The key question that is never asked in the never ending attacks on Arsenal

 

 

By Tony Attwood

• Arsenal in Europe as Tottenham are ranked below Bodo/Glimt

As the European matches continue, an underlying point has been made in English football that somehow Arsenal are cheating.   And three accusations lead on to such thoughts as: why are they cheating, how are they cheating, and why are the authorities letting Arsenal get away with it?   And indeed, if you really want to dig into this, there could be this question following on: is someone helping them cheat, or are they so clever they are doing it all by themselves?  Plus, if someone is helping, who is it?   PGMO?  It seems unlikely!  Uefa?  Ditto.

I pondered all this while watching the Euro game last night, wondering if I could find any sign of cheating – but I couldn’t.  It could be argued that the penalty at the end wasn’t a penalty, but unless the argument is that the ref had been truly bought along with the people running the VAR who manipulated the images, it was a penalty, and Arsenal got their draw, which is obviously going to help in the re-match.  Not to mention the psychology of the Arsenal players for the forthcoming Everton game on saturday (at 5.30pm).

Now of course, these “Arsenal cheat” comments are easier to make than to be seen through in practice, and quite honestly, if Arsenal were cheating last night, I wish they had done it a bit better and got the win instead of making us wait so long.   But we got the goal, and if you are looking back at any team that wins a trophy, there are always chances are you will see an odd, dodgy game along the way.

But what really pleased me about the draw last night was that it now means a dozen games since our last defeat    And that’s good because after the Everton game the fixture list doesn’t look that pleasant as it involves Bayer Leverkusen at home and ManC away.

And ManC’s last three games read as a draw, a win and a defeat.   Not quite the sort of run they had before that, with eight wins and a draw in nine but they are still hard to beat.   It could be a tasty affair.

The Guardian’s coverage of the Real Mad game is headlined “Valverde’s astonishing Real Madrid hat-trick leaves Manchester City on brink” which is something we haven’t read about for quite a while.   I particularly liked the comment that told us the game “cast Pep Guardiola as a tactical novice.”

Of course, the reality is that in every game it is up to Arsenal to win, not for us to rely on the failures of others, but even so, one can’t help but smile occasionally.  And I still do recall that Manchester City came eighth in the league stage of the Champs League this season.  Mind you we can’t really judge too much on that as Tottenham came fourth.  Last night, Manchester City lost 3-0 and Tottenham 5-2, while Liverpool also lost, this time 1-0 to Galatasaray.

So we might say that the old notion of the Premier League being the best league in the world is not being repeated so often on the continent.   And I do think any return to reality in journalism is not a bad thing.   For there was at one time a reason to think the Premier League offered football not seen elsewhere, but six league titles in seven years funded by the seemingly unlimited riches of an oil state to one club, rather seemed to put an end to that form of thinking.

So anyway, Arsenal got a draw, and stands a decent chance of going through to the next round after the return game.

And I guess I really should squeeze in a word about Chelsea with their 5-2 defeat to PSG.  Chelsea are 19 points behind Arsenal in the PL, but there is also their goal difference that is 18 goals worse.   The Chelsea game reports are headlined with words like “another keeper calamity” which isn’t really that positive, and one begins to wonder why both Tottenham and Chelsea at the same time have had such difficulties in finding themselves a regular keeper who can do what we normally expect goalkeepers to do.

I am sure there is an answer somewhere, but for the moment it is quite interesting to watch both those teams defences trying to avoid their keeper getting the ball. 

PS: Tottenham are 38 points below Arsenal in the Premier League, just in case you couldn’t find them.