“Daniel Levy targeted with Tottenham fans to protest at Man Utd match”

That headline comes from the Telegraph, and it is followed by an article in which we are told that supporters “are planning pre-game march followed by sit-in after Sunday’s fixture to voice their disapproval of Spurs chairman.”  The message as ever will be “Get out of our club”.

But really things down the Lane are not quite as bad as some make out.  After all it is not as if Tottenham are going down – that won’t happen any more now the PL finances have effectively made it nigh on impossible for promoted clubs to do anything much other than go back down the next season.

OK they might be 14th and sinking, and they might have 27 points to Arsenal’s 50, but even so they are still over 50% of Arsenal’s points, so that’s not too bad is it?

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
2	Arsenal	24	14	8	2	49	22	27	50
14	Tottenham Hotspur	24	8	3	13	48	37	11	27
15	West Ham United	24	7	6	11	29	46	-17	27
16	Everton	23	6	8	9	23	28	-5	26
17	Wolverhampton Wanderers	24	5	4	15	34	52	-18	19
18	Leicester City	24	4	5	15	25	53	-28	17

 

But of course the trouble is that these supporters of theirs will keep on talking up their own club while talking down Arsenal, in a way that is, by and large, utterly illogical.

Of course it is true that Arsenal have been in a similar state; in Deember 2020.  In fact Arsenal were in a worse state that season after 14 games, for Arsenal were just four points above the relegation places while Tottenham were being talked up for the Champions League what with Everton being in fourth spot on 26 points.  And as the media noted, Tottenham had a far better goal difference than Everton.  Amost twice as good in fact.

 

Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
6	Tottenham Hotspur	14	7	4	3	25	14	11	25
15	Arsenal	14	4	2	8	12	18	-6	14
18	Fulham	14	2	4	8	13	23	-10	10
19	West Bromwich Albion	14	1	4	9	10	29	-19	7
20	Sheffield United	14	0	2	12	8	25	-17	2

 

Now of course Tottenham supporters didn’t have any good words to say about Arsenal at the time, and were looking, full of ambition, at the upper reaches of the league.  But then they made two fatal errors.  The first was to play a merry-go-round game with managers – which almost always brings about disaster.

Indeed this decade (yes this decade, since 2020)  Tottenham have had no less than seven permanent and temporary managers.   This century they have had 19 permanent and temporary managers!  This decade Arsenal have one.  This century Arsenal have had four (including Freddie as a temp).

And remember this has included a period at the end of 2020 when Arsenal were 15th in the league.

But despite some poor times at the start, with the inevitable demands for his departure (including, utterly insanely this season and last season) Arteta has not only come good, he has also turned out to be the manager with the highest win percentage of competitive matches of any permanent Arsenal manager at any time in the club’s history.  That is to say since 1893.

That win percentage of Arteta’s is 59.22% – so let us contemplate Tottenham Hots and the win percentages of their managers.

Tottenham have never had a manager who has achieved Arteta’s level of wins but they have had two managers who have reached over 55% win percentage with Tottenham.  In the 19th century it was Frank Brettell (manager 1898-1899) who got to 58.73% victory rate in the Southern League.  And then there was Arthur Turner who it is claimed got to 55.1% win rate during the last of the wartime leagues in 1946/7.

In modern times Antonio Conte (2021/3) got to 53.95% wins, Mauricio Pchettino (54.27% wins) and Andre Villa-Boas (with 55% wins).

Now those figures are not too bad, but all those guys left Tottenham when they were doing ok.   And this may give us a sense of what is wrong at TotStad, as I think the ground is called (at least until they do finally find a ground sponsor – I wonder why it is taking so long).  They keep changing managers.

But why do that?   To answer this we might have a look at what happened to Keith Burkinshaw who in the space of three seasons (1980/1 to 1983/4) won the club two FA Cups and the Uefa cup.  He left because the chairman wanted a say in which players were bought.  And then the Tiny Totts slipped back down.

Since then Tottenham have won the League Cup twice and the FA Cup once.  But also since then by my count Tottenham have had 22 managers, excluding as far as I can make out, those who have been temps.

Maybe this shows that finding a manager who can do stuff is difficult.  Maybe it suggests that those people who are either calling for Arteta to go because he has failed to win anything since the FA Cup, should actually think what he has done compared to other managers.  Maybe we should just snigger at Tottenham and let Arsenal get on with it.