By Tony Attwood
“Anything can happen in the next half hour” was, I recall, part of the introductory segment of the puppet series Stingray (although that is stretching my memory a bit.) Although stretching the time period, I do feel that anything can happen between now and next May.
Certainly, it would seem very likely that some clubs have already started to target Arsenal players in the hope of slowing them down. And this of course, is something that is encoruaged by the huge variation in the way referees oversee games, with regular referees this season having yellow card averages of anything between 5.5 and 2.0 cards per game. And let me stress, this is each refs AVERAGE card issue, not their highest and lowest so far. Get a ref with a low average card rate, and the level of unpunished fouling goes up, along with the number of injured players.
But for now, Arsenal are chugging along rather well. Arsenal have not gone to the utter extremes of Liverpool in trying to hold onto possession come what may (Arsenal have an average of 58% possession – lower than Liverpool, Chelsea and Villa), and they are allowing the opposition more possession in order to encourage them forward, leaving space for Arsenal’s quick-moving counter. Arsenal have learned their lesson with referees, are below the league average on the number of tackles put in (and hence fouls called against them) than Liverpool. It is a technique that seems to be working well, as the league table below shows.
Here I have included the teams that were being talked up by the media pre-season, for various reasons…
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal | 7 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 14 | 3 | 11 | 16 |
| 2 | Liverpool | 7 | 5 | 0 | 2 | 13 | 9 | 4 | 15 |
| 3 | Tottenham Hotspur | 7 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 13 | 5 | 8 | 14 |
| 6 | Chelsea | 7 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 13 | 9 | 4 | 11 |
| 7 | Sunderland | 7 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 7 | 6 | 1 | 11 |
| 8 | Manchester City | 6 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 14 | 6 | 8 | 10 |
| 9 | Manchester United | 7 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 9 | 11 | -2 | 10 |
| 15 | Newcastle United | 6 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 5 | -1 | 6 |
| 16 | Aston Villa | 6 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 6 | -2 | 6 |
| 17 | Nottingham Forest | 6 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 10 | -5 | 5 |
The point here, of course, is the pundits tend to be rather poor at telling us what is going to happen, but they overcome this by publishing more and more of their punditry, secure in the knowledge that most people are now so used to this they just soak it up as part of the general background.
We do, of course, now have major concerns about Martin Ødegaard’s knee injury and apart from wishing him a quick recovery, we can also say that without him, the team is still coping. This latest event was apparently caused by a “clash knee-to-knee,” and it doesn’t look like something that can be resolved with a few days’ rest. We also have an injury to Rice, who apparently asked to come up because of pain in his back.
But perhaps most of all, we should remember all the prognostications about this match with the worries that, having scored two or more goals in six of their last seven games, Arsenal would, for reasons that were never explained, slip up in a game against one of the lower-scoring teams in the league.
And this really does bring up a significant point about the way Arsenal are being reported. Arsenal are the top scoring team in the Premier League on 14 goals – although to be complete, I must add that ManC also have 14 goals and have this weekend’s game still to play. At worst we are second best.
Arsenal also have the best defence in the league (three goals conceded), equal with Crystal Palace, who have played one fewer game. As a result, Arsenal have the best goal difference in the league (and here we might note that the Arsenal goal difference is seven better than Liverpool, who have been repeatedly talked up by the media as superior to Arsenal.
Now of course, things might change in the course of today (Sunday) or indeed in the coming week, but it is unlikely that Arsenal’s position of strength will decline since all this is being achieved despite a whole range of injuries being reported each week.
But the fact is that although injuries are always bad news, Arsenal are not the only club suffering. Yes, Arsenal have had six injuries so far this season, and only Tottenham have had more, but three other clubs have had six, and in fact half the league have already had four or more injuries.
Besides, although injuries are never good news, the number of injuries a club has does not directly equate with the club’s position in the league. Nine clubs are shown on the table as having had between zero and two injuries this season – and they are not the clubs at the top. Bournemouth, Leeds, Liverpool, ManU, Newcastle, West Ham, and Wolverhampton all have had two injuries so far this campaign. Nottingham Forest have had one and Fulham (currently 12th in the league) have had none.
Of course, injuries are never good, but in their summer purchasing Arsenal acted in the sure knowledge that they are going to be kicked this season, with perhaps less protection than we might expect from the referees, and hence brought in extra players to cope with this. It already appears to be paying off.
