By Bulldog Drummond
Arsenal injuries are declining as we are down to four now – and Martinelli might actually be fit enough to come in for a brief spell at the end. There was talk of him playing in the under 23 game last night but he didn’t, although Physioroom have him down as just 25% chance of playing.
Obviously Xhaka is out, Gabriel is out, both for getting cards, and Partey is out because of his injury.
Ominously, the BBC site says that “Arsenal have reported several unspecified injury “doubts” ahead of the trip to Goodison Park.” We will have to wait to see what that means. Mind you they are also running the much copied “a top flight season since 1974” line, which we might have thought would have been done to death by now – but seemingly not. If everyone else uses it, it must be ok, that’s the approach of football writers no matter what their publication.
Note to the BBC – copying other people’s football sites can make you look a bit silly.
Elsewhere, Liverpool are still top of the injury league with eight, followed by Everton, Villa Palace and Newcastle on six.
As for today’s opponents, Everton have won the first division nine times and the FA Cup eight times, their most recent trophy being the FA Cup 11 years ago. This compares to 14 cups and and 13 league titles for Arsenal.
But although the clubs have been playing each other since 1905 we really have the upper hand. We have won 108 against Everton, drawn 46 and lost 61. And we’ve also not only scored more goals against them than any other club in the PL era, we have also scored more against Everton than any other team at any time in the history of football.
Which is interesting. None of the media I have seen have mentioned this, but here we have the BBC still running the “club’s worst start to a top-flight season since 1974.” (currently to be found on 44,000 web pages apparently, according to Google). It is the absolutely proof that football writers copy football writers who copy football writers who…
That is why the news gets stuck and why so much news (ranging from Leicester’s unprecedented eight penalties in the first eight games of the season, to the extraordinary way in which Liverpool can commit more than twice as many fouls as some other teams, without picking up a yellow card, while other clubs get cards much more frequently.
Indeed for the past ten seasons in the League Arsenal v Everton has been pretty much one way traffic. In fact our run of 34 Premier League victories over Everton is the most victories we have over any club in the Premier League. In recent results it has looked like this…
| Date | Game | Res | Score | Competition |
| 24 Oct 2015 | Arsenal v Everton | W | 2-1 | Premier League |
| 19 Mar 2016 | Everton v Arsenal | W | 0-2 | Premier League |
| 13 Dec 2016 | Everton v Arsenal | L | 2-1 | Premier League |
| 21 May 2017 | Arsenal v Everton | W | 3-1 | Premier League |
| 22 Oct 2017 | Everton v Arsenal | W | 2-5 | Premier League |
| 3 Feb 2018 | Arsenal v Everton | W | 5-1 | Premier League |
| 23 Sep 2018 | Arsenal v Everton | W | 2-0 | Premier League |
| 7 Apr 2019 | Everton v Arsenal | L | 1-0 | Premier League |
| 21 Dec 2019 | Everton v Arsenal | D | 0-0 | Premier League |
| 23 Feb 2020 | Arsenal v Everton | W | 3-2 | Premier League |
Seven wins to us, one draw and two defeats.
But as we saw in an earlier piece, they are ahead of us this season both in terms of home and away games – and overall they have nine points more than Arsenal. Curiously they have actually conceded more goals than we have but they have scored over double the number of goals that Arsenal have got. And with 13 games played (a third of the season) that is pretty shocking.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | Everton | 13 | 7 | 2 | 4 | 23 | 18 | 5 | 23 |
| 15 | Arsenal | 13 | 4 | 2 | 7 | 11 | 16 | -5 | 14 |
The problem with the league table is not just that we are 15th but that we are three points behind the two clubs above us, one of whom has a game in hand.
As for the tactical table – which you will only find on Untold Arsenal (unlike the “top-flight season since 1974” comment – here it is, updated to last sunday night, but not including the mid-week games…
| Club | Tackles | Fouls | Tackles per foul | Yellow cards | Fouls per yellow | Penalties for | Penalties against |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arsenal | 152 | 130 | 1.17 | 19 | 6.84 | 1 | 0 |
| Everton | 244 | 138 | 1,77 | 21 | 6.57 | 2 | 3 |
So we can see Everton typically put in 50% more tackles than Arsenal but only get a handful of extra tackles called as fouls. Which is a shame since the number of yellows each side gets. If Everton were being punished for tackles as Arsenal are they would be on 28 yellow cards which would probably have tempered their play somewhat.
Thus they will tackle us and get away with it. Although if we can get into their penalty area and be tackled that could lead to us picking up a few more penalties in our favour.
More later…
- Everton v Arsenal: Arteta half as effective as Ancelotti, and after that bad run in the 70s
- Arsenal make a complete cock-up; I’m sorry I believed they would get it right
- Attack, attack, attack. How one newspaper launched 10 attacks on Arsenal in just 2 days
I wonder which of our players will be chosen by PGMOL to receive Arsenal’s obligatory Red card?
Andre will be able to do an ID parade to make sure it’s the right 0ne too.
Surely they can find another London team to punish. Including the lower leagues there are quite a few, FFS.
There is a reason they target Arsenal – we gave Wenger a job. The same Wenger that pointed to Marceille cheating with referees in the European Cup. The cartel still run the betting ring and the FA and their PGMOL are major players.
The cards are an easy handicap because they say it is subjective.
Cara is an abuse of the language and of commentary. His voice annoys me.!!!
The officiating allows Leno to be obstructed but doesn’t do anything to stop it.
This is what we have to accept as part of EPL football.