Top PL players: are Tottenham really the equal of Arsenal?

 

 

• Running a football club isn’t easy, and sometimes it can go horribly wrong

By Tony Attwood

There is a list of players on the Give me Sport website under the heading of the 20 best signings of the season.    Perhaps a little disappointingly, only two of them are with Arsenal, Martin Zubimendi at 16th on the list and Eberechi Eze at number 9.

I didn’t think too much of this until I went on and realised that there were also two Tottenham players in the list: Mohammed Kudus at number two and Joao Palhinha at number 13.  

Now I don’t watch enough football that doesn’t involve Arsenal to be able to judge whether these ratings are reasonable or not, but if, for the moment, we accept that they are, it does show once again that individual players don’t make a team, no matter how wonderful they are as individuals.

To see this, let’s engage in one of my favourite statistical sports this season, comparing Tottenham and Arsenal’s form in the Premier League.  And this time I am separating these into home and away for reasons that I hope might become clear in a moment.

First off, the home games.   Tottenham are just so far behind Arsenal in terms of home games that it is hard to imagine the two teams are in the same league.   Arsenal have scored twice as many goals at home as Tottenham, Arsenal have conceded fewer than half the number of home goals that Tottenham have, and Arsenal have three times as many points as Tottenham have from home games….

 

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
2	Arsenal home 2025/26	14	11	2	1	33	9	24	35
18	Tottenham Hotspur home 2025.26	14	2	4	8	17	22	-5	10

 

But now compare the away form.   Arsenal, of course, are still better than Tottenham, but only by four goals scored, although Tottenham’s defence away is not so solid.   But in terms of points, although Arsenal are still better, we are only one and a half times better than Tottenham when it comes to games away from home.

 

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Arsenal away	15	8	5	2	25	13	12	29
9	Tottenham Hotspur away	14	5	4	5	21	21	0	19

 

Arsenal, of course, do have a better away record than Tottenham, but Tottenham’s away record, as we have mentioned many times before, is much, much better than its home form.

Now, for a moment, let us compare Tottenham’s away form last season with their home form in that campaign.

 

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
17	Tottenham Hotspur away 2024/5	19	5	2	12	29	30	-1	17
15	Tottenham Hotspur  home 2024/5	19	6	3	10	35	35	0	21

 

Tottenham at home in 2024/5 wes a bit better than their away form.  Not by much, I do agree, but still a bit better.   But Tottenham’s home form this season is but a shadow of its home form last season.

Now the big point here is that in 2024/25 at home, Tottenham were not that good – for although they scored as many as they conceded, they only won six out of 19.   But they were still a bit better than they were away from home.

However, the talk in Tottenham at the end of 2024/25 was that the main thing is to get the home form sorted.  Home supporters are of course, the natural base of the club’s support, and almost half of the league teams won over half of their home games.    Indeed, this is what we always expect – to win your home games.

In fact, last season only five teams lost over half of their home games.  This season only four teams have lost over half of their home games: West Ham United, Tottenham Hots, Burnley and Wolverhampton Wands.  For the record Tottenham have played 14 at unsponsored New WHL, and they have won two, drawn four and lost eight.    That is worse than West Ham, identical to Burnley, and just one draw better than Wolverhampton.  And it explains why they can’t get a ground sponsor.

In the simplest of terms, clubs owe it to their supporters to win their home games.  That is what the paying public expects and demands.

Now, according to Ticket Compare, “As of today, there are around 80,000 fans waiting for the chance to purchase a Tottenham season ticket…. With a bit of digging, we worked out that it could take three years or more for you to be offered a ticket if you joined the waiting list today.” 

That is obviously quite a lot less time than it would take to get onto the season ticket waiting list at Arsenal, and of course, issues of Tottenham’s season ticket are not really our concern.  But I publish this thought, because assuming Tottenham continue to get results as they are getting them this season, I wouldn’t be surprised to see that waiting list shrink quite a bit in the summer.

And that might be a problem for Tottenham, as I suspect that part of the way they are paying for their stadium is through having a guarantee of a full season ticket sale each summer.

Will Tottenham run out of money if they don’t sell all their season tickets?  I don’t think so, but like West Ham (as per our last piece on this subject), putting up prices, and keeping each match sold out, while actually not winning at home, isn’t the best policy.