By oldest 
I got this itch last night to see how Arsenal stacks up against Monaco this season. Don’t ask me why, just woke up thinking about it like it was some deep football mystery. Needed stats, the real stuff: points, goals scored, wins, the whole lot. Felt like digging for buried treasure, only the treasure is numbers scattered all over the place.
Here’s What I Did Step by Step:
First up, hunting down the numbers. Hopped onto the first big league stats website I remembered. Found Arsenal’s Premier League section alright. Easy peasy. Points, goals for, goals against, wins, draws, losses… copied that whole block of text into my trusty Notepad. Monaco though? Total nightmare. Their Ligue 1 section felt like it was hidden three levels deep. Got there eventually, copied their similar block, threw it into Notepad too. My text file looked messy as heck, just two huge piles of numbers separated by a couple of blank lines. Felt like a victory just finding it.
Next, tried to make sense of the mess. Fired up Google Sheets – figured a spreadsheet was the way to go. Opened a new sheet. Got to actually putting my stolen numbers in. Started typing Arsenal’s stuff: name, league, games played, points… you get it. Then, scrolled back to that Monaco text block in Notepad and started typing theirs in the next row down. Typing it felt slower than watching paint dry, but didn’t trust copy-paste to land the numbers right. Had to do a few double-checks against the website because I kept hitting keys wrong. Was praying I didn’t transpose any figures.
Alright, let’s look at what we’ve got. Both rows filled in. Time to see the picture. My eyes scanned Arsenal first: 38 games? Points: 89? Bloody impressive. Goals For: 91! Goals Against only 29? Wow. Wins: 28. Seriously solid.
Then I looked at Monaco. Games Played: 34. Hold up. Wait a damn minute. 34? Arsenal played 38. So Monaco played fewer games! Felt like my whole comparison just tripped over its own feet. Here’s the raw data staring back at me:
- Arsenal: PL – 38 Played, 89 Pts, 91 Goals For, 29 Against, 28 Wins, 5 Draws, 5 Losses
- Monaco: Ligue 1 – 34 Played, 67 Pts, 56 Goals For, 38 Against, 20 Wins, 7 Draws, 7 Losses
My “oh crap” moment. Pounded my head softly on the desk. “You donkey,” I muttered. Can’t just compare the points total directly when one team played four fewer matches! Obvious now, but it totally slipped my mind grabbing the raw figures. Needed a way to level the playing field.
Getting clever (well, basic math). Needed points per game. Simple enough. Tapped into the spreadsheet. For Arsenal: Points divided by Games Played. Typed =89/38 in a new cell. BAM, about 2.34 points per match. For Monaco: =67/34. Hit Enter, got around 1.97 per match. Same thing for goals per game: Arsenal ~2.39, Monaco ~1.65. The wins percentage told the same story: Arsenal won 73.7% of their games, Monaco 58.8%.
Final look: Stared at the sheet. Even with Monaco having played less, Arsenal’s numbers just looked… bigger. Significantly more points per game, way more goals flying in, and a much higher win rate. The gap in quality seemed pretty stark looking at these season stats. Finished the spreadsheet, leaned back. Itchy football question finally scratched. Mission accomplished, mostly thanks to basic division!
