By Bulldog Drummond
- Preston v Arsenal; the injury recoveries, the young players, and 2 unbeaten teams
- The bias against Arsenal is not pre-meditated. It’s far worse than that
According to the official Preston site, Arsenal tickets are sold out for this match. According to the “Live Football Tickets” they can be bought – although at a hefty mark up price. Which makes me wonder, if football authorities are so keen on tracking us all, on the basis that it stops violence breaking out, and stops ticket touting, why is this happening? Is it for example that they actually don’t care about ticket touting, and instead want to keep track of us for other nefarious reasons?
I suppose one possible answer is that really, no one really cares very much about touting, which is why it continues It just happens; that is how it goes.
Anyway, since beating Fulham 16-15 in the last round of the league cup (and yes that really was 16-15, which I think was the biggest score for a penalty shoot out in a professional match ever – but do correct me if you know of a higher score) Preston North End have been doing ok with two wins, four draws and one defeat, all the games coming in the Championship.
The defeat was 3-1 away to Millwall. At home of late they have beaten Watford and Coventry City while drawing with Norwich City. Twice they have scored three goals in a game, drawing with Plymouth Argyle and beating Watford.
But here is a little point about Arsenal.
Arsenal have played nine league games this season and three of them have been against what we might call the other members of the traditional top six: Liverpool, Tottenham and Manchester City. So a third of Arsenal games in the league have been against the other top six clubs. But throughout the whole season only fractionally over a quarter of Arsenal’s games are against other top six clubs.
So Arsenal have been given an above-average number of games against the bigger clubs in this opening to the season. At least this game will bring a spot of relief from that. The fixture list is against us.
Preston last won a trophy in 2000 when they won the League Division 2. Then in their first season in Division 1 they came 4th, but then each year slipped further and further down, coming 8th, 12th and 15th.
Their last significant win was that of the League One Play Offs which took them back into the Championship where they have been ever since.
In the form table based on the last six games Preston are tenth in their leaguewith two wins and a draw at home and two draws and a defeat away. At home they have scored six and conceded two in these last six games.
This compares with Arsenal in terms of their last six where Arsenal also have two wins and a draw at home and one win, one draw and one defeat away from home. Interestingly, looking at the last six table, despite all the doom and gloom stories over this short period of time, Arsenal are still fifth on 11 points just three behind Manchester City with 14, who are top of the last six table.
We might also perhaps compare Preston’s start to the season this year with what happened to them last year. For in 2023 Preston started with a draw followed by six wins in the Championship.
After these six games they were indeed Proud Preston as their motto says (or used to say, I might be out of date on this).
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Preston North End | 6 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 10 | 4 | 6 | 16 |
| 2 | Leicester City | 6 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 11 | 5 | 6 | 15 |
| 3 | Ipswich Town | 6 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 12 | 7 | 5 | 15 |
| 4 | Norwich City | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 15 | 8 | 7 | 13 |
But then after beating Birmingham City on 19 September things went rather badly wrong for them. For from that point on they played 13 games in the league in which they won two , drew four and lost seven. During this spell their goals scored were 12 and the goals conceded 25. They sank from top of the league on 19 September to tenth by the end of the season. 34 points behind the champions, Leicester City.
Thus one might say that certainly last season they were not the most consistently stable of teams. Today they are 12th, on half the number of points of Sunderland at the top of the table just three points clear of the relegation spaces. Relegation spaces which incidentally include Luton Town who last season were playing in the Premier League.
Just goes to show. (I’m not sure what it goes to show, but I am sure it goes to show something.)
More anon.
