |
| Aaron Ramsdale | 34 | 0 | 3 | 37 |
| Emile Smith Rowe | 33 | 0 | 4 | 37 |
| Ben White | 32 | 1 | 4 | 37 |
| Alexandre Lacazette | 30 | 1 | 5 | 36 |
| Gabriel Martinelli | 29 | 1 | 6 | 36 |
| Granit Xhaka | 27 | 0 | 3 | 30 |
| Nuno Tavares | 22 | 1 | 5 | 28 |
| Eddie Nketiah | 21 | 1 | 5 | 27 |
| Thomas Partey | 24 | 0 | 2 | 26 |
| Cedric | 21 | 1 | 4 | 26 |
| Kieran Tierney | 22 | 1 | 2 | 25 |
| Sambi Lokonga | 19 | 1 | 4 | 24 |
| Nicolas Pepe | 20 | 0 | 3 | 23 |
| Takehiro Tomiyasu | 21 | 0 | 1 | 22 |
| Rob Holding | 15 | 1 | 5 | 21 |
| Mohamed Elneny | 14 | 0 | 3 | 17 |
| Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang | 14 | 0 | 1 | 15 |
| Ainsley Maitland-Niles | 8 | 0 | 3 | 11 |
| Bernd Leno | 4 | 1 | 3 | 8 |
| Calum Chambers | 2 | 0 | 3 | 5 |
| Sead Kolasinac | 2 | 1 | 2 | 5 |
| Folarin Balogun | 2 | 0 | 2 | 4 |
THE GOALS
Our 77 goals this season were scored by 17 different players (and an own goal). As well as being our leading appearance maker, Saka led the way in goals too, with 12 in all competitions, closely followed by Emile Smith Rowe on 11. The only other player to reach double figures is fellow academy product, Eddie Nketiah (10).
It was a more experienced head who claimed the most assists – Alexandre Lacazette contributed eight throughout the campaign, ahead of Saka with seven.
We scored 32 in away matches and 45 at the Emirates, while more than half of the goals (39) came in the first half of matches. We scored six out of nine penalties.
The biggest win was 6-0, against West Brom in the Carabao Cup, while we scored five times in three further matches. We failed to score in 14 games.
Our scoring rate of 1.71 per game was slightly up on last season (1.62 per game).
At the other end, we conceded 52 (1.16 per game, slightly up on 2020/21), and kept 17 clean sheets.
| Player | PL | LC | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bukayo Saka | 11 | 1 | 12 |
| Emile Smith Rowe | 10 | 1 | 11 |
| Eddie Nketiah | 5 | 5 | 10 |
| Martin Odegaard | 7 | 0 | 7 |
| Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang | 4 | 3 | 7 |
| Gabriel Martinelli | 6 | 0 | 6 |
| Alexandre Lacazette | 4 | 2 | 6 |
| Gabriel | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| Nicolas Pepe | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Thomas Partey | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Nuno Tavares | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Kieran Tierney | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Cedric | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Rob Holding | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Granit Xhaka | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Calum Chambers | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Charlie Patino | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Own goals | 1 | 0 | 0 |
THE GAMES
We played 45 games in all competitions this season, the fewest since 1988/89. Of those games we won 26, drew just four and lost the other 15. In fact we tied a club record for fewest draws in a single campaign, the last time there were only four draws was way back in 1896/97 (from just 33 matches). Looking purely at league matches, the three draws we recorded is a new club record for fewest in a campaign.
The full record in the league was P38 W22 D3 L13 W61 A48 for a total of 69 points, eight more than last season, and just shy of our overall Premier League average of 71.
It was the 12th time in our history we have finished fifth, and the 55th time we have finished in the top five (out of 105 campaigns).
In all competitions our most common scorelines were 1-0, 2-0 and 0-2 (five each). Our longest unbeaten run was 10 (between September 11 and November 7) and the most wins in a row was five (recorded twice). Our longest sequence without a win was also five (the whole of January). We enjoyed three unbeaten months – September, October and February.
Of the 4,050 minutes total playing time this season we spent 1,678 minutes in the lead (41 per cent), 760 minutes trailing and the rest (1,612 minutes) level.
We opened the scoring 29 times and conceded the first 13 times. When we scored first we won 25 times, drew one and lost three. When conceding first we won one, drew none and lost 12.
Our overall win rate this season was 57.8 per cent – higher than the previous two seasons.
The playing record for each of our three kits was as follows. Red: P27 W18 D2 L7, Blue: P6 W3 D1 L2, Yellow: P11 W5 D1 L5, White: P1 W0 D0 L1.
We played on all seven days of the week, Saturday was the most common day (15 fixtures). We had ten different kick off times, the most frequent was 7.45pm (10).
| Season | P | W | D | L | F | A | Win% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012/13 | 53 | 29 | 12 | 12 | 105 | 60 | 54.7 |
| 2013/14 | 56 | 37 | 8 | 11 | 99 | 57 | 66.1 |
| 2014/15 | 56 | 35 | 11 | 10 | 109 | 53 | 62.5 |
| 2015/16 | 54 | 28 | 12 | 14 | 91 | 59 | 51.9 |
| 2016/17 | 55 | 35 | 8 | 12 | 121 | 65 | 63.6 |
| 2017/18 | 60 | 32 | 10 | 18 | 113 | 73 | 53.3 |
| 2018/19 | 58 | 35 | 8 | 15 | 112 | 71 | 60.3 |
| 2019/20 | 54 | 25 | 16 | 13 | 93 | 65 | 46.3 |
| 2020/21 | 58 | 31 | 10 | 17 | 94 | 58 | 53.5 |
| 2021/22 | 45 | 26 | 4 | 15 | 77 | 52 | 57.8 |
| Day | P | W | D | L |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 4 | 0 | 1 | 3 |
| Tuesday | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Wednesday | 5 | 4 | 0 | 1 |
| Thursday | 6 | 2 | 1 | 3 |
| Friday | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Saturday | 15 | 9 | 1 | 5 |
| Sunday | 11 | 8 | 1 | 2 |
THE FANS
The big change this season was that for the first time since 2018/19, there were fans in the stadium for every single match. In total 2,204,058 fans came through the turnstiles at Arsenal games this season – an average of 48,979 per game. We played 23 matches at the Emirates, in front of a total of 1,369,532 fans – averaging 59,545.
The highest attendance at the Emirates this season was 60,223, for the 3-1 win over Manchester United. The largest crowd we played in front of all season was also against Manchester United – 73,123 at Old Trafford.
Indeed Old Trafford was the only stadium to have a higher average crowd this season in the Premier League than the Emirates, ahead of West Ham’s London Stadium in third and the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in fourth.
| Team | Average home attendance |
|---|---|
| Manchester United | 73,156 |
| Arsenal | 59,811 |
| West Ham United | 58,513 |
| Tottenham Hotspur | 56,234 |
| Manchester City | 52,738 |
| Newcastle United | 51,487 |
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