Man Utd v Arsenal Preview

There’s a lot of noise surrounding Man Utd this season, either it’s Jose Mourinho complaining about hotel rooms, selling out his players or not playing them at all (where are you Henrikh Mkhitaryan?).

However, what the mainstream journalists are missing is their atrocious scoring%. The biggest symptom of this was Zlatan Ibrahimovic going six games without a goal but the entire team should shoulder the blame.

That is if there is blame to apportion at all. Scoring rates are prone to variance/luck or both. United are converting 21% of their shots on target into goals this season, the league average is nearer 32%.

The good news is United are still taking shots (20.8 per game – the second best in the league) and at some stage they will start to go in. Zlatan got things moving at Swansea in the last round of fixtures and there’s still plenty of upside to come.

Arsenal have enjoyed positive variance so far when it comes to scoring precentage, and although they are particularly choosey about shot locations, these are two teams more closely matched on underlying numbers than the odds suggest.