- Are English clubs really exhausted before they take on Europe?
- If people who buy football clubs can’t see they are being stupid, who are we to tell them?
By Tony Attwood
And so, we rush back from foreign parts to focus on the domestic league, which finds Arsenal at home to Everton on Saturday in the early evening. There are, in fact, only seven places between the two clubs in the league, but the differences are sharper than we might otherwise expect. Arsenal have scored 25 more goals at home than Everton have away (although Arsenal have played one more home game than Everton have played away).
The defensive difference is slightly closer, but even so, Arsenal have conceded 11 goals fewer than Everton.
These totals do seem quite large, but really, it is when they are added together that the real shock emerges, because Arsenal’s goal difference is 36 better than Everton’s!
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal | 30 | 20 | 7 | 3 | 59 | 22 | 37 | 67 |
| 8 | Everton | 29 | 12 | 7 | 10 | 34 | 33 | 1 | 43 |
In fact, if one were to build a league table based on goal difference, the speed of decline in the numbers is really quite extraordinary, moving from 37 for Arsenal to 11 for ManU in just four places in the points table. It really does reveal the extraordinary positivity in Arsenal’s play through the season – top scorers (equal with ManC, although Arsenal has played one game more) and the best defence in the league.
In fact, half a dozen Premier League teams have conceded twice as many goals as Arsenal, and I suspect that figure will be quite a bit higher by the end of the season.
| 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 |
| 5 | Chelsea | 29 | 13 | 9 | 7 | 53 | 34 | 19 | 48 |
| 3 | Manchester United | 29 | 14 | 9 | 6 | 51 | 40 | 11 | 51 |
As ever, I like to take a look at how the clubs compare in terms of their home and away games, and here we can see Arsenal’s advantage emphasised – Arsenal score twice as many goals at home compared with Everton’s goal scoring record away.
And again, the comparative goal difference (Arsenal at home compared with Everton away) is simply massive – I think it is 1200% although my calculator has been giving me funny looks over that one. But as you can see, Arsenal’s home GD is 24 while Everton’s away GD is 2.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Arsenal home | 14 | 11 | 2 | 1 | 33 | 9 | 24 | 35 |
| 4 | Everton away | 14 | 7 | 3 | 4 | 16 | 14 | 2 | 24 |
But there can always be a worry that the situation we are seeing across the whole season is not a fair reflection of the current position, so we also have a look at the last six games. Now that shows us Arsenal in first place and Everton down in ninth. And once again that goal difference is of interest – Arsenal being on +8, four times that of Everton on +2. Plus I should add that this table is based on all the last six games, not the last six away games or home games.
| Pos | Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal | 6 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 13 | 5 | +8 | 14 |
| 9 | Everton | 6 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 9 | 7 | +2 | 10 |
But the fact is that whichever way we look at the form, across home/away, differences this season, or just the last six game, the winner is indicated.
Looking back at Everton’s recent record, the two defeats in the last six games were both home games – to Bournemouth and Manchester United.
If, however, we look at the league games from the start of the year we find ten games played by Everton, with four wins, three defeats and three draws. They have scored 15 goals, and conceded 11, and this has taken them up to eighth in the league.
Of course a major part of the issues surrounding Everton is the new stadium and its cost – and as so often happens, once the building was near completion a new funding deal was struck (given that it is awlays easier to borrow money at lower interest rates when the project is just about complete, than when it simply exists on paper, and no one quite knows what unexpected whatnots might turn up as the diggers get to work.
The cost of the stadium was initially set at around £500m, but the final cost appears to be around £750m and of course, that money has to be paid back somehow. We probably all remember how Wegener had to reduce his buying projects dramatically once Arsenal moved, in order to cut costs. It is more than likely that Tottenham are in the same situation, although correspondents sometimes deny that they have even had to pay for the ground. And matters of fact are complicated at Tottenham by the previous owner being found guilty of a variety of crimes, and thus departing the scene.
So the move will undoubtedly restrict the amount of money Everton can splash around the transfer market for some years to come, (Everton’s net transfer spend in January was zero, although in the previous summer they spent £96m. Arsenal spent around a quarter of a billion last summer).
However one looks at it, just as Arsenal had a period of lower spending on players when they moved to the new stadium, so Everton are bound to have some sort of restriction, even if we disagree how much.
