Arsenal have had a really impressive start to the 2023/24 Premier League season and have been able to carry forward their momentum from the previous campaign, and it appears that they’re excelling in a ‘field tilt’ metric that has confused a lot of fans.
The Gunners have only dropped points once in their five games so far in the league, winning the remaining four matches in a rather compelling fashion. Not only has Mikel Arteta’s side been able to win their games, but also dominated the key aspects of the matches to outwit their opposition as well.
While Arsenal might not be among the highest-scoring teams in the league so far, it appears that they have at least dominated their matches really well so far. Amid all this, an Arsenal fan and statistic geek on Twitter decided to show an interesting metric in which the Gunners are excelling at.
What is the new ‘field tilt’ stat Arsenal are excelling at?
The Gunners appear to have a high ‘field tilt’ percentage for the majority of their matches so far this season. They had a 83.8% ‘field tilt’ dominance in their most recent win over Everton and over 81% against Manchester United as well.
Arsenal's field tilt:
vs Everton 83.8% vs United 81.2% vs Fulham 90.4% vs Palace 50.4% vs Forrest 82.8%
This is a rather strange statistic metric and not one that the majority of fans had even heard about before this statistic popped up out of nowhere. The Arsenal supporter decided to give an explanation of what the ‘field tilt’ metric even means, tweeting: “I guess I muted this at the right time, never knew I would get hate for a stat lol.
“But lemme make an effort to explain the metric here — Field tilt is to possession what the xG/xA value it to chance creation, it provides context and informs about the quality of possession. Field tilt is measured by the amount of touches and passes that were played in the opposition third, so if a team has the majority share of possession but majorly pass it around the back while the other side plays with an aggressive approach and have more touches and possession in the opp third then it’ll end up with a better field tilt value despite having less possession through the 90.
“Probably you still won’t talk about it in a pub with your friends, but it’ll be increasingly used to judge a team’s offensive acumen going forward much like how xG is now.”
It appears that a basic explanation of the ‘field tilt’ metric is that it is calculated depending on a team’s possession as well as touches and passes made in their opposition’s final third – which includes inside the box and just outside that area as well.
Fans make memes out of hilarious ‘field tilt’ stat
Basically, it is made to show how Arsenal have controlled the ball in the key attacking areas rather than just pass it around in their own half or in the midfield areas. Irrespective of the explanation, most rival fans just don’t care about this strange metric and how some Gooners are coming up with just about anything to try and make their team come off as the best in the Premier League.
When it comes to ‘field tilt’, some fans have already envisioned how it could mean a literal football field being tilted to the side for a team’s advantage. A lot of hilarious memes have been created thanks to this metric, with fans calling out the hilariously weird stat and how nobody would probably be discussing this among their friends.
This kind of statistic is hardly considered when analyzing how good a team has been, and just seems to be one created by the football nerds more than anyone else. There is little doubt over how clinical and impressive Arsenal have been so far this season, but coming up with statistics like this will only cause more mockery than anything else.
