What else can we say except, “look at the table”?

 

 

By Tony Attwood

• Top PL players: are Tottenham really the equal of Arsenal?
• Running a football club isn’t easy, and sometimes it can go horribly wrong

 

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Arsenal	30	20	7	3	59	22	37	67
2	Manchester City	29	18	6	5	59	27	32	60
3	Manchester United	29	14	9	6	51	40	11	51
4	Aston Villa	29	15	6	8	39	34	5	51

 

I have friends who said they knew we would do it.   Maybe I am more feeble in my support but the honest response is I thought we would do it.    I have nerves – although not as bad a set of nerves as some.   But once the game going, the confidence returned.

What I was not at all sure about was ManC.   After six successive victories, for them to slip against Nottingham Forest of all clubs was something unexpected.   Indeed I feel the need to show the lower reaches at this point…

 

Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
16	Tottenham Hotspur	28	7	8	13	38	43	-5	29
17	Nottingham Forest	29	7	7	15	28	43	-15	28
18	West Ham United	29	7	7	15	35	54	-19	28

 

So life is joyful, although of course the nerves will soon return, I know.  And I don’t normally wish any of my fellow humans a really bad time (except for those who start wars, torture, and the rest), but it does give me a bit of a smile to see Tottenham just ONE POINT above WHAM and the woodland folk.   OK, the Totts have got a much better goal difference than each of those teams, but there is still a lingering thought that they might just go down.   Or come so close to the descent that the owners will once again sack all their senior staff (which always makes things worse).

But we move on, and next up is Mansfield Town away on Saturday at 1215.  They are 16th in League One, just in case you hadn’t looked it up, which means they are even lower down the league structure than Tottenham.  So some of our players might be able to have a rest, having been playing on with minor strains and niggles, and that is never the best thing to do.  A rest on the bench can be helpful.

There are, of course, some silly headlines around, because that is what the media do, (Pep Guardiola and Mikel Arteta on opposite sides of set-piece culture war is a good example today) but it just goes to show how little of football the media understand.   And the negativity abounds, even with Arsenal stretching out their lead at the top.   “Only one team tried to play’: Hürzeler hits out at Arsenal after win at Brighton” shouts the Guardian.

I don’t think that is the slightest bit true, but it does remind me of little children saying “that’s not fair”.   If Arsenal go on and win the league as we all hope, no one will remember Brighton’s season except for their own fans who might recall last season compared with this, for they have indeed sunk down quite a bit.   Maybe that comes with “trying to play.”

 

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
7	Brighton and Hove 2025	29	12	11	6	48	42	6	47
13	Brighton and Hove 2026	29	9	10	10	38	36	2	37

 

The fact is that Brighton have not progressed this year but have sunk backwards, and in order to protect his own job the Brighton and Hove manager will try to find some sort of explanation for yesterday’s result which doesn’t involve him.   That is what people who fear getting the sack in football do.

They do it, not really to fool their own bosses who tend to know a little bit about football, but to fool their own fans who might have forgotten that this season their club has gone backwards by using the services of the media who will of course publish anything they are told (rather than do any proper research of their own).

Arsenal, in case you are interested, after 30 games this season, have six points more than this moment last season, and have a goal difference of seven goals better.    And we have done this so far without a top goal scorer – Viktor Gyökeres is on ten goal having scored under half the number of the top scorer, Erling Haaland (of Manchester City, in case you didn’t remember).

Which does show that the media’s fetish about which player scores the most doesn’t always tell us very much.   Arsenal and ManC have each scored the same number of goals.  The difference is that Arsenal have let in five fewer and have ended up, thus far, with seven points more (a figure that really is rather important).

There will be time to get a grip with Mansfield in the coming days, but for the moment, let us just spend a few seconds more contemplating the league table.  Or at least a little bit of it.  (Our goal difference is 42 better than the tiny totts)

 

Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Arsenal	30	20	7	3	59	22	37	67
16	Tottenham Hotspur	28	7	8	13	38	43	-5	29