Arsenal are being flagged offside more times on average than any other team in a single Premier League season since 2009. Why can’t their players stay onside?

Mikel Arteta has done a masterful job of slowly, meticulously and expertly improving just about every aspect of Arsenal’s game with painstaking precision. The result of years of work is an efficient winning machine who give up very few chances, make almost no mistakes, won the Premier League last season and may very well win it again this year, too.

But he is the first to admit they are not perfect, and he has acknowledged that being caught offside too often is one of his side’s not entirely insignificant imperfections.

Arsenal players have been flagged offside 35 times this season, which is at least 11 more than any other team (Tottenham – 24) and more than twice as many times as almost half of the Premier League.

Their figure is not only a lot compared to other teams this season, though. Arsenal’s current rate of 3.5 offsides per game is the highest by any team in any season since Hull in 2008-09 (3.7).

The highest rate in any of the last 10 seasons – which are more comparable because VAR might have made some difference – also doesn’t come anywhere close to Arsenal this season, with Chelsea’s 2.8 in 2017-18 the highest. (An aside, Burnley under Sean Dyche were caught offside with astounding consistency.)

Arteta was asked about the subject after Arsenal’s 1-0 win over Hull City this weekend, in which his side were denied a penalty when Kai Havertz was deemed to be in an offside position when he was fouled in the box by Nobel Mendy. In fairness to Arsenal and Havertz, had the rules been applied correctly, the German would only have been deemed ‘active’ once he made an attempt to play the ball, and the foul would have taken precedence over the offside. So, in this case, Arsenal were incorrectly penalised for being offside.

But their huge offside tally cannot be ascribed to refereeing errors. Even discounting that mistake against Hull, Havertz is still miles clear at the top of the Premier League, having been caught offside 15 times all on his own. No other player is on more than eight; six teams are on 15 or fewer.

“Certainly, it’s far too many,” Arteta said of his side’s offside count. “There are many areas that we need to improve. That’s one, that’s related sometimes to the timing or the situation, or really the position [of the opponent], where he’s lined up and what space he’s given you.”

So, what possible explanations are there for these sky-high numbers?

Arteta pointed out how early into the season we are, and that Arsenal’s eight offsides in their win over Aston Villa are skewing their average slightly.

“It’s true that the Villa game is obviously putting those stats in a different perspective,” he said. “I think the sample is quite [small] to analyse it.”

He has a point. Arsenal’s eight offsides against Villa were the most a team has been caught offside in any Premier League game in the last two and a half years (since Everton’s 10 vs Burnley in April 2024). That game should be a bit of an anomaly, and given we are only 10 games into this season, it may skew the numbers. Their average could, and probably will, come down over the next 28 games.

But it wasn’t a complete one-off. Arsenal were also flagged offside seven times against Leeds, five times against Coventry, four times against Hull, and three times against both Chelsea and Liverpool, each of which will bring their average up to three or higher.

Even their two offsides against Sunderland are significant, because they make up 28.6% of the seven times Sunderland have caught opponents offside all season. Only Everton (five) have caught opponents offside fewer times.

Part of this is circumstantial. They have played the six teams to have caught their opponents offside the most times in the Premier League this season in Villa, Coventry, Hull, Leeds, Liverpool and Brighton. They are also, as a possession- and territorial-dominant team, likely to create more situations than most that are conducive to being caught offside.

For example, Arsenal rank third in the Premier League for field tilt (64.1%), which is a measure of territorial dominance.

They are also second for through balls attempted (31), second for passes ending in the attacking third of the pitch (1,662) and second for line-breaking passes that go behind the opposition’s defensive line (207). The conditions are clearly there for them to be caught offside a lot.

But they aren’t the first team to dominate the ball like they do, nor are they the only side this season to do it. For example, Manchester City and Spurs have more possession and higher field-tilt numbers, and Brighton are very close behind in both regards. Brighton also make more line-breaking passes through the opposition’s defence.

Also, Arsenal rank down in sixth for off-the-ball, high-intensity runs in behind the opposition’s defence while they are in possession (408); precisely the type of run that would increase the possibility of being flagged. They, and particularly Havertz, have proved ineffective at getting those runs right.

“It’s all about timing,” Arteta said. “So, there is a signal on the ball, and you need to time it around that. If that’s a second too late or half a second too late, that’s [enough].”

Despite perceptions of Havertz as a former midfielder playing up front who likes to drop deep, he does actually try and get in behind an awful lot. Only Fulham’s Gonzalo García (145) and Manchester United’s Bryan Mbeumo (141) have made more in-behind high-intensity runs in the Premier League this season than him (125).

But those two players have been caught offside two and four times, respectively, compared to 15 for Havertz. Both have played at least 90 more minutes of football than the Arsenal forward.

He has been flagged in all manner of situations. In some, he has been a little unfortunate, but all too many have been infuriatingly avoidable, including this occasion when he failed to get himself onside with plenty of time and space to do so against Villa…

…and from this quickly taken free-kick when able to look all the way across the Liverpool backline at Anfield…

He has also been flagged twice from free-kicks booted all the way up the field by goalkeeper David Raya.

Those last examples are three of 11 occasions that Arsenal’s players have been flagged offside within 15 seconds of a dead-ball being taken this season. A few of the others have been narrow calls in a packed penalty area, such as when Ezri Konsa was called offside during a VAR review of Riccardo Calafiori’s disallowed equaliser against Chelsea, but it’s not like Arsenal can say tight calls at set-pieces are the explanation for their high overall offside tally.

The truth is this hasn’t hurt Arteta’s side. They are five points clear at the top of the table and, without any obvious challenger, are huge favourites to go on and win the title. They are so solid defensively that they have consistently needed only one goal to win games this season.

But there is a chance that the 35 turnovers of possession they have suffered as a result of being caught offside has affected their chances of scoring. They have scored only 15 goals in 10 games; at this rate, they would hit just 57 goals all season, and so could obliterate the record for the fewest goals scored by a Premier League champion (67 by Man Utd in 1992-93).

So far, they’ve been able to rely on their watertight defence, but there might come a time when more goals are needed. Staying onside more often could be a good place to start.

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