by Linda Thompson
The Premier League is arguably the greatest football league in the world. Since its inception in 1992, many of the world’s greatest football players have played in the Premier League. Many consider the Premier League along with La Liga to be the best leagues in the world. As a result, a considerable number of footballing bets are placed on clubs in the Premier League. However, one thing that you should know before betting on any club is that the league position is not the only thing that determines the result of a club. In fact, if you have been watching football for a long while, you would know that on the pitch, the league position matters little.
There have been countless cases in which football clubs that were toiling away in the relegation zone managed to defeat teams that were champions. After all, who can forget that Sunderland ended Jose Mourinho’s unbeaten home record when he was at Chelsea? It came as a shock to almost everyone who watches football. The biggest example though was last year when Leicester City, who were literally outsiders and who many thought would be battling relegation by the end of the year, ended up winning the Premier League title.
It’s All in the Head
Psychology plays a very important role in determining the result of any football club. Let’s talk about Arsenal, which is one of the hottest clubs in the Premier League right now. When it comes to Premier League betting, Arsenal is quite unreliable. They narrowly won against West Brom, having lost their past two games to Man City and Everton.
Apart from these two losses, the club has been playing pretty consistently all season, drawing and even winning bigger matches and playing relatively steadily. However, many have associated Arsenal with suffering from a mental blip. A number of pundits have stated that when push comes to shove, Arsenal tends to buckle under the pressure. There have been several situations where Arsenal has been on a blazing run of form only to have their streak halted by a club from the mid-table or the lower table.
The Winning Mentality
Now, let’s talk about Chelsea. At the start of the season, many didn’t think Chelsea would be sitting in such a strong position before the year’s end. However, Conte’s team has been on a 12-win streak and, thanks to the return to form of several key players as well as reducing injuries, they have been able to maintain a pretty strong atmosphere in the dressing room.
Manchester United, on the other hand, has struggled for consistency simply because several of the key players at the club are unable to maintain fitness. On top of that, Mourinho’s desire to constantly shuffle the team has also led to instability and a lack of motivation because players never know whether they’ll be playing the next week even if they had performed amazingly well in their past game.
If they don’t want to fall further behind the current leaders Chelsea in the table, Arsenal can’t afford not to beat Big Sam Allardyce’s now manage Crystal Palace team at the Ems on Sunday.
Not to beat Crystal Palace which the Gunners should beat with ease will tantamount to Arsenal not serious to see themselves crowned as the PL Champions at the end of this season.
A Crown they’ve been waiting for 12 years to be recrowned after they’ve been decrowned in 2005 should not elude them this season because of the immersed quality of players with experience there are in the rank and file in their squad has make winning the PL and even CL this season imperative for them to achieve.
In the WBA match they played last weekend at the Ems when they took all points via Olivier Giroud’s looping heading off Mesut Ozil’s Intelligent assist crossing, Arsenal have shown they’ve come of age in not longer falling victims to any counter attack team to steal a goal to win the match by any park the bus team.
Arsenal showed class in their game against the largely park the bus team of WBA as the Gunners played a sustained high pressing game in that match to break the backbone of the Baggies. All that is now left for the Gunners to do in their next games as they handle them game by game is to upgrade their newly sustained high pressing game which they played in their last match again WBA to the grade of polishing their finishing in front of goal to precise accuracy in their shootings at goal. More Intelligibly so as not to be shooting the ball to the goalkeeper’s hands or near him to save their shots. By so doing, I believe the Gunners will succeed in scoring as many goals as possible to be killing the opposition teams off in their matches against them.
Nice article.
I wouldn’t necessarily say that some (much? most?) of the results you describe are due to unreliability. It is fairly common to read in academic studies of football that luck plays a much larger part in the result than other sports (such as basketball). A big part of the reason luck plays such a large role, is that scoring is so rare.
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Rachel Yankey and Emma Byrne have apparently both left the Ladies team. 17 years for Emma Byrne, quite a run!
OT – New Saints of Wales break 27 straight win record of Ajax. Didn’t the Arsenal Ladies achieve a better record a few years ago when winning everything & only drawing one CL match?
Here’s a pointer to your New Saints of Wales story, and a couple of other stories.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/31/new-world-record-crowns-claimed-cycling-football-oldest-man/