Is there, at long, long last, an international uprising against state financed clubs?
By Tony Attwood
Last season Arsenal were seven points clear of the third-placed club. In 2023 Arsenal were nine points clear of third, and as part of the usual anti-Arsenal reportage the notion that Arsenal could slip down to third themselves, or even not qualify for the Champions League has been circulating for weeks.
What’s interesting is that none of the speculators looked at where Arsenal might end up ABOVE the third-place team. Although in doing this we must admit that it is still possible that Arsenal don’t finish second – but unlikely.
It is just possible for Manchester City to overtake Arsenal if ManC win their two remaining games and Arsenal lose to Southampton next weekend. However that by itself wouldn’t be quite enough for ManC would also have to close a goal difference of ten goals, thus perhaps winning their two games each by 5-0 while Arsenal lose to Southampton. It does however seem unlikley: in fact any defeat to Southampton seems unlikely.
Here’s the top of the table today… and it shows that a win for Arsenal while Newcastle, Chelsea and Villa are all defeated could give that eight point gap…
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | Max | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Arsenal | 37 | 19 | 14 | 4 | 67 | 33 | 34 | 71 | 74 |
| 3 | Newcastle United | 37 | 20 | 6 | 11 | 68 | 46 | 22 | 66 | 69 |
| 4 | Chelsea | 37 | 19 | 9 | 9 | 63 | 43 | 20 | 66 | 69 |
| 5 | Aston Villa | 37 | 19 | 9 | 9 | 58 | 49 | 9 | 66 | 69 |
| 6 | Manchester City | 36 | 19 | 8 | 9 | 67 | 43 | 24 | 65 | 71 |
| 7 | Nottingham Forest | 37 | 19 | 8 | 10 | 58 | 45 | 13 | 65 | 68 |
Another approach would be for Arsenal to lose Southampton 5-0 giving Arsenal a goal difference of +29 and Manchester to win 6-0 across their two matches. That would give ManC a goal difference of +30 and Arsenal a goal difference of +29
But as we have noted before that final Arsenal game is against Southampton whose position we can look at in the league… which of course I have loved to post for a while because of the teams in 16th and 17th. As Squawka put it “Tottenham Hotspur would have been hopeful of securing a top-four finish this season after coming fifth in their first campaign under Ange Postecoglou, but things haven’t quite gone to plan.”
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 | Manchester United | 37 | 10 | 9 | 18 | 42 | 54 | -12 | 39 |
| 17 | Tottenham Hotspur | 37 | 11 | 5 | 21 | 63 | 61 | 2 | 38 |
| 18 | Ipswich Town | 36 | 4 | 10 | 22 | 35 | 77 | -42 | 22 |
| 19 | Leicester City | 36 | 5 | 7 | 24 | 31 | 78 | -47 | 22 |
| 20 | Southampton | 37 | 2 | 6 | 29 | 25 | 84 | -59 | 12 |
Southampton as we can see have won two games this season but that is a lot worse than what I think was the previous worst for a 38 match PL season. That was Norwich City in 2019/20 in which they got 21 points and ended with a goal difference of -49. So even a win for Southampton against Arsenal next weekend would still leave them with the lowest points total ever and indeed almost certainly the worst goal difference ever. But Southampton then won the Championship with 97 points the following season to rise back up once more before falling back down once again.
So although Ipswich, Leicester City and Southampton are going down this season, that does not mean we will have seen the last of them, since two of last season’s departees are coming back again. Luton Town however will play in League One next season.
We’ll look in more detail at Southampton leading up to the final game, but it is perhaps worth noting that apart from only having won two games this season, they have only beaten Arsenal once in the last ten games between the two sides. That was in 2021/22, when Arsenal finished fifth and Southampton 15th.
But there is of course other news, and in this regard it is good to see that slowly more of the truth about Sir Alex Ferguson is emerging, although it is very late for this to happen. Blick Sport has a piece on Patrice Evra, for example, who played 379 matches under Ferguson. In an SDS podcast, he said
“You know how many players I saw crying because he threw hairdryers or boots at them – he was evil. If Ferguson were a manager right now, he’d probably end up in jail.” The piece includes a report of a torrade of abuse by Ferguson against Danny Welbeck. He also reports, in the recording, “the toxic atmosphere within the Manchester dressing room. In 2011, during the derby against Liverpool, Jamie Carragher violently tackled Nani. Without sympathy for Nani, Patrice Evra announced that “I hope his leg is broken”. Ferguson said “We were waiting for Nani to come back the next day to attack him. If you’re bleeding and crying, you’re done for, you’re out of our squad.” Later Patrice Evra apologized for his behavior saying “We were bad people. “I want to apologize to all the young people who trained with us. We were animals.”
Watching that Man U team of the time, some of us thought that too.
