By Bulldog Drummond
- If your child was not treated properly at a football club, who would you complain to?
- There is something seriously wrong with Arsenal’s admin
It seems quite funny to mention it now, since during the last dozen league games between Arsenal and Manu, the northerners have only won two, but there was a time when Arsenal could seemingly never beat Manchester U.
And yet looking back we now find that the last time Manu beat Arsenal away from very old Strafford, was an FA Cup match on 25 January 2019. That was the final game in a run of seven in which the northerners won four, two games were draws and there was a single solitary victory in a league match by Arsenal in May 2017.
But that awful run did end in January 2019, and since then it really has been Arsenal 8, Manchester United two, and there have been two draws. A much more acceptable state of affairs.
Now 2019 is of course an important year in Arsenal’s history since Mikel Arteta was brought in as manager that year, and although the results against ManU were turned around before he arrived, the 2019 results were a win at home and a draw away, and we had no idea if that really was the turning of the tide.
However under Arteta it really has been seven Arsenal wins, two deafets and one draw. 18 goals to Arsenal and 10 to ManU.
But yes in January 2019 the score was Arsenal 1 ManchU 3, with Unai Emery in charge of Arsenal. Arsenal’s team was
Cech
Koscielny Sokratis Kolasinac Maitland-Niles
Ramsey Xhaka Torreira Iwobi
Abuameyang Lacazette
Of course Unai Emery has since moved on and indeed, as if often the case with a manager, once he left Arsenal he received lots of praise for his work in his new role – in this case at Aston Vill – a with consequent suggestions that the reasons he didn’t win stuff at Arsenal is that Arsenal don’t have a winning mentality.
On the other hand under we now find Emery Aston Villa have won four of their last 16 matches, including a run in November of four successive defeats in which they conceded nine and scored two. Can you imagine what the media would have made of that if he had still been at Asenal?
.But back to now… where has it gone so wrong for the Manus?
One possible area of self-inflicted cockup has been their desire, rather like Villa, but on a bigger scale, to change the managers. In the last six years they have had six of them, although to be fair one was a caretaker and twof of them have been designated interim. Their natinalities read like a rout of Europe: Norway, England, Germany, Netherlands, Netherlands again and now Portugal. Longer term players are said to ask of new managers, “What language should we use?” and “How long do you think you’ll be here?”
But perhaps the real problem for the ManUs is that the latest incarnation, having had 11 games (that’s Ruben Amorim in case you are losing touch, and it is rather hard to keep up with issues relating to the ManUs I do agree) has only got a win percentage of 33%. Now interim manager Ralf Rangnick is the only one who has got even close going beyond this, taking the club down to 37.93% win rate., but the new man must be congratulated on beating the recent decline.
Still there is plenty of time, and there is of course the chance that within the strange world of the north west, there is a plot to do something dastardly and clever – and it is just that it is so clever we haven’t quite worked out what it is yet.
Of course one great objective has been achieved, and ManU are actually lower now than the Tiny Tottts, and there are not many clubs that are managing that at the moment.
One of their particular problems just now is the fact that with over half the season gone only four teams have managed to score fewer goals that ManU: Crystal Palace, Ipswich Town, Everton and Southampton. And indeed Ipswich Town have only scored three fewer than ManU, so it is getting close.
In other matters it would appear that ManU’s biggest problem is that someone has said to them, “if you want to do well and get the crowd on your side you need to play some interesting football, like that north London lot.”
Unfortunately for the Manus they took that literally, saw that Tottenham have indeed scored lots of goals and used their approach which they assumed would lead them to glory.
As a result if we look at the last six matches table we see
| Pos | Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 | Tottenham Hots | 6 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 14 | 15 | -1 | 4 |
| 18 | Manch Un | 6 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 6 | 13 | -7 | 4 |
| 19 | Leicester C | 6 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 4 | 16 | -12 | 1 |
| 20 | Southampton | 6 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 1 | 14 | -13 | 1 |
Still I am sure they will grow out of it.
Eventually.
Does Sir F-word (as we used to call him), still have a season ticket? I guess he does. He must be getting really cheesed off.
