By Tony Attwood
I don’t normally start writing about a forthcoming match more than a couple of days before the game is played, but this has been an international fortnight, and the upcoming match is against Tottenham. So I thought I might sneak in a bit of an extra preview, what with us being top and Tottenham being fifth.
And what better place to start than the overall record – Arsenal have won 89 of the 211 games between the two clubs (42%) while Tottenham have won 67 (32%). The remaining 26% have. rather obviously, been drawn.
In terms of the league, Arsenal have won the top division 13 times and Tottenham have won it twice. That more or less sums it up..
As things stand this season after 11 games, Arsenal have scored just one more goal than Tottenham, but have conceded only half as many as Tottenham since August in the league.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal | 11 | 8 | 2 | 1 | 20 | 5 | 15 | 26 |
| 5 | Tottenham Hotspur | 11 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 19 | 10 | 9 | 18 |
Now last season Arsenal lost 10% of their games while Tottenham lost 58% Arsenal had a goal difference of +35 and Tottenham of -1. And just one more statistic from the last campaign, Arsenal were within two points of achieving double the points total of Tottenham
So we can say that Tottenham this season is closing the gap on Arsenal with its form improvement this season.
Obviously, Tottenham’s biggest problem last season was that their attention was ultimately diverted into the Europa League, which they won. In the Premier League, they lost 22 out of 38 games. But last season was a bit of an oddity; normally, the gap is not that big.
In fact, Tottenham had a huge falling away in the latter part of the season, winning only one of their last 12 league games. What’s more, the points they did pick up last campaign were mostly against the weaker teams, such as Southampton, West Ham, Ipswich and so forth.
Their ultimate drop to 17th was their worst performance in almost 50 years, when in fact they got relegated. The following season, they came third in Division 2 and so came back up again.
Their current position in the league is fifth, which is to say, there, but not quite, It is, one might say, typical of their form in recent years.
Meanwhile, Arsenal have a spot of positive news about Martin Odegaard, who, as you may recall, has been injured.
The media claim is that “Martin Odegaard says that his injury is ‘starting to look better’ amid hope that he’ll be available for this Sunday’s North London derby. Odegaard, 26, has been sidelined since the start of October with a knee injury which he suffered in the Gunners’ 2-0 win at home to West Ham.”
Thankfully, the officials of his country did not pick Odegaard for recent games even though he has been recouping there, and Norway qualified for the World Cup finals without him.
So there is the news that even if Odegaard doesn’t start the next game, he should be on the bench, and after that should be making his comeback. But then against that we have the news of at least two players down through playing internationals, rather than focusing on the organisation that pays them. For not only Gabriel Magalhaes but also Riccardo Calafiori pick up an injury and that, I guess, means that each of them will be very doubtful for the Tottenham game.
Personally, I would be very surprised if Odegaard did even make the bench for the Tottenham game, and one can only wonder if he paid a script writer for that comment. But to be fair, he did go on saying, “The match today came a little too early… But it’s starting to look better, so hopefully I’ll be back soon.”
Of course Arsenal are not giving away any detailed in information about any of the injured: namely, Odegaard, Kai Havertz, Noni Madueke, Viktor Gyokeres and Gabriel Martinelli. But even if some will be back following the international break surely it is getting close to the time for clubs to take control of whether their players are fit enough to play in interationals.
Arteta was of course, his normal coy self, answering the question about how many will be unavailable for the Tottenham game, by saying, “Some of them, all of them, I don’t know. There are a lot of things that have to happen…
And one might say, a load of stuff that has happened. Most of it not good. But on the other hand it is only Tottenham we are playing..
So great to see Kieran Tierney’s spectacular goal last night. I thought he was a great player when he first came to Arsenal and he had some dreadful luck with injuries. Good luck to him.
I hope for the best but fear the worst bearing in mind we have Oliver officiating. Webb hoping to destabilize our season by giving us the biggest anti Arsenal referee he has at his disposal.