Why do Arsenal score so many goals in the second half under Unai Emery? Having scored more second half goals than any other Premier League rival, Arsenal are proving to be builders rather than demolition men

It was nothing compared to the finish from Jefferson Lerma for the game’s opener, but Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s second-half tap-in was enough to secure all three points for Arsenal. Where Lerma had slashed in a screamer at the near post – if there was a Puskas Award for own goals, he’d be on the shortlist – Aubameyang slid the ball home from barely five yards after a neat assist from Sead Kolasinac, with the clanking defendotron the fans nicknamed ‘The Tank’ last season converted into a swashbuckling left wing-back by Unai Emery.

It was Arsenal’s 21st second-half goal in the Premier League this season, more than any other side in the top flight. With ‘second-half goals’ not the most common statistic, that might well prompt the response: ‘So what?’ While, unfortunately for Arsenal, football matches are won and lost over two halves, it is interesting insomuch as it shows a profoundly skewed trend in the data. By comparison Arsenal have scored only seven first-half goals, which suggests they are kings of the second half or – dependent on perspective – feeble princelings of the slow start.

Emery, for all the improvements he has made in his first few months in charge at the Emirates, has struggled to get Arsenal onto the front foot in the opening exchanges and has often been forced to rely on second-half winners. It’s a trend which was picked up in the media some time in mid-October, when despite going on an 11-match winning run in all competitions Arsenal had not held a single Premier League lead at half-time. While Arsenal were often reliant on late fightbacks in Arsene Wenger’s final season, this was not so much a statistical pattern as a sign of frantic desperation. During Wenger’s twilight years Arsenal were more famous for blowing leads owing to their defensive frailty, something they have so far avoided this term but which over the course of 2017-18 they managed to do eight times.

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Second-half specialists

Were Premier League matches decided on second-half goals alone – and yes, again, we’re aware they are not, but bear with us – Arsenal would be second only to Manchester City in the table. Pep Guardiola’s side would actually have two points less than they do currently – a fairly arbitrary difference given they have been absolutely battering sides in both the first and second halves all season – but would still be top of the league and remain undefeated.

Chelsea have also been strong second-half performers over the course of the campaign, scoring two or more goals after half-time on six occasions. Liverpool, by contrast, have been fuelled by fast starts, with nine points fewer in the second-half table than they have in real life.

Of their 10 league victories this season, Liverpool have established a first-half lead and gone on to win in nine of them (apply the same criteria to City, and it’s 11 out of 11). Everton have gone from second-half slowpokes at the start of the season to late-game clinchers, while Spurs are far stronger in the first-half than the second and Manchester United are – surprise, surprise – maddeningly inconsistent.

What does it all mean?

Having established that Arsenal are the Premier League’s biggest overperformers in the second half, this begs the question: “Why?” Emery gave a clue to the answer when asked about Arsenal’s slow starts after their 1-0 win against Sporting Clube de Portugal in the Europa League last month, with the game at the Estadio Jose Alvalade in Lisbon sealed by a 77th-minute winner from Danny Welbeck.

When Arsenal’s sluggish first-half showing was brought up in his post-match press conference, Emery said: “We cannot impose our ideas in the first 45 minutes… we need to continue finding the solution for us to be better in the first halves.

“We spoke in the dressing room before the start of the match today about our objectives. And one objective is this. But the most important thing is that when we were in the dressing room at half-time, we spoke.”

So what does all this mean, really? Emery could be an incredible half-time motivational speaker or, given he’s reportedly attempting to improve his English by watching Peaky Blinders, a domineering alpha male in the dressing room screaming in a Brummie accent and ruling through fear. There are few signs of grand rhetorical skill when he faces the media, however, let alone an undercurrent of Thomas Shelby-esque hyper-violence. It’s possible that Arsenal’s second-half bias is a statistical quirk, with a fairly small sample size given that we are only 13 games into the league season.

The other possibility, to read a little deeper, is that Arsenal are still in the building-blocks stage of their development under Emery. Looking at the teams in the top seven which have performed much better in real life than they have in the second-half table – Liverpool and Tottenham, most notably, though we can also include Man City among the fast starters – and they tend to be sides who are fully familiarised with their manager’s methods.

Jurgen Klopp, Mauricio Pochettino and Guardiola have been at their current clubs for three, four and two-and-a-half years respectively, leaving their players in little doubt as to what their manager requires from them. They don’t need a half-time reminder of how they are meant to be playing, they don’t need a refresher on ideas and philosophies: it is instinctive at this point and hence – with all the talent they have – they are able to go out there and demolish teams from the start.

Look at Chelsea, meanwhile, and despite a two-point deficit they are third in the second-half table compared to fourth in real life. Maurizio Sarri, like Emery, is a new manager attempting to communicate new ideas, which fits the emergent pattern of sides which are less familiar with their coach’s tactical outlook starting slow and building up to belated self-realisation.

If Emery and Sarri are architects – assessing their raw materials, drawing up blueprints and thrashing out complex mathematical equations – Klopp, Pochettino and Guardiola are more like prospectors working with dynamite. That’s one way to interpret slow and fast starts: where Arsenal and Chelsea are still in the planning and construction phase, Liverpool, City and Tottenham have progressed to the point that they need only call on the demolition men.