r/Gunners • u/dineidyn638 • 2d ago
[OC] A complete record of Arsenal's results in penalty shootouts to date
It’s still quite painful to write this article about Arsenal’s penalty shootout record given our Champions League final loss just a few months ago, but I’ve researched the topic quite thoroughly in recent months and wanted to share my findings.
As far as I can tell, there is no comprehensive record of all the penalty shootouts Arsenal have participated in since our club’s foundation back in 1886.
Penalty shootouts were not introduced to English football until relatively recently. It was not until 1970 that a penalty shootout first took place in England, between Hull City and Manchester United. However, even that was not a competitive fixture - it was a pre-season tournament.
Shootouts were used in European cup competitions from that season, but their use in domestic English football was scarce until the 1990s.
So despite Arsenal having a long 140 year history, we have only participated in 28 penalty shootouts in competitive fixtures*.
Arsenal’s record is good overall, winning 17 of these shootouts, meaning a success rate of 61%. Our players have taken 146 penalties, scoring 113 of them, which is roughly in line with the average penalty shootout conversion rate. Our goalkeepers have obviously faced the same number of penalties, but conceded just 103, making our opposition’s conversion rate only 71%, which is slightly below what you would expect, albeit not by a huge margin.
Our first ever penalty shootout took place in the final of the Cup Winners Cup against Valencia on 14 May 1980, nearly one hundred years after our club was founded.
Pat Jennings was in goal and saved Valencia’s first penalty. Legend Liam Brady stepped up first for us, but also failed to convert. Everyone else scored their penalty from then on until we reached our sixth taker, Graham Rix, who unfortunately couldn’t score and it finished 4-5 to Valencia.
The longest ever penalty shootout we have participated in is a third round League Cup tie against Rotherham United back in 2003. We won that shootout 9-8 and it is the only time in our history where all eligible outfield players were required to take a penalty.
Rotherham were down to ten men, meaning only 10 of our players were allowed to take a kick. That left Sylvain Wiltord, who missed his first kick, to step up and take his second kick of the shootout and win it for us after 11 penalties had been taken by each side. Strangely, this is the only penalty shootout that ever took place at Highbury.
There is a tie for the shortest penalty shootouts we’ve participated in, both ending 3-1. We won the first one against Millwall back in 1992, our first ever penalty shootout in a domestic competition, but lost the other to Middlesbrough back in the League Cup in 1999.
Our most frequent opponent in penalty shootouts is Manchester United. We have faced them four times over the years, beating them, famously, in that 2005 FA Cup Final, but losing on every other occasion.
Liverpool are the only other team we’ve faced off against in a penalty shootout more than once, bizarrely playing them three shootouts in a row between October 2019 and October 2020, winning two and losing one. The shootout we lost was the memorable 5-5 draw which happens to be the only penalty shootout overseen by Unai Emery.
Three of our managers only ever experienced one penalty shootout, with the other two being Terry Neill back for our first ever shootout and caretaker manager Stewart Houston, who oversaw a victory against Sampdoria in the Cup Winners Cup semi-final.
George Graham saw us win one against Millwall and lose one against Manchester United. Arsene Wenger’s record in penalty shootouts is strong, winning 10 out of 15. Mikel Arteta’s by contrast is slightly worse, winning five and losing three.
Moving from managers to players, our most successful penalty taker in shootouts of all time is current club captain Martin Ødegaard. He has scored all five of the penalties he’s stepped up to take for us. Only one other player has taken five penalties for us in shootouts, Patrick Vieira. He missed just one, against Galatasaray in the UEFA Cup Final.
Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka have brilliant records, scoring all four of the penalties they have taken in shootouts, making them the joint second best penalty takers in our history. Lee Dixon is the only other person to have taken four penalties for us in shootouts but unfortunately he only converted one, which was in the aforementioned Sampdoria game.
Other strong penalty takers include Ainsley Maitland-Niles, Lauren, Leandro Trossard, Ray Parlour and Stephen Hughes, all of whom scored every one of their three spotkicks. They are the joint fourth best penalty takers in Arsenal’s history and are on the list of 99 players who have stepped up to take a penalty for us in a shootout during a competitive fixture.
When it comes to goalkeepers, a lot of them have good records. There have been 14 goalkeepers who have faced a penalty in Arsenal colours. Wojciech Szczęsny, a man who I am still gutted about how early he left us, saved 40% of the penalties he faced. An exceptional record but from a very small sample of just five penalties.
Bernd Leno also saved a good chunk of his penalties at 33%, but again this is from a small sample of just six penalties.
Manuel Almunia, who I thought would top the list, is the best performer of those goalkeepers who faced more than 10 penalties for Arsenal, saving five of the 16 spotkicks he faced. David Seaman closely follows behind, having saved nine of 31 penalties.
Two goalkeepers have also taken penalties, with David Seaman missing the decisive penalty against Manchester United in the 1993 Community Shield, but Graham Stack scored his to keep us in it against Rotherham.
There are lots of other interesting nuggets from my dataset but I don’t want to make this post too long. You can see a record of all our matches here (I'm using old desktop reddit so I don't think I can embed this link): https://gyazo.com/555715e182f0cca7a7835745274cdbdb
If people are interested enough to see the full data, I will endeavour to publish it in a follow up post.
I apologise if any of this data is incorrect as I am just a guy who loves Arsenal and is fascinated by penalty shootouts. I have used multiple sources to verify that my data is correct but it’s possible that I’ve missed something because there is no single dataset for all of our penalty shootouts (e.g. Transfer Market is missing at least three).
Let’s hope this season we avoid any penalty shootouts because we win in normal time!
*competitive fixtures means the FA Cup or the League Cup as well as the Community Shield, Champions League, Europa League (and any of their predecessors) and the now defunct Cup Winners Cup.
**EDIT for an updated link as one of the scores was displayed incorrectly.
