by Bulldog Drummond
While all the newspapers and their lapdogs in the bloggettas are predicting that Arsenal will sell Alexis in January, Arsène Wenger has said that he doesn’t think that will happen and that he anticipates Alexis Sánchez will stay at least til the summer.
Of course the fake news outlets are all sticking with their story that Alexis wanted to go to Man C last summer (it was “his wish” according to some), even though as we have so oft pointed out 97% of their predictions turned out to be wrong. Quite why this one should be right I have no idea.
But clubs like Manchester City have a lot of pull with the media these days and they have learned how to disrupt their rivals through maintaining a story, be it true or false, and so the notion of Alexis to Manchester has continued almost daily.
Which when you look at the league table, is a bit odd. Normally players are bought either because clubs need the player or because he will be a backup to someone else. I can’t see Alexis being a backup to anyone, and I can’t see that the club which first became famous for being champions one year and then being relegated the next, actually need another goalscorer. They did in those far off days, but not now.
Certainly if they did bring him in, someone would have to be dropped, and whoever that was, would be mighty unhappy. Would you risk upsetting the squad at such a time?
Here’s that league table.
| Pos | Team | Pld | W | D | L | F | A | GPG | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Manchester City | 10 | 9 | 1 | 0 | 35 | 6 | 3.5 | 29 | 28 |
| 2 | Manchester United | 10 | 7 | 2 | 1 | 23 | 4 | 2.3 | 19 | 23 |
| 3 | Tottenham Hotspur | 10 | 6 | 2 | 2 | 19 | 7 | 1.9 | 12 | 20 |
| 4 | Chelsea | 10 | 6 | 1 | 3 | 18 | 10 | 1.8 | 8 | 19 |
| 5 | Arsenal | 10 | 6 | 1 | 3 | 19 | 13 | 1.9 | 6 | 19 |
| 6 | Liverpool | 10 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 17 | 16 | 1.7 | 1 | 16 |
| 7 | Burnley | 10 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 9 | 9 | 0.9 | 0 | 16 |
The additional column in the table of Goals per Game reflects just how strong the Man C forward line is. Last season Chelsea won the league with 2.24 goals per game. The season before it was Leicester with 2.13. In 2015 it was Chelsea with 1.92.
The last time Man C won the league was in 2014 when they knocked up a goal per game ratio of 2.68 which was impressive, but nowhere near what they have at the moment with 3.5. So why change the forward line now?
In reality, what the newspapers that try and get within spitting distance of the truth say on this, is that “there have been reports they may try again during the winter transfer window,” which as a statement is as weak as you can get in these matters. “Reports” is the code word for “a bloggetta said” in football, and when the source is not mentioned it means that source was a very little bloggetta.
Even odder, it was suggested that Raheem Sterling would go the other way, to Arsenal. Yet what club gets rid of its proven top scorer? OK Alexis is a great player, but when a player moves from one team to another it takes everyone a while to settle down. The risk to Man C of moving Alexis in, even with making room for him by moving Sterling out, is huge. And why bother?
Mr Wenger agrees, telling one bemused journalist, “You say everybody thinks City will come in for Alexis – I am part of everybody and I don’t think he will go.” A bit complex for newspapers, but I suspect they got the idea after it was explained back at the office.
Besides, Mr Wenger has also constantly said that Alexis was never even close to signing for Manchester City last time around.
Moving on, last season we lost at the original tax payers stadium (handed over by the state after mugs like me paid for it through our taxes for the Commonwealth Games, on the justification that it was better to have it occupied than standing empty), drew in the league at the Ems and then beat Man C at Wembley in a match we were widely predicted to lose.
And in fact our record against them has not been that bad
| Date | Game | Res | Score | Competition |
| 29 Mar 2014 | Arsenal v Manchester City | D | 1-1 | Premier League |
| 10 Aug 2014 | Arsenal v Manchester City | W | 3-0 | FA Community Shield |
| 13 Sep 2014 | Arsenal v Manchester City | D | 2-2 | Premier League |
| 18 Jan 2015 | Manchester City v Arsenal | W | 0-2 | Premier League |
| 21 Dec 2015 | Arsenal v Manchester City | W | 2-1 | Premier League |
| 08 May 2016 | Manchester City v Arsenal | D | 2-2 | Premier League |
| 18 Dec 2016 | Manchester City v Arsenal | L | 2-1 | Premier League |
| 02 Apr 2017 | Arsenal v Manchester City | D | 2-2 | Premier League |
| 23 Apr 2017 | Arsenal v Manchester City | W | 2-1 | FA Cup |
Now I know Untold can get numbers wrong sometimes but roughly speaking I make this four wins (I’ve put them in red to help clarify things) four draws and one defeat.
Isn’t it funny how the media and their chums don’t look at statistics, except when it helps boost their case.
- Are Arsenal really utterly appalling against other “top clubs”?
- Santi Cazorla back in January, Mourinho admits the crime, Evra banned, Wenger on City.
- Arsenal v Red Star: our kids need playing time but ex Man U players always offer amusement
Sane was allowed to score an offside goal last season when we were 0-1 in front and Man C couldn’t get a decent attack together before they were allowed the equaliser by failing officials….
I think Alexis was closed to join Man City during the last summer transfer deadline day as we are all awere. But he wasn’t very close to sign for them since no transfer fee has been paid to Arsenal for him by Man City despite the transfer fee for Alexis transfer to Man City has been agreed by Arsenal with Man City. But because Arsenal who never wanted to sell to a direct PL Title rival club side like Man City and who want to keep Alexis to see if he can be persuaded later to extend his cintract deal at the club were clever as they aborted the Man City’s move for him by using their purported failed bid to sign Thomas Lemar as replacement for Alexis if he leaves as a strong case excuse to stop Man City from signing Alexis. But I don’t believe Arsenal would have paid the reported astronomical £92m transfer fee to AS Monaco to sign an unproven Lemar if he had jumped to join Arsenal which he didn’t as was reported.
But that all these were in last summer transfer window. But as we are edging close to the winter window, will things in this regard remain the same or it wlll change? Do Man City still want Alexis as they badly wanted him last summer window? Well, no one can say except Pep Guardiola. But the indication is he still wants to sign Alexis in January because he dodged the question when it was put to him if he will bid for Alecis in January, and that his dodging should tell us he’s still interested in signing Alexis. More so, if Arsenal are doing very in the PL campaing up to December ending and are in the range of challeging Man City to the Title win. So, taking Alexis from us to weaken Arsenal team from challenging Man City for the Titte will be a strong incentive for Pep Guardiola.
Like I’ve said before on this forum, I strongly believe Arsenal will beat Man City on Sunday at the Etihad Stadium but if they do the needful in the game by blocking to cutoff the operational game playing of the nine Man City players who I listed yeaterday night and below today in my comment posting of yesterday on this site.
For the avoidance of doubt, the 9 Man City players who the Gunners should block to cutoff their operational game playing work rate to slow them down in their game are: Kevin De Bruyne, Nicolas Otamendi, John Stones, Fernandinho, David Silva, Raheem Sterling, Leroy Sane, Gabriel Jesus and Sergio Aguero. Difficult work, but if the Gunners are to win the match, they MUST do the work and do it successfully too.
Let me add, the Citizens will get physical in the game if they see that Arsenal are blocking them in the game from performing to their optimal level. Therefore, Let the Gunners prepare themselves to deal successfully with the physicality aspect of the game which the Citizens will be forced to adopt in their game when they see that the Gunners are blocking them from performing credibly in the match.
I think that it’s fairly safe to say that Alexis did indeed want to move. There was that tweet sent from Paris, whilst he was supposedly ill, which he then later went on to delete. His fellow Chilean team-mates also said that he wanted to move (to Man City in particular) and was frustrated when it didn’t pan out. I mean, if this really was just an invention by the media, why would he not just come out and pledge his allegiance to Arsenal, rather than remain completely silent on the matter?
I’m not too keen on having players in the squad that aren’t 100% committed to Arsenal. Luckily, Sanchez is the type of player that always gives his all, as he is just happy being on the pitch.
As brought up by Walter, the goals figure one sees is the result of legal goals scored, and “gifts” (from the officials).
The sum of Goals For for the top 6 is 131, which gives a mean goal production of 21.833. If we use just the square root of 21.833 as a guess for the standard deviation (all we really know, is that this square root should be multiplied by some number close to 1), we find that Man$ is producing about 2.8 times as many goals as the average of the top 6. Which is perhaps high enough to be considered not part of the top 6 (on Goals For). Whether their goal production is too high due to legal goals only, or because they are getting excess “gifts”, I am not going to get into.
All they need is (about) 4 “gifts” to be reconsidered as the same as the others of the Top 6.
In terms of Goals Against, the sum of Goals Against for the Top 6 is 56, which leads to an average of 9.33. Man$ is only about 1.1 estimated standard deviations below that. So that isn’t a problem.
The typical guesses for goal production is that the Top N are producing about 2 goals per game (For), and that the rest of the pack are producing about 1 (For).
Words missing. Man$ is producing goals at about the average plus 2.8 times this estimated standard deviation.
It is borderline as to whether they are part of the group on goal production, or on theiown. This is reflected in how few “gifts” they need.
The December 2016 loss at City was caused by City being given an offside goal in Min 47. Also in Min 80 De Brune should have been sent off for a dreadful challenge from behind on Gabriel, There were also two other incidents into extra ti,e when Sterling should have had a second yellow card for an elbow to Bellerin’s head and Touré should have had a second yellow for deliberately delaying a restart to the game. In short a series of ettors from Martin Atkinson another of the so called better referees in the PL.
I seen a medja article, wondered if there was anything at Arsenal.com
Yes, young Joe Willock has signed a contract extension.
https://www.arsenal.com/news/joe-willock-signs-contract-extension
Gord, yes he has signed. There are no details of the contract but speculation that it is a five year deal. He is a player with a bright future. Mattie (oldest brother) is at Man U and Chris (middle brother) is at Benfica having let his contract run down in Summer