- How can we let out feelings about international shut downs be known?
- Everything that is wrong with football: you just have to read the headlines…
By Tony Attwood
It is often the way that by the time a new season starts, how Arsenal did int the opening matches the season before, has long since been forgotten. So I though I might reconstruct the table of recent seasons to show Arsenal’s position after five games, in order to answer the very simple question – is this season already a disaster, or does it show some promise?
And the first thing to notice amidst all the doom and gloom of having lost the most recent game, is that this is still not an appalling start. .
Now it is true that in 2023/4 we were on 13 points after five matches and in 202/3 we won the opening five league games in a row…. but if you really want to find a negative to reflect the doom and gloom being expressed in some quarters, you are best directed to the goal difference.
For this season’s goal difference is the worst at Arsenal for the last five years. And by and large that was all down to the last game.
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P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | End |
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5 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 8 | 4 | 4 | 12 | |
| 2025/6 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 10 | 2 | 8 | 10 | 1st |
| 2024/5 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 8 | 3 | 5 | 11 | 2nd |
| 2023/4 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 9 | 4 | 5 | 13 | 2nd |
| 2022/3 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 13 | 4 | 9 | 15 | 2nd |
| 2021/2 | 5 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 2 | 9 | -7 | 6 | 5th |
But perhaps the most important thing that the league table after five games tells us, is that it doesn’t tell us anything much – in that we had just ten points by this stage last season where (as you might perhaps recall) we won the league. But even when we have 15 points in 2022/3 and indeed the best goal difference in any of the seasons above, we still only came second.
So in fact, how a club is doing after the first five games doesn’t actually give us much of a clue as to how the season is going to end. Five games and you can win the league, have 15 points and the club might come in second.
Looking at the chart above we can see that 12 points is pretty middling. But what has happened is that Arsenal are a bit down in terms of goals scored, and a bit higher than we might wish in terms of goals again. Quite possibly the Mancs are celebrating being champions again already and think its all going to be so much easier this year. Whereas in fact what happens is that everyone wants to be beat last season’s champions, so it gets harder.
But above all else these tables can also remind us that each season is different.
The fact is that as you will probably remember in 2025 we came second with 74 points. In 2023 we came second with 84 points. In 2024 we came second with 89 points When we finally won the league in 2026 it was with 85 points – four fewer than we got in coming second in 2024.
In short, the issue each season is not a case of getting a certain number of points or a certain goal difference, it is about what Arsenal does in relation to other top teams.
Now we all know that ManC have once again shot off at great speed winning all their matches and quite obviously if they carry on like this no one will be able to catch them. And there can be more doom and gloom created because Arsenal were beaten by Brighton and Hove Albion whose greatest triumph in the past was to come eighth in each of the last two seasons.
So you might believe that Brighton and Hove can indeed leap up to second place and stay there – an achievement that they have never matched before, or you might consider Manchester City to be the biggest problem. But either way there are still 99 points to be played for, and some will be dropped by everyone.
You might also want to remember that the issue of Manchester City’s crimes in recent seasons in terms of their expenditures and the resultant charges against them. In fact last weeked saw the the two year anniversary since an independent commission started to hear evidence against Manchester City in terms of over 100 charges that the Premier League had laid against them in relation to potential breaches of its financial rules.
So now there are things to consider…
a) Can Arsenal improve on its record of winning 80% of its league games? The current rate will give them 84 points at the end of the season. Last season Arsenal won the league with 85 points.
b) Will the League finally find ManC guilty, and if they do will ManC succeed in their threat of tying the League up in legal processes until it (the League) runs out of money.
Or will the League get so fed up with the ManC case that the other 19 clubs will resign from the league and set up a new division, into which ManC are very much not invited?
