- Arsenal v Wolverhampton: A referee who utterly favours the away team
- Arsenal v Wolverhampton: the last five seasons for each side, and current injuries
- Arsenal v Wolverhampton: how the financial issues of last season will affect this campaign
By Tony Attwood
There is a major problem with expectation: expect too much and one can be disappointed. Except too little and one becomes a gloomy old sod left sitting alone in the bar nursing one pint too many.
And although the journalists are doing their usual Manchester City love-in, quite probably afraid that if they don’t then their press passes to the ground and press conferences will be confiscated, there is something of a buzz around the issue of Arsenal winning the league this season. Either on their own, or with Manchester City getting a points deduction and thus helping Arsenal along the way.
Of course that latter option will be annoying in that it will mean that forever this season will have an asterisk against it with journalists across the land proclaiming that ManC would have won it had it not been for the asterisk.
But last season’s table is still something that is hard to believe… not least because it shows Arsenal delivering 91 goals – the highest Arsenal goal tally in a 38-match campaign ever, and the highest since winning the league in 1953, during which campaign we played four matches more, and defences were, well, rather different in those days.
Indeed in 1952/3 Arsenal let in 64 goals which is twice as many as the 29 conceded last season, which gives some measure of the different way in which football was played in those days.
In fact if nothing happens to Manchester City, and Arsenal come second to them again I am not sure I will be that upset, simply because I find it hard to believe that the League would make up 115 breaches of its procedures, and given the penalties that two other clubs have already had for breaches of around half a dozen issues not battered ManC out of the league for quite a long time.
But then it’s football which is not so much a funny ol’ game, as a game that has a very funny bunch of administrators.
And this is not a season where we are expecting things to improve through the advent of the new Arsenal number 9 that some bloggers and journalists are still craving, and will be blaming Arteta for, if Arsenal don’t shoot to the top at once.
As ever there are multiple commentators demanding new players and seeing things which to them are obvious but which Arteta and co don’t take note of. But in the demands for new players there is very little thought of Arsenal’s FFP situation, and whether a club with a player that good would be willing to sell him to a club so near the top.
And there is the reverse situation to consider. If the notion is that everyone is available at the right price, then I am amazed that we are holding on to some of our players. Indeed this is the contradiction: there would be outrage of Arsenal sold Rice for £120m but Arsenal are expected to be able to knock up a deal for whomever the club wants to buy.
What I do find interesting however is the lack of discussion concerning Martinelli last season, his injury and his loss of form. Last season he had 24 starts and six goals (a goal ratio of 25%). Two seasons ago it was 40 starts and 15 goals – a goal ratio of 38%. If the form that we began to see again later last season is repeated that could see us score even more goals than last season.
And this is before we take into account the situation concerning Gabriel Jesus who again is a player who might well be able to recapture some previous form – or turn into a superb player to bring on in the last 20 minutes of the game, make the opposition defence readjust and as a result create or score a vital goal or two. Indeed the fact is that despite Martinelli’s decline, Arsenal’s overall goalscoring went up. If Martinelli gets his previous form back and Gabriel could become a powerful substitute we could be into some real fun.
