A return to the last six games table and the team of the season so far.

 

 

• If results continue as they have been so far, where will Arsenal end the season?
• Arsenal and the dark arts: why no one else can copy the Gunners

by Tony Attwood

Mikel Arteta joined Arsenal as manager in 2019 as you probably remember.   Sine then ManU have had as manager Ole Gunnar Solkjer, Michael Carrick, Ralf Rangnick, Erik Ten Hag, Ruud Van Nistelroy, Ruben Amorim, Darren Fletcher, Michael Carrick, and Mauricio Pochettino.   Now I know some of them were designated as caretakers, but even so they were managers and were there because of the previous action by the board of directors.   Which raises for me one question: wouldn’t the club have been better off getting rid of the directors?

Incidentally there is an interesting headline in the Daily Mirror – a newspaper I don’t refer to that often – which says, “Man Utd players in bust-up as Mauricio Pochettino ‘secret’ causes fury” 

 The story states in the paper that, “Summer signing Youri Tielemans was reportedly involved in a bust-up with team-mate Lisandro Martinez, following the Champions League loss to Atletico Madrid last month. The squad are also said to feel for Michael Carrick over how his future is being handled.”  Ah well, if you must keep swapping all the staff around….

Now I make that a 9-1 victory in terms of managerial numbers to Man U.  And what we can do is compare the position of Arsenal with Manchester United in the league table.

 

	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
Arsenal	10	9	0	1	15	5	18
Man Utd	10	1	5	4	14	19	8

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Now of course when a club has a manager who is not delivering the goods then ultimately the club has to chuck him out, but nine managers seems a bit of an overload.  It is almost as if the ManU club took a looked at Tottenham and thought “that’s how you do it and so did it that way.”   (And then the ManU men forgot that Tottenham had come 17th in each of the last two seasons).

And thinking of tables we used to run, but haven’t run for a while there is also the last six games table which used to be a a regular feature but then … I am not sure why we stopped running it.   But doing that managerial table made me think about i, so I’ll put it up again…

Except we are not top of the tree across the last six, so maybe I won’t.  This is because Brighton have been scoring lots more goals than Arsenal.   Well one goal a game more, on average, to be exact.  But it does emphasize the fact that both the BIG money spenders (Manchester City and Chelsea) as well as the regular managerial changes really haven’t been doing that well of late.

So maybe there is hope for financial sanity after all – at least there will be when people realise that in football, money doesn’t talk, it sort of blabbers and sprouts nonsense.  And this has left Manchester City and Chelsea in 8th and 9th respectively in the last six games table while Manchester United drift down to 17th with three other clubs each of whom have managed to amass just four points from those lost six games.

The other issue that jogs along in the background while we don’t have any matches is of course injuries – and this lack of games means that there is not chance of anyone being rushed back into a match and then cut the shreds again by an opponent.

Arsenal however still have only two players out injured.  Saka is thought to be heading for a return in early December, while Ezri Konsa is said to be ready to play again.

Now this compares with Brighton and Hove who as you may have remembered from a couple of paragraphs earlier, have rushed themselves up to the top of the league.   According to the injury table I regularly refer to, Brighton have got eight men out injured – which is indeed a high number, and could affect their position up near the top of the league in weeks to come.

Other big number injury squads are Hull City with nine, plus Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United and Tottenham Hots each with seven, which really can’t be doing them much good (although some of those players might be repaired by the time these internationals finish and we can start proper football again.

Meanwhile back with the Daily Mail, they have filled up the gap without football by giving us their team of the season so far.  And would you believe it, despite Arsenal’s constant run of success there is only one Arsenal player in the XI – and that is the man who is now injured: Saka. 

The link to find the full list of players is here but I am not sure it is worth looking up.   I only mention it because there is a dreadful shortage of real news today as we wait for the wretched internationals to get over and done so we can see who has been injured and then put the rest back together so the proper football can start again.

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