- What might happen if Tottenham get relegated?
- What really happened at WHL, and why changing managers is such a laugh
By Tony Attwood
There are still 10+ games to go in the Premier League and 13 in the Championship, but already we can start making predictions (or if you prefer, jumping on the bandwagon or leaping to conclusions) as to who will go down and who will come up.
Looking at promotion hopefuls, the four favourites to make it up are Coventry City, Middlesbrough, Ipswich Town and Hull City. And if we want to predict how likely they are to stay up, we can look at a few hypothetical situations, such as could Coventry City at home beat Tottenham away, and the reverse – could Tottenham at home beat Coventry away.
And although we have to take into account the very different levels of difficulty between the Premier League and the Championship, we might note that Tottenham have managed to get 10 points at home this season, and promotion-chasing Coventry have got 26 points away from home. Moreover, Tottenham have scored 17 home goals and Coventry have scored 34 home goals. If they get there, it will be a lot tougher for Coventry in the top league, but they might well just survive with an attack like that.
Tottenham’s problem of course, is their home form, but their situation is not just down to that. For if we go back in time and look at the Premier League table on 25 October last year. Tottenham as we can see, were third.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal | 9 | 7 | 1 | 1 | 16 | 3 | 13 | 22 |
| 2 | AFC Bournemouth | 9 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 16 | 11 | 5 | 18 |
| 3 | Tottenham Hotspur | 9 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 17 | 7 | 10 | 17 |
| 4 | Sunderland | 9 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 11 | 7 | 4 | 17 |
| 5 | Manchester City | 9 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 17 | 7 | 10 | 16 |
Now if you are a regular reader of my ramblings, you might recall that I spent quite a bit of the early part of this season complaining about Arsenal’s schedule of matches. A schedule in which in the first six games we had included away games against Manchester United, Liverpool and Newcastle, with home games against Manchester City, Nottingham Forest and Leeds. OK, those last two home games were not so bad, and Arsenal duly won them, but fixtures against Manchester United, Liverpool and Manchester City – and indeed at that stage one might have added away to Newcastle United, all looked at least challenging if not actually impossible.
I am not sure we argued that the fixture list was “fixed” but I remember noting in my comments that the order of games was certainly flawed if not outright biased against Arsenal. And I was as surprised and happy as anyone, to find the league table after six matches showing Arsenal in second place to Liverpool.
But here’s another point, for you might remember that after those opening six games, Tottenham were actually fourth….
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Liverpool | 6 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 12 | 7 | 5 | 15 |
| 2 | Arsenal | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 12 | 3 | 9 | 13 |
| 3 | Crystal Palace | 6 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 8 | 3 | 5 | 12 |
| 4 | Tottenham Hotspur | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 11 | 4 | 7 | 11 |
Now at the time, I don’t think we did a commentary on Tottenham having some comparatively easy fixtures to start the season, but they did have games against Burnley, Bournemouth and Wolverhampton at home, not to mention West Ham and Brighton away, and given all the hype surrounding the Tots at the time, all looked rather winnable.
Amazingly, as you might also recall, Tottenham beat the ManCs away 0-2 on 23 August, and indeed ManC had a very wobbly start, losing two of their first three.
But after their away win at ManC, Tottenham only won two of their next six games, and although we couldn’t know it at the time, that was the start of their decline, which today leaves them lingering in 16th, four points above relegation.
So what does any of this tell us? One obvious thing is that even with a club doing well in the opening half a dozen games in the League, that most certainly can’t be taken as a prediction of what will happen next.
Crystal Palace were in third after six games and are now 13th. Tottenham Hots were fourth at the end of September but are now 17th, four points above relegation.
Doing well in the early games is always very encouraging for us fans, but if the club then slips back significantly, the negativity around the club can be much worse than the club gets from having a mediocre season all the way through.
In short, the rule has to be, if the club starts well, it needs to make damn sure it can keep up the pace, otherwise the criticism can remove the manager and result in major disruption to the club’s plans.
