By Tony Attwo
When Arsenal won the league at the end of last season, much of the media was full of counts of how many years it was since the club had last won the league. But as ever, there was no sense of comparison. So we found out how many years it was since Arsenal won the league, but not how many years it was since, for example, Tottenham had won the league.
So I thought it might be a bit of fun to work it out for some other clubs. And in this table I am thinking about what we will say this season. So for Arsenal it is one year since we won the league.
And then since the table looked a little bleak I thought I would add one extra column showing how many times that meant they had won the league.
If we take Arsenal’s last triumph in the league as one year ago (in the sense that it was last season), it is obviously two seasons since Liverpool won the league and three seasons since Manchester City won the league.
That is a number even I can remember, but I was surprised to find how much of a gap there was after that. For the next club we find winning the league is Chelsea, who last won the league 10 years ago. All that money and they haven’t won the league in ten years. And that’s a bit funny because I haven’t seen anything in the media looking at how much money Chelsea have spent on players in those years, without actually winning the League.
11 years ago Leicester won the league, which surprised quite a few of us, and it allows us an interesting reflection on where they are now. But then we find Manchester United haven’t won the league for 14 years. Then there is a big jump backwards since it was 32 years ago that Blackburn Rovers won the league and 35 years ago that Leeds United got the last of their three trophies.
Of course, the further back we go, the easier it is to forget that some of these clubs have actually ever won the league. That Everton hve won the league nine times, seems rather unlikely but apparently it is the case, although perhaps it is not so much of a surprise to be told that the last title they got was 40 years ago.
As for Aston Villa their last trophy was 46 years. ago. And that again took me by surprise because I feel that journalists are sometimes writing or commenting on who might win the league, with the notion that Villa are “always in the mix” as they say. In fact, I do think that some journalists have a list of a dozen clubs who are (as they have it in their own funny language, “there or thereabouts”.
But pondering this issue, the main thing that has stuck me is that football journalists seem to have certain clubs in mind whenever they think about the Premier League, and which clubs these are can have as much to do with football history as how well clubs have been doing of late.
Obviously I don’t know how well Arsenal will do this season, but I am moved by the fact that when Arsenal won the league for the very first time they then won it five times in eight years (and in one of the seasons they missed out on the title, they won the FA Cup instead).
So I guess my point is that winning becomes something of a habit. Players somehow expect to win, and so if they go two goals down, they don’t lose their drive and think “that’s that,” they keep on playing, knowing that one goal for them can make the opposition a bit shaky and worried, giving the opposition to sneak one more goal and thus achieve what had, a short while before, looked like a very unlikely draw.
I don’t know if Arsenal will win the league again of course, but I do think the team will keep in their minds that they most certainly can do it and so most certainly should at no stage give up. And in case you are interested, I think it is over 50 years since Tottenham last won the league… but I sort of lost count.
