• How do the title winning teams of Arteta and Chapman compare with each other?
• So just how brilliant is this new Arsenal?

By Tony Attwood

“It is very hard to see a strategy in Arsenal’s summer

That is a headline from the Telegraph newspaper today.

At the same time we had the headline Arsenal hunger is ominous for rivals as they dismantle Man City which is also in… The Telegraph!   Unfortunately, the Telegraph is one of those publications you have to pay to read online, but if you particularly want to read a particular piece you can try typing the title into Google, and you might well find that some kind soul has put the whole thing up on another website – so you can read it.

Trying to work my way around this, I then typed in “Arsenal now have the best midfield in football” and got four sets of videos to prove it.

Now we often see journalists disagree, but really levels of disagreement like this are fairly unusual.  Take for example, “Arsenal’s summer of distractions: Vinicius Junior, Morgan Rogers and now a switch to defensive cover. Yet they still need a big sale. Mikel Arteta on the transfer window and the backroom staff changes,”  That’s the Telegraph again.

The Arsenal Are Wonderful group win, in terms of the number of reports saying that Arsenal have got it right – but what is particularly noticeable this summer is how long it took for the media to find this out.  The signs were there – after all Arsenal have been building upon a club that won the league by seven points last time around, but there seemed to be a lack of belief in some of the press pack that this really happened. 

Or it didn’t happen; it was an accident because ManC were looking the other way, wondering about their change of managers.

Obviously nothing has been won yet, and no one will remember the Community Shield if Arsenal have a dread start to the season, although the selection gods have been kind with the first match of the campaign.  If we can’t win that one, I think we might have to worry about what is going on

But if you find your fingernails getting short, just look again at last season’s table….

 

	Club	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Arsenal	38	26	7	5	71	27	44	85
2	Man City	38	23	9	6	77	35	42	78
3	Man United	38	20	11	7	69	50	19	71
4	Aston Villa	38	19	8	11	56	49	7	65

 

The effect we saw last season was that the gaps were big.   Seven points between Arsenal and second-placed ManC… the only difference in numbers that were close was the goal difference between the top two.   Now I know that most, if not all, newspapers have never looked beyond that, but if you do take a peek at just how the goal difference drops away after the top two, Arsenal’s excellence last season is now fully revealed.

Of course, each Premier League season we play the same clubs – and that concept is now even stronger than before because it seems that by and large the three that come up then go down again.   And those that go down fight to come back up.   I can’t see any of those promoted making any difference this season.

So who could give Arsenal a challenge this campaign?    Tottenham?  (Stop laughing)

Manchester City are a bit of an unknown having changed their manager after so many years.  And of course they have not resolved their financial issues – although the fact of the last manager leaving jusst one year before the end of the contract does suggest hat something might be coming out soon

But of course the main thing is for Arsereal not to get too over confident.  Not to havea run of say six consecutive wins and then find they can’t win again for some bizarre reason.  I don’t think that will happen, butt at the moment it looks like being the only thing that could screw Arsenal up.

One thing I do know: I have not been this excited about a new season for many a long year.   But the trouble is that I was very excited about the forthcoming season after the Unbeaten Season – and look what happened there… We didn’t win the league (as you will remember).

I have tried crossing my fingers, but that makes it very difficult to type, so I’ve abandoned that.   But yes, I felt very enthusiastic after the unbeaten season….

Mind you I also felt very enthusiastic before the unbeaten season, and that didn’t work out too badly..