Man Utd goalkeeper pulled the best ball in the defeat against Arsenal
On average, each time he dribbles, Onana moves the ball forward 1.4 m, the longest distance on the team. The player who pulls the ball the most is midfielder Lisandro Martinez with 1.2 m.
Drag is a modern metric, calculated when a player dribbles forward, as a way of finding space or penetrating the opponent's lines. Onana pulling the ball the best on the team is not entirely a positive signal for Man Utd, because the players above cannot create mutations.
On the Arsenal side, the best players to pull the ball were midfielder Declan Rice, then midfielder William Saliba. Goalkeeper Aaron Ramsdale is only 10th on this list.
Onana also leads the team in his ability to move the ball forward with passes. On average, with each pass, he moves the ball forward more than 5 meters. The player who does the second best in this parameter is Casemiro with 4 m, then Christian Eriksen with 3 m. This shows that most of Man Utd's attacking players' passes are backwards.
Goalkeeper Ramsdale is only sixth at Arsenal in forward passing parameters, averaging 3 meters. Central defender Saliba is at the top with nearly 5.5 meters per pass.
The progress of the match showed that Onana was confident every time he kept the ball, and often chose short passes even when the opponent was close. When he waited for a long time and didn't see any players entering the field, he pushed the ball forward, many times out of the penalty area.
However, Man Utd do not often put the ball into the danger area, compared to Arsenal. The away team passed 462 times in the match, equivalent to 87% of the host's parameters. However, only 17.5% of their passes ended up in the last third of the field. This figure of Arsenal is up to 46.4%, showing that they pull the ball up better and put a lot of pressure on Onana's goal.
Therefore, Arsenal made 26 crosses into Man Utd's penalty area, while the "Red Devils" only had three such situations. The Gunners' first two goals were scored from crosses, the ball at Martin Odegaard's table, and the high ball at Rice's table.
Arsenal's expected goal parameters are also superior to their opponents in this match, 2.1 compared to 1.0. This index means that Mikel Arteta's team created more scoring opportunities than their opponents, helping them win 3-1 in the end.
