Does form tell us anything? Yes but probably not what you thought…

 

 

• While Arsenal have had the tough away games, who’s been getting it easy?
• Copa America legal cases maybe just could change world football

By Tony Attwood

Look at the current league table and you’ll see Arsenal placed in fourth, and Bournemouth in 12th.   But think back to the recent game between the two sides which Bournemouth won, and you might begin to wonder what is going on.

And you might remember we’ve already pointed out that Arsenal have had a singularly difficult opening set of games this season, including in their 11 matches, games against all the other clubs that came in the top seven last season.   In short 54% of Arsenal’s games have been against other top seven clubs from last season.

But, in fact across the whole season, only 37% of Arsenal’s games are against the other members of the top seven, so as we have pointed out before, Arsenal have had a singularly tough opening to the season – something which the media has been keen to avoid writing or talking about, at all.  Ever.

The other side of this of course is that in the remaining 71% of this season Arsenal are going to have far fewer matches against the top clubs from last season.

Obviously, this doesn’t mean Arsenal are going to win all those games – we can all remember the result against Bournemouth, very much not a top seven club, but even so we might reasonably hope for a better run from here on.

For the odd way in which the fixtures have been arranged this season, which has certainly been to the detriment of Arsenal, means that some clubs in the last six games have been able to do far better than expected because of the nature of their fixture list.

And indeed this doesn’t just apply to top six clubs.  For example, if we compare Bournemouth’s position in the last six games with their position in the last 10 matches they are nine places better off.  Brentford are eight places better off.  Manchester City however are four places worse off if we look at a table of the last six games only.

Other big movers include Everton who are five places better off, and Aston Villa are six places worse off.

However, if we are looking at these figures without considering what sort of fixtures they are we once again find them very misleading.

Below is the last six-match league table – as you can see Arsenal are 11th….  (Table supplied by the Fishy.)

 

Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Liverpool	6	5	1	0	11	5	+6	16
2	Bournemouth	6	3	1	2	10	7	+3	10
3	Nottingham Forest	6	3	1	2	9	6	+3	10
4	Brentford	6	3	1	2	15	13	+2	10
5	Fulham	6	3	1	2	9	8	+1	10
6	Man City	6	3	1	2	9	8	+1	10
7	Brighton	6	3	1	2	11	11	0	10
8	Tottenham	6	3	0	3	14	8	+6	9
9	Chelsea	6	2	3	1	10	8	+2	9
10	Everton	6	2	3	1	5	3	+2	9
11	Arsenal	6	2	2	2	10	9	+1	8

 

But Liverpool’s next two fixtures are against Manchester City and Newcastle.  Meanwhile Nottingham Forest are playing Manchester City, Manchester United and of course Arsenal in three of their next four fixtures.

Even Tottenham will have a somewhat harder time of it with games against Manchester City, Fulham and Chelsea among the upcoming four league games.

So although the league table at the moment looks less than enthralling, this decision of the Premier League to give Arsenal just about the toughest possible opening set of games imaginable, things will eventually balance out, and the League’s fixing committee (sorry that should be fixture committee, although given what we are seeing maybe “fixing” is right) might well be slightly concerned that Arsenal have sailed through this run of difficult fixtures and still come out the other end in fourth.

By Christmas, the table might well look a little different.

Now we know that at least one fan of ManC has called for their manager to go as they are only sixth, and it shows the maturity and depth of understanding of the way things can be manipulated in football that Arsenal fans, by and large, are not calling for change.

For while we might bemoan the fixing of the fixtures in this way which ensures that certain clubs can get a very positive boost by opening the season with a series of easier games, the reality is that each club is still going to play the other 19 sides twice.  Yes a very difficult run of matches can affect the confidence of the team, but I suspect Arsenal players and most certainly Arsenal management know enough about the manipulations of PGMO and indeed this time the fixtures committee, to make life easier for some and not others, to know they will soon be picking off some of the easier to beat teams.