- 100 Seasons in the top divison: 1980/81 and 1981/82. Arsenal’s near misses, but not nearly good enough
- Why clubs are getting a little less gung ho about buying new stadia.
By Tony Attwood
According to the Guardian, it is all over as they announce in their banner headline that, “Alex Scott and Bournemouth deal blow to nervy Arsenal’s title hopes” perhaps not noting that Arsenal still have a nine-point lead at the top.
Indeed, slightly amusingly, immediately below that on my screen is their second headline of the day, “This is what we’re up against,” which refers not to the the match, nor indeed to biased anti-Arsenal journalism, but to their fund raising activities, which claims that all the other newspapers are funded by mega rich donors putting their economic and political messages across, while the Guardian stands firm against such tittle-tattle.
Which maybe is true generally, except it doesn’t really seem to follow in football, where the Guardian follows the standard line that a run of Arsenal defeats means that is the end of the line no matter that even if illegally funded ManC win their spare gamese, Arsenal are still top.
Arsenal have 70 poionts from 32 games, which means if they won every game left (unlikely, I know, but I am trying to see what the possibilities are) Arsenal would end up with 88 points, which would have been more than enough to win the league last season.
Now it is quite true that more often than not, the winning club has got more points than those 88t, but the difference between those years and this season is that in those days gone by, there has been but one club way out on its own, winning before the season is over. With Liverpool having proven themselves to be one-season wonders, Arsenal have taken up the mantle of challenging the ability of oil money to buy everything it wants and one might have thought one or two media outlets might appreciate that, but it seems not.
But that is not how it goes these days, and one can see that from the fact that the still financially unrestricted (and yes, I know I make this point in every other post I write, but I do so because no one else seems to care) Manchester City, won the league four times running between 2021 and 2024 inclusive. These are not normal times, clearly, since a team that has not won the league since 2004 is still at the top of the table.
So yes, football is a strange world. It is one in which people make predictions about which player each club is going to buy, but mostly don’t, and in which the organisation in charge finds one of its members guilty of over 100 offences, and then does absolutely nothing about it.
Meanwhile, what happens is what we were told could not happen, while the media continue to tell us that in fact it absolutely won’t happen – except sometimes it does.
And if that last paragraph looks weird, remember this. Football is full is predictions (one of my favourites in recent weeks was Last time Spurs looked too good to go down, they proved us all wrong” which turned up in the Telegraph recently, and thinking back to that it made me wonder why no one has bothered with “Last time we said it was all over we were totally wrong.”
But the media rarely go quite go that far. Although rather famously the Daily Express proclaimed the maxim ‘No War this Year’ on its front pages as late as 7 August 1939, something for which it is still being laughed at. Today the Sun keeps telling us about mythical supercomputers, although at least the BBC manages predictions while telling us the existence of such a machine is a myth. (Although I bet the Sun keeps on running the fake story).
All we can do is move on from this weekend’s defeat and try to think of other stories which, if it came from any organisation other than Fifa, would be utterly unbelievable, but given it is Fifa, it is true. For Fifa has just changed the maps which show the layout of the grounds in which this summer’s World Cup matches will be played.
As a result, all the tickets that were sold months ago are now shown as being for seats with a far worse view of the pitch than those who bought them originally saw on the plans of the stadium. I’ve seen some sports scams in my day, but no one has ever pulled this one before. It would be utterly illegal in the UK, but not it seems in Fifa Land.
Mind you, the Premier League has found ManC guilty of 100+ offences and then utterly failed to punish them, so maybe Fifa is just copying the PL.
Of course, the League and Fifa know they can rely on the ManC and Fifa supporting media not to say a word about such things, in the hope that ultimately everyone will forget. And besides, when we look at the league table…
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal | 32 | 21 | 7 | 4 | 62 | 24 | 38 | 70 |
| 2 | Manchester City* | 30 | 18 | 7 | 5 | 60 | 28 | 32 | 61 |
| 3 | Manchester United | 31 | 15 | 10 | 6 | 56 | 43 | 13 | 55 |
… and no one (not even Untold, which I regret, but have now rectified) is putting an asterisk next to ManCs name, leading to a note saying
*Pending points deduction for 100+ financial offences in previous years.
The whole team with ‘what if’ we were more sharp and clinical etc, (with the exception of Dowman’s enthusiasm) had an off day, but our engine room was the main culprit for our tactical disaster and energy lacking movement and motivation.
Usually, a teams highest energy players are it’s fullbacks and it’s defensive holding midfielder, who usually all three would have to cover the most ground during 90 minutes of play.
All three players lacked any energy and all three players (White, Myles and zubimendi) were marked out of the game by higher energetic opposition.
This should never be allowed to happen as their energy levels should be no match for the oppositions forward defending offensive players who are marking them over 90 minutes.
Yet, strangely it was so.
While the Arsenal engine room (White, Myles and Zubimendi) was half dead and struggling, this had a knock on effect to the energy of the whole team.
Not only was these three players giving no outlet for Raya to release the ball quickly to counter attack (because they could not loose their offensive markers), their lack in energy had forced our front offensive line to drop back to have to help them out with a pass outlet to get the ball forward, they also needed help in basic defending when having to chase back.
This in turn left big gaps between our front offensive line and Bournemouth’s back line defence that was so wide that Bournemouth back line was unchallenged throughout the game. This gave them with plenty of space to operate in our half of the pitch.
We were now unable to defend from the front due to our slow moving, non sharp energy lacking engine room.
As mentioned and in my opinion, due to our dying engine room, we were always a pace off the game with slow passing and slow movement and always second to any fifty fifty tackles.
Why Arteta sees this all too late and not on the training field, I do not know. But he did see it and made some changes in those engin room departments, but too little too late as Bournemouth was already motivated and continued on the front foot.
We lacked our captain and any guidance and motivation usually given by a fit Odeguard. Was he really injured (unusual that he was not on the bench at least to watch the game)
We missed our regular A-Team fullbacks and also Odeguards energy in closing players down from the front and setting an example for our team to push up and close the front space. He would have been ideal for this type of high energy game and would have instructed Zubimendi to show of energy and Character in the midfield.
Our fullbacks and defensive midfielder (White, Myles and Zubimendi) were easily been marked through the game and showed either a lack of energy or ability to loose their close energetic markers, and to show that they are better than just squad back up (B team players). White and Myles are maybe still not match fit, but Zubimendi seemed to be running on empty, maybe lacking in Rices stamina and over played in games this year.
I think there may be some players leaving in those departments in the summer and some new players coming in that can actually compete for those A team positions when everyone is fit. They need to compete and be on par, not just a back up.
But unless things change, they will be questioned if they are even good enough to be filling the injured spaces regardless of squad size, let alone compete for starting places Just IMO.
Let’s hope for a new rejuvenated engine room with also missed motivation players in Saka, Odeguard and a full complement A Team fullbacks to fix our broken back line.