There is little to talk about apart from transfer rumours, and as you all know, they are covered over on the Gossip site.  Robin van Persie is still an Arsenal player and has clearly totally misjudged both his attractiveness as a player to other clubs, their willingness to throw bucketloads of cash at him and Arsenal fans willingness to back him over the club.

Cazorla is signed but he’s not official, Arsenal are still after Nuri Sahin and the internet seems to believe that the club are still not quite done in the transfer market.

This summer has been something of a revelation as an Arsenal fan.  From enduring years of watching our best players leave only to be replaced by kids we have changed transfer strategy to the relief of many. Whether, in previous years, the club and Wenger have been restrained due to stadium debt we will maybe never know.  The official line is that we have always had money to spend we just chose not to.  Whether the club think that fans would rather hear than that the more honest version, that we simply didn’t have the cash, I don’t know, but something hasn’t quite been right over the past few seasons, that’s for sure.

As the new season approaches, kick off in just two weeks, and not much but gossip to talk about, I thought it would be interesting to look back at some league stats from the season not long passed.

• Out of a total of 38 league games Arsenal kept a total of 13 clean sheets.
• Arsenal’s league record for the 2011/12 season read played 38, won 21, drawn 10, lost 7.
• On average, Arsenal scored 1.95 goals per game and conceded 1.29.
• The longest winning streak enjoyed by the team was seven games.
• The longest losing streak endured was three games.
• The longest run of draws was three games.
• Arsenal scored a total of 10 goals against Blackburn Rovers (can we play you every week? Oh, they’ve been relegated, never mind)
• Arsenal netted 74 times in total.
• Arsenal took 585 shots on goal over the course of the league season.
• There were a total of 300 crosses made by Arsenal players (no, I don’t have the stats that tell us how many actually found a player)
• Arsenal players were offside on 87 occasions. (I couldn’t find stats for Adebayor but I’m sure he was offside more than this)
• Neither Everton nor Bolton scored against Arsenal.
• Arsenal made 164 saves.
• Arsenal made 80 blocks and 195 clearances.
• The team scored five own goals out of the 48 goals conceded.
• Arsenal received 71 cautions and committed 374 fouls, a rate of a card every 5.27 fouls. To contrast Manchester City received a card every 6.43 fouls, Manchester United every 7.2 fouls and Liverpool every 6.1 fouls.
• Arsenal’s passing accuracy for the season, from 20,596 passes, was 84.85%.
• The £35m received from Barcelona for Cesc Fabregas was an Arsenal record for player sold.
• Arsene Wenger’s record stands at games 901, won 514, drawn 215, lost 172.

Shots allowed from inside/outside the box

Offsides provoked

Stats from here and here.