By Tony Attwood
Why we should encourage talk that Arsenal cheated their way to the top
For many years, as long as I can remember, in fact, it has seemed that football journalists take their position to be one in which they are able to point out the mistakes football managers and their selected players make. And by implicatioin this suggests that if only these journalists were allowed to be in control of clubs, everything would be fine for these mistakes would never happen.
Except, of course journalsits have no experience of running a club or managing a team. And thus we know the fundamental precept of journalist talk in terms of football is basically bunkum.
But even journalists have their limits. For even the Tottenham-loving journalists eventually admitted that this Tottenham team is awful, and that the way the club has been run is utterly appalling. Some even admitted it wasn’t really a good idea to have a club owned by a man like Joe Lewis, who was guilty of insider trading on a megascale. Although not all, and after a while, those who did recognise the fallacy of such an approach tended to forget about it.
But now, even journalists are admitting that Arsenal are doing rather well. Although I suspect this coming Sunday will be headlined in many places as Arsenal’s “biggest test”. For Sunday is of course the date of the League Cup Final against the Mancs.
There will obviously be plenty of time to pick our way among the statistics swirling around this match, but maybe we might do a bit of advance noticing, by looking at the last six league table, which we often consider. For today it reads…
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal | 6 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 12 | 5 | +7 | 14 |
| 2 | Man City | 6 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 11 | 5 | +6 | 14 |
It does look rather balanaced with just one goal being the difference between the two clubs.
Mind you, in their piece about last night’s game, the Guardian led with the question, “Is there anyone who can stop Arsenal in this kind of form?” And I think we might well agree that Janis Blaswich in goal had rather a good game.
But back to the forthcoming League Cup match, a competition in which we have played five and won five, although one of those (against Palace) was on penalties. Here’s the rundown…
| Date | Match | Res | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 24 Sep 2025 | Port Vale v Arsenal | W | 0-2 |
| 29 Oct 2025 | Arsenal v Brighton and Hove Albion | W | 2-0 |
| 23 Dec 2025 | Arsenal v Crystal Palace | W | 1-1 (8-7) |
| 14 Jan 2026 | Chelsea v Arsenal | W | 2-3 |
| 3 Feb 2026 | Arsenal v Chelsea | W | 1-0 |
So as we can see, whatever the competition, the Arsenal run goes on and on, and is now 14 unbeaten, with just three of those being draws, namely against Brentford, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Bayer Leverkusen. Which is rather a fine preparation for what comes next.
And although we will come back to Manchester City in due course, we might note as a starter that while Arsenal’s recent record (noted above) looks rather fine, for the last five games the ManCs have won one, lost two and drawn two. And indeed last night they lost the second leg of their Champions League round, against Real Madrid, so that’s one less competition for them to think about.
Now of course, it is true that Arsenal had opponents last night who were a lot easier to beat than Real Madrid, but still ManC have won just one of their last five games in league and cup. Although it could be argued that this could make them even more determined for the next match… which is of course Sunday at 4.30 against Arsenal.
Which brings us back to the top of the last six games table, where we noted that in league matches, the two clubs are currently equally matched.
For there is one more thing I think we might contemplate at the start of this run-up to the League Cup final, and that is just how separated out the clubs have become at the top of the League. I imagine you will know that Arsenal are nine points ahead of ManC and 16 points ahead of ManU in third. But surely that is a bit extreme, isn’t it?
Comparing last season after 31 games with this season, we find that Arsenal have won four more games and drawn four fewer – and of course, last season it was the decline into draws rather than wins that stopped Arsenal challenging Liverpool. |And there is also the point that Arsenal’s goal difference is nine goals better, as well as the points total being eight points superior. We’ve also got a slightly better defence as well.
As quite a few people noticed last season, we just had to turn those draws into wins. And we have…. as this table shows comparing Arsenal this year with last year…
| Team | Pld | W | D | L | GF | GA | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 31 | 21 | 7 | 3 | 61 | 22 | 39 | 70 |
| 2025 | 31 | 17 | 11 | 3 | 56 | 26 | 30 | 62 |
It all seems to be looking rather good.
