Scott and Adam close the book on the Premier League season by grading every one of their preseason over/under predictions, then hand out a data-driven team of the season.

The format is simple: 20 teams, bottom to top, against the points totals from the preseason betting markets.

The headline result is that both hosts finished ahead of the coin flip, Adam at 13 of 20 and Scott at 12, which feels respectable until you sit with the ones that got away.

With this we will start to turn our attention away from 2025/26 and into the summer transfer season.

⁠Over/Under on the Premier League⁠ [https://www.cannonstats.com/p/overunder-on-the-premier-league]



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Reviewing the PL Over/Unders for 2025/26

Scott and Adam process Arsenal's penalty shootout defeat to PSG in the Champions League Final, a loss that stings without feeling like an indictment of the performance.

The episode opens 24 hours on, with both hosts landing somewhere closer to proud than devastated. Adam keeps coming back to Gabriel, who skied the decisive penalty and deserved that ending less than almost anyone, and to the sense that a shootout loss tells you very little about a team. Scott frames it against the alternative: this was not Inter getting blown out in last year's final. Arsenal were in this one. It played out almost exactly as he predicted, a tight game decided by a handful of moments, right on the knife edge, and this time the edge fell PSG's way.

The match breakdown is the heart of the episode, and both hosts land on the same read. Arsenal made a conscious choice to cede possession, sit in a medium-low block, and use PSG's strengths against them. It worked. Scott notes that outside the penalty, PSG managed only four chances above ten percent xG, and through 90 minutes the non-penalty xG was roughly 0.8 to 0.6 in Arsenal's favor, with the two biggest chances of the game both falling to Havertz. The argument both hosts make is that the 72-28 possession split and lopsided shot count are not evidence of a problem, they are evidence of a plan. PSG had no central access, no zone 14 touches, and visibly ran out of ideas against a team built to deny exactly that. As Adam puts it, there is a difference between not threatening because you cannot and not threatening because you are not trying to, and that distinction is the whole game. Doing this to one of the two or three best attacks in the world is an accomplishment, not a failure.

From there the conversation turns to the officiating, which both hosts felt was unusually prominent. The referee twice blew his whistle before Arsenal could take a corner, a pointed and demonstrative call you almost never see outside a blowout, and the run of ticky-tack fouls and Saka's yellow consistently punished whichever side was out of possession, which by design was Arsenal. On the two major decisions, they agree the Mosquera penalty was correct if soft, and that the Madueke no-call on Nuno Mendes in extra time was a far bigger miss. Scott makes the point he keeps returning to: a no-call is a call, it shaped the game in PSG's favor just as surely as a whistle would have shaped it in Arsenal's, and being afraid to make the call is the real failing.

The substitutions get a full airing. The Timber-for-Mosquera change at the hour was the easy one to back. Bringing Odegaard off for Gyokeres made sense for transitional speed and tired legs, but Adam thinks pulling that much technical quality out of midfield hurt Arsenal's ability to build, a pattern they have seen before this season. The bigger sticking point is Saka. Both hosts understand the fitness logic given his calf, but Saka is the moments player, the one you want available for the four chances a game like this offers and for the shootout itself. The counterpoint is that Enrique pulled Dembele, Kvaratskhelia and Vitinha too, so both teams reached penalties without their best takers.

On the shootout, the hosts dig into the margins, from Safonov reading the scouting report to sit middle for Rice, to Eze's hesitation-filled, twisted run-up that produced a poor strike, to the general debate over the stutter-step approach and whether it is worth the loss of balance unless you take penalties constantly like Lewandowski or Jorginho. PSG won both coin tosses, took the shootout at their own end, and chose to go second. Arsenal missed two.

They close on the long view. It is almost 20 years to the day since the 2006 final loss, and the parallels are there, but the key difference is that 2006 marked the end of a chapter while this team is squarely in its prime. Over the next three to five years, this is a side that should be a

The Wrong Side of the Knife Edge

Scott and Adam soak in Arsenal's Premier League title and turn their attention to the Champions League Final against PSG.

The episode opens with both hosts reflecting on the trophy lift and the emotional weight of finally getting over the line. After years of near-misses, eighth-place finishes, and a fan base conditioned to expect heartbreak, this one hits different. Scott traces his own 15-season journey as an Arsenal supporter and the stretch where a title felt unrealistic given the financial gap with Manchester City. Adam picks up the thread from his own entry point during the Emery transition, walking through the slow build under Arteta from top-four hopefuls to genuine contenders to champions.

The conversation zeroes in on what defined this season. Scott highlights a remarkable consistency stat: Arsenal were the only team in the league to never be outperformed by more than one expected goal in any single match, while doing it to opponents 20 times. Both hosts push back on the narratives that followed Arsenal all year, from questions about Jorginho's quality to skepticism about the team's attacking output and Arteta's in-game management. The verdict: this was a team that won ugly when it had to and never stopped believing, even through the late wobble against Bournemouth and City.

The second half pivots to the Champions League Final against PSG. Scott and Adam break down last season's semifinal, where Donnarumma's saves and a couple of fortunate PSG finishes proved the difference. They identify PSG's pressing intensity and high turnover creation as the primary threat, but also point to vulnerabilities when Hakimi and Nuno Mendes push high and leave space behind. The lineup discussion runs through every position: Calafiori gets the nod at left back for his ability to create moments, Mosquera slots in at right back with Timber's fitness uncertain, and the midfield debate between Lewis-Skelly, Eze, and Zubimendi alongside Rice and Odegaard takes up the most real estate. Trossard earns the left wing start on big-game pedigree. Both hosts predict a tight, low-scoring affair, with Scott floating a nervy 1-0 or a 1-1 that goes to extra time, and Adam going 2-1 Arsenal. The dream ending: a set-piece goal from a defender.



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We Are the Champions (But We're Not Done Yet)

Scott and Adam process a deflating loss to Bournemouth and answer the questions that you provided.

If you are a premium subscriber, you can listen to an ad-free version through Substack or you can add to your preferred podcast app through the personal RSS feed. 

The conversation starts with the lineup. Neither host saw the announcement until moments before kickoff, and both were caught off guard by the absences of Odegaard, Saka, and Timber — none of whom even made the bench. With a midfield built around Rice and Zubimendi and Havertz dropped into a striker-adjacent role, the left side chemistry with Martinelli never clicked, and Arsenal struggled to generate open-play xG as a result.

The first Bournemouth goal gets a close look: a defensive lapse in the space behind the right back, Ben White caught too central, and a Saliba clearance that agonizingly found the back of the net anyway. Both-things-can-be-true verdict: an avoidable situation that still required a bounce to go wrong.

Despite the loss, Scott and Adam push back on doom narratives. Arsenal led the league in big chances in this match week, and have scored more three-goal games than any other side since December. The vibes around this team, both agree, are genuinely different from the dread-filled early kickoffs of the Emery era.

The Q&A covers Havertz’s best position when the attack is at full strength, and closes with a summer transfer discussion: what type of forward does Arsenal actually need, and which profile fits the left wing.



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Questions, Questions, Questions

Scott and Adam are back to break down Arsenal's League Cup Final loss to Manchester City. They push back on the post-match doom, arguing Arsenal's low-tempo approach wasn't a failure; it was a deliberate game plan built around missing Odegaard, Eze, and Martinelli. Without your A, B, and C options for getting between the lines, you adapt. City executed better on the day, but this wasn't a tactical masterclass dismantling.

They also zoom out: Arsenal won the two matches that actually mattered that week, and the League Cup was always the fourth priority. Nobody's consoling themselves with a Carabao Cup if the Premier League and Champions League are still on the table. One loss, the fourth of the season and the first by more than a goal, doesn't change the trajectory of a title race.

The episode closes with a look ahead, covering injury cover options, Saka's potential midfield role, Odegaard's return timeline, and what rotation might look like for Southampton and Sporting. The international break, annoying as it always is, might be exactly what this squad needs heading into the run-in.



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Looking into the Crystal Ball, where do we go from here?

On this episode of the Cannon Stats podcast, Adam and Scott return after a Christmas break for a high-level discussion on Arsenal's recent form, dismissing finishing concerns, spotlighting key players, and previewing the massive upcoming clash with Aston Villa.

They dive into why the "wasteful finishing" narrative is shallow, highlighting forced own goals, strong shooting thwarted by great saves, and elite underlying process.

Conversations on Viktor Gyökeres' adaptation, Bukayo Saka's world-class creation and shot volume despite low-end product, the league-wide reality of "uncomfortable" wins, and optimism for a statement result against third-placed Villa to close out 2025.

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Are there reasons to worry about Arsenal's finishing?

On this episode of the Cannon Stats podcast, Adam and Scott break down Arsenal’s kick in the balls loss against Aston Villa. It is a need catharsis and a nice way to get back to some analytical thinking about the match. The podcast goes through the second-guessing decisions that could have been made, the match key moments, hits on the individual performances and looks ahead to some chances for rotation.

If you are a premium subscriber, you can listen to an ad-free version through Substack or you can add to your preferred podcast app through the personal RSS feed.

One of the other topics referenced was Gyokeres who has a tendency to not always run out every situation, which Adam saw in the film while he was at Sporting.

⁠Film Study: Putting Arsenal's striker links head-to-head⁠ [https://www.cannonstats.com/p/film-study-putting-arsenals-striker]

If you enjoyed this podcast and want to leave a review or rating, that would be much appreciated.



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Everything goes wrong for Arsenal at Villa Park

On this episode of the Cannon Stats podcast, Adam and Scott break down Arsenal’s draw against Chelsea, breaking down the big talking points, pre-red card Arsenal being outplayed? Post red card Arsenal getting a goal back but just playing decent? A bit on some of the individual performances and some big picture talk. It’s a full podcast and the start of the busy season for Arsenal.

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Part 1 focuses on the period before the red card, Part 2 looks at the second half, the final part is a bit of a big picture look at things.



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Which team dropped points at the Bridge?

On this episode of the Cannon Stats podcast, Adam and Scott break down Arsenal’s win against Tottenham, revel in the losses of Liverpool and Manchester City, do a mini power rankings and then look ahead to Chelsea and Bayern Munich. It’s a packed podcast after one of the more delightful weekends of the season.

Part 1 focuses on the match with Tottenham, Part 2 looks at Liverpool and Manchester City’s matches, the final part is looking ahead for the rest of the season, and the key matches Arsenal have in the next seven days.

If you haven’t yet, you can help us out by taking the quick survey below:

Give us feedback [https://www.cannonstats.com/publish/post/%%survey_url_prefix%%https://www.cannonstats.com/survey/4434?token=%%survey_token%%%20]



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North London is RED

On this episode of the Cannon Stats podcast, Adam and Scott break down Arsenal’s draw away at Sunderland, hitting the main points of the match, the individual performances, and have some big picture views of the Premier League after the weekend's action.

If you are a premium subscriber, you can listen to an ad-free version through Substack (also you can add to your preferred podcast app) on CannonStats.com [https://www.cannonstats.com]

Part 1 focuses on the match; it is a tale of two halves performance for Arsenal. Arsenal start slowly again and here it hurts them. In the second half Arsenal showed great resilience to fight back and end up conceding late as they ran out of gas. One of the big topics here is the use of the substitutes and what could have or should have been done.

Part 2 hits on the individual performances here, looking at Leandro Trossard, Bukayo Saka, Martin Zubimendi, and Eberechi Eze. The Eze chat goes well with the latest post on the newsletter here looking at how he is playing the “10” role. [https://www.cannonstats.com/p/an-early-look-at-eze-in-the-10-role]

The final part is a bigger picture view of how our opinions have changed on these two teams, plus a view into Manchester City vs Liverpool.

If you have any feedback, please share it with us. Also, you can help us out by leaving a review.



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Arsenal Drop Points but Give Us Reasons for Optimism 

Scott Willis (@cannonstats) · Zencastr

Scott Willis (@cannonstats)

Thoughts and analysis on Arsenal and the football (soccer) world at large.

www.cannonstats.com [https://www.cannonstats.com?utm_medium=podcast]

Cannon Stats - The Analytics Podcast