...but I was trying to work out whether my impression of our collapse in form during the last weeks of the season just ended was distorted by the fact that I was watching the car crash from the kerbside rather than from a safer distance back. At the time it really seemed to be dramatic.
So I re-ran some stats from a few seasons back which I'd been using at the time to work out how significant our traditional Winter dip was (the answer to that question, by the way, was not terribly).
I'm afraid the stats make for even poorer viewing than some of the run-in matches did (or at least they do if you can engage with numbers and charts representing the little guys in red and white). I've pasted in the charts below analysing Arsenal's form in the last dozen league games of each full Wenger-managed season. And frankly last season's were by far the worst. We were not imagining it to be that way just because the pain was fresher.
The 25% win ratio (3 out of 12 games) was the lowest by some distance of any season. And in a three-points-for-a-win era, that kills you, even if actual losses in the last dozen games were no worse last season than the season before, the first Emirates season, or indeed 2001. We gained 1.25 points per game over the last dozen in 2011, a notable collapse even from 2009.
I got a fresh bit of nostalgia for the title-winning seasons when I was reminded that 2002 signed off with a dozen straight wins, 1998 looks just as good if you bear in mind that the losses in the last two games spoling the otherwise perfect record were because we'd already won the title and were resting players in order to secure the club's second Double, and 2004 would of course have had no losses recorded on the graph even if I'd extended it across all 38 league matches.
Sorry, brief bit of happiness crept in there. Back to the fiasco of the run-in just gone...
Splitting the analysis of the last dozen games into home and away matches (where the last three seasons have had a direct 50/50 split), we can identify two distinct problems from the average goals graphs for the 2010/11 season...
1. We did not score enough goals at home. The last six home games produced an average of only 0.67 Arsenal goals per game, the only time in the entire Wenger era that this has been below 1. Interestingly, the problem did not recur in away matches where there was an average of two goals a game (actually better than any title-winning season).
2. We conceded too many goals away - 2.17 goals against per game. Again, though, this was not a problem at home, where the striking problems (or perhaps in at least one match the linesman's calls) were the issue.
Wenger is famously a fan of statistics so whatever else you think might drive him to rebuild and/or reinforce the squad over the summer, the numbers are a definite argument for doing it.
Here are the charts for your information and any other messages you might want to glean from them...
I'd say enjoy except the message is not encouraging, other than as an argument for change. So instead, make of all this what you will...