Comparing Arsenal's 2013-14 Stats to Their 2014-15 Figures

After their eighth consecutive league win, Arsenal are now ensconced in second position in the Premier League and are the only plausible challengers to Chelsea. 

However, it would be an exaggeration to say Arsenal have been in a true title race this season. After a disastrous start to the campaign, the Gunners have been on a steady upward incline since Christmas, yet they have never really looked like credible champions. 

After Arsene Wenger’s side led the Premier League for longer than any other team in 2013/14, there is genuine room for debate as to whether or not Arsenal have made progress this season. In this piece, we break down some of the numbers to get to the bottom of the matter.

The current winning streak is better than anything they managed last season. Victory at Turf Moor means they’ve racked up eight wins on the bounce, whereas they never managed more than five consecutive victories in 2013/14. In fact, the last time Arsenal matched this feat was in 2004: the year of the Invincibles.

Their overall record last year read 24 wins, seven draws and seven defeats. Arsenal are on course for an eerily similar set of results this time around. With half a dozen games to go, they have won 20, drawn six and lost six. Their win ratio across the two years is identical: 63 percent. 

However, there are some marked differences. Arsenal’s title challenge of 2013/14 was built largely on a surprisingly secure defence. They kept a hugely impressive 17 clean sheets, with Wojciech Szczesny tying Petr Cech for the Premier League’s Golden Glove award. In total, they kept clean sheets in a remarkable 45 percent of their games. This season the ratio stands at just 34 percent. The Gunners would need to keep a clean sheet in each of their remaining fixtures to match last year’s parsimonious record. 

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The disparity is surely due to the absence of Laurent Koscielny in the early period of the season. His partnership with Per Mertesacker was the bedrock of Arsenal’s title charge of last year. Without Koscielny, Arsenal struggled for stability at the back.

Although Arsenal have not been quite as consistent at the back, there is evidence to suggest they have been more exciting going forward. They finished 2013/14 with 68 league goals, but are on course to beat that with 62 already in this campaign. They’re averaging 1.97 goals per game, as opposed to 1.79 last season. 

That’s not enormously surprising. While Arsenal were hugely reliant on Olivier Giroud last season, this year he has received support from a potent cocktail of attacking options including Alexis Sanchez and Danny Welbeck. As Mesut Ozil has settled in to the English game, Arsenal’s attacking game has begun to click in to gear.

Paul Gilham/Getty Images

In terms of the pure results, the two seasons will ultimately come to look fairly similar. However, Arsenal have picked those results up in a drastically different order. They started 2013/14 well, charging to the top of the table and staying there well in to the new year. This time round, they stuttered to begin with but have found form as the season approaches its climax.

There’s also a differentiation in style: Wenger is developing a team with a more varied attacking threat. Perhaps that goes some way towards explaining their slow start—it took time for the Frenchman to implement his new approach. Next season, there will be no such excuse.

All stats via PremierLeague.com.

James McNicholas is Bleacher Report's lead Arsenal correspondent and is following the club from a London base throughout the 2014-15 season. Follow him on Twitter here.