By Nitram
…. And how that even caused the bookies to get it so wrong!
The thing is, no matter what Arsenal do we are always seen in a negative light. The glass is always half empty.
Kind of like, ‘yes they did okay last year (winning the league) but this year will be different. You wont have the same LUCK. You wont be allowed to CHEAT at corners. You wont be allowed to time waste. Those days of ‘The Dark Arts’ are gone’. Blah blah blah.’
Whenever we are successful it is either through cheating, luck or just boring our opponents to death. Yet for others it is always somehow different.
Take Tottenham for example. No matter how bad they are, ‘next season will be their season’, or at the very least they will be on the way back. Similar with Liverpool, and certain others of course.
The following is an example of how even those usually astute bookmaker fellows can get caught up in this media hatred of Arsenal.
In season 21/22 we finished 5th on 69 points, just 2 points and one place outside a Champions League place, and 24 points of top spot. Following two 8th placed finishes this was a very reasonable effort and certainly an improvement showing we were heading in the right direction.At least that is what you might have thought.
Arsenal’s pre season odds to win the title in 22/23 were 50/1. Yep FIFTY to ONE. Now, I never usually bet on football, but those odds were so ridiculous, so ARSENAL, I had my first and last bet on football. A few quid EW. Nice one.
But my point is, WHY? Only Arsenal would of been such a massive price after such a promising season. My view is that no other team would of been such a price after such a season, and the title odds this season prove my point perfectly.
Now compare and contrast.
LIVERPOOL
Last year it is they who finished 5th, but this time on only 60 points (9 worse than us in 21/22), 5 points off of 5th (3 worse than us) and 25 points off of top spot (1 worse than us). So, all round worse than Arsenal in 2021/22, and of course on a massive DOWNWARD trajectory, as opposed to our UPWARD trajectory.
Yet Liverpools odds as we stand are currently 5/1. Yep FIVE to ONE.
So, WHY 5/1? Is it because it’s Liverpool, simple as that? Everything they do is great? Every player they sell is ready to be moved on? They always get a great price? Everyone they buy is the next Worldy?
CHELSEA
Finished 10th last year on 52 points, a massive 33 points off of top spot, yet they are just 8/1. EIGHT to ONE.
Their last four seasons have been 12th, 6th, 4th, 10th. Another team on a downward trajectory.
Yes, they have spent a lot of money, but they’ve been doing that for a long time and haven’t been near a title for almost 10 years. Recent history shows they do not buy very well. They have a new manager, another negative.
So, Why? Because it’s Chelsea? It cant be any other reason can it? They have done nothing to warrant such short odds.
And finally,
TOTTENHAM
Last year, as we all know they finished 17th for the second season running. Their last seven seasons read 6th, 7th, 4th, 8th, 5th, 17th, 17th.
Yet their odds are just 20/1. Don’t forget Arsenals were 50/1 after finishing 8th, 8th, 5th.
Again WHY? It can only be simply because it’s Tottenham. Ask yourself, if we were 50/1 after finishing 5th what would we be after finishing 17th and 17th,
But here’s the thing. Really, this isn’t about them, it’s about Arsenal and why WE are always seen in such a negative light by the media. Not why are those teams the odds they are, but why were Arsenal such a ridiculous 50/1?
Well, my view is that it is all down to all the raging negativity across the media. Even when we won the title last year so much of the talk from so much of the media was about how we ‘cheated’ our way to the title. Getting away with murder at corners. Time wasting. The ‘dark Arts’.
Those odds on Arsenal back at the beginning of season 22/23, were to me a clear indication of just how the constant media barrage of negativity towards Arsenals is all consuming. The public, the bloggs and even the Bookies, get caught up in the fog of anti-Arsenal bias so prevalent throughout the media.
Do I expect our treatment from the media to be any different this year? No chance. And in their wake do I expect our treatment from the officials to be any less stringent? Of course not. That old stop watch is going to be on high alert whenever we have a throw in, corner or goal kick.
Still, all that being said…. I CANT WAIT!!!!!!!!
- The rise of Como and the rise again of Cesc
- You might think the Fifa squabble is all over, but there’s another explosion around the corner.
Good piece.
Look at the shape of the market rather than our number in isolation.
In 2022 City were 8/13, Liverpool 9/4. Convert those to percentages: 61.9% and 30.8%. That’s 92.7% of the entire book sitting on two clubs before a single other side has been priced. Add the bookmaker’s margin on top and there is next to nothing left for the other eighteen. Whoever finished sixth favourite that summer was going to be an enormous price. It happened to be us.
Now do the same sum for this season. Arsenal 6/4 is 40%, City 5/2 is 28.6% — 68.6% between the top two. That’s roughly twenty-five percentage points more probability to hand out down. Liverpool’s 5/1 in this market and our 50/1 in that one aren’t the same kind of number at all. They’re prices from books with completely different amounts of room in them.
Margin isn’t spread evenly across a book — it’s loaded heaviest onto the longshots, because nobody quibbles between 33/1 and 50/1 and no serious money polices the bottom of the market. Our 50/1 was probably a 30/1-ish true price. That isn’t a verdict on Arsenal, it’s how every club at that end of every outright market gets treated.
And the question in 2022 was never “are Arsenal improving?” It was “can a 69-point side reach 90-plus in one jump, past a City team at its absolute peak?” 50/1 is about 2% before margin. Ungenerous, but not deranged.
We finished second. The win price was right. And the market repriced us fast the moment the football justified it — 37/20 by 2024/25, 6/4 favourites now, 1/8 for the top four.
Where I think you are onto something: Spurs at 20/1 after two seasons of nearly going down, cut on the back of one transfer window, is hard to justify from any model. But that isn’t the press. That’s money – big clubs pull in stakes regardless of form, and a book shortens whatever it’s exposed to. In 2022 nobody was backing Arsenal, our own support very much included. No liability, no reason to shorten.