by Bulldog Drummond.
It is always interesting when this day comes around in the season to look and see where we were before – for this of course is the day when the opening matches of the campaign are reversed. As a result we played Brentford away in the first match of the season at the Brentford Community Stadium, and we lost. Now we play them at home.
Brentford in fact only had one defeat in their first nine matches of the season in the league and league cup. Since then they have only had eight matches in which they have not suffered defeat.
Thus is was that by 3 October 2021 the top of the league table showed this…
| Pos then | Pos now | Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | Chelsea | 7 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 15 | 3 | 12 | 16 |
| 2 | 2 | Liverpool | 7 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 17 | 6 | 11 | 15 |
| 3 | 1 | Manchester City | 7 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 14 | 3 | 11 | 14 |
| 4 | 4 | Manchester United | 7 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 14 | 6 | 8 | 14 |
| 5 | 16 | Everton | 7 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 13 | 8 | 5 | 14 |
| 6 | 9 | Brighton and Hove A | 7 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 8 | 5 | 3 | 14 |
| 7 | 14 | Brentford | 7 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 10 | 6 | 4 | 12 |
| 8 | 8 | Tottenham Hotspur | 7 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 6 | 10 | -4 | 12 |
| 9 | 5 | West Ham United | 7 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 14 | 10 | 4 | 11 |
| 10 | 12 | Aston Villa | 7 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 10 | 9 | 1 | 10 |
| 11 | 6 | Arsenal | 7 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 10 | -5 | 10 |
Everton, Brighton, Brentford, Tottenham and Villa are now all below Arsenal, and Arsenal have games in hand over all the clubs in the league except bottom-placed Burnley, Tottenham and Everton. Indeed even with all those games in hand Arsenal have climbed the most places since that opening run of seven games. Everton have sunk the most.
Commenting on the season since then the Guardian has the lovely phrase about Brentford, “It’s been patchy lately…” which is one way of expressing the situation of a club that is bottom of the league and who in their last seven games have lost six, drawn one and have conceded 18.
As usual we have a little scout around to see which players might line up for Arsenal and note a few of the predictions.
The Express won’t give us a team, but does say 2-0 to the Arsenal. The Sun confine themselves to saying that the game is not on TV in the UK.
SportsMole joins in the expanding awareness that Arsenal are doing ok saying, “With Arsenal boasting a 32-game unbeaten home record in the Premier League against promoted teams, they will fancy their chances of beating Brentford this weekend.”
The Mole’s line up is
Ramsdale;
Tomiyasu, White, Gabriel, Tierney;
Partey, Xhaka;
Saka, Odegaard, Smith Rowe;
Lacazette
With there being a real danger of Arsenal winning, TalkSport, which has the radio rights have relegated the commentary to TalkSport2. They won’t predict a team.
The Standard goes with a 2-0 win for Arsenal but again are not willing to give us the team – although it seems fairly obvious for this game. As for the team, it is exactly the same as Sports Mole.
And so it goes on – the same team in most places (the only question is at right back) and predictions of a safe 2-0.
So I have turned to the video collection from the Arsenal History Society which has an Arsenal video for almost every day of the year. Here are the two that involve Arsenal and Brentford.
League Cup 2018
So since most outlets are not bothering to cover the game with any information other than telling us that it is not on TV, let’s do a little bit of speculating ourselves. Here’s the table before the game.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Manchester City | 25 | 20 | 3 | 2 | 61 | 14 | 47 | 63 |
| 2 | Liverpool | 24 | 16 | 6 | 2 | 61 | 19 | 42 | 54 |
| 3 | Chelsea | 24 | 13 | 8 | 3 | 48 | 18 | 30 | 47 |
| 4 | Manchester United | 25 | 12 | 7 | 6 | 40 | 32 | 8 | 43 |
| 5 | West Ham United | 25 | 12 | 5 | 8 | 44 | 33 | 11 | 41 |
| 6 | Arsenal | 22 | 12 | 3 | 7 | 34 | 25 | 9 | 39 |
| 7 | Wolverhampton Wanderers | 23 | 11 | 4 | 8 | 21 | 17 | 4 | 37 |
| 8 | Tottenham Hotspur | 22 | 11 | 3 | 8 | 28 | 29 | -1 | 36 |
West Ham are playing Newcastle at home at lunchtime. Crystal Palace play Chelsea, Manchester City play Tottenham, Leeds play Manchester United and Wolverhampton Wanderers play Leicester City.
If the last six matches form table is really as helpful as we’ve been suggesting then it should give us a guide as to who will win. Positions in brackets from that last six game table…
- Arsenal (2nd) will beat Brentford (20th)
- West Ham (7th) will draw with Newcastle (6th)
- Crystal Palace (14th) will lose to Chelsea (8th)
- Manchester City (1st) will beat Tottenham (11th)
- Wolverhampton (4th) will beat Leicester (16th)
- Leeds (12th) will lose to Manchester United (5th)
After the game Arsenal will be on the same points as West Ham in 5th / 6th place but will have three games in hand and be maybe one or two goals worse off in terms of the goal difference. So we are not able to race up into fifth, but we’re getting closer day by day.
(Oh, and by the way, just in case you missed any of the newspapers, it’s not on TV.
3-4-3 i’d be happy with …
ramsdale
white-holding-gabriel
tomiyasu-partey-xhaka-tierney
saka-lacazette-smithrowe
it’d give this calf-biting young bunch the final grahamesque touch … and after his wolves masterclass, rob deserves to start
one-nil to The Arsenal all over again!!
COYG
hilariously cheeky equaliser by joe for newcastle
easily Mot(Half-)M; the lad’s beaming with confidence again
so happy for him … hats off to howe, for the outstanding job he’s been doing with him
The VAR official is certainly sticking to the PGMO script to day!
Am I wrong ? At least 3 valid pen calls ignord by Moss AND by the var…
goalless half, not an unpleasant one, though those bees are bus-parking, time-wasting cheats (if there is such an awful thing as moss’s memoirs published someday, we might find out how their keeper hasn’t been at least yellow-carded yet, then)
moss has outmossed himself again – they have a free pass to mow bukayo down, as well as to play basket-ball, and kick laca away in their box
we should have scored though, i wish we were given the VAR evidence of laca’s offside when the goal he scored was ruled out
partey’s been very decent today, but i think a ramsey beside xhaka is missed, our opponents only have 4 players to hush, none of our 6 players behind, none of our 2 deep midfielders in particular present any attacking threat whatsoever
emil’s been great, as always, he might be our light-bringer
COYG; 1-0 is all it takes
You know who I am missing in thesegames…. ? Ozil… he was the best at finding, creating, inventing space.
I wonder how Arteta would have managed him….
Good win against a very negative Brentford team and a totally incompetent referee….
I may be wrong but I make that five VAR decisions all of which went against us. Same old, same old.
job well done eventually, too bad we leaked that goal in
emil-bukayo, after joe earlier on – Hale End Rocks indeed
tougher test ahead thursday, but a thrilling game i have a feeling it’ll be anyway – these wolves won’t just sit back
Walter’s said it for me. Very professional win from the young team.
We were far more threatening when in possession than we were at the start of the season although we take a long time to make up our minds when on the counterattack. At 1-0 we had a couple of clear counterattacks and muffed them by dilly dallying on the ball and then I was convinced that Partey had waited too long to pass the ball to Saka, for example. Fortunately, I was wrong.
I was not convinced that Lacazette was offside but as has been mentioned we were never shown the stop picture that they used to make their decision. What are we supposed to think when there is a lack of consistency in process? Do they purposely want to alienate the fans. It’s not just Arsenal fans that are saying this.
As much as it is killing me…full marks for the Sp*rs display against Citeh.
Another piece of excellent consistent officiating. The bastards work to Rileys agenda and chalk off a good Arsenal goal, ignore penalties including a handball and then give a goal to Brentford when several players were offside and interfering with play.
There is no doubt that Fat Moss the Corrupt and Mason the Blind colluded to rob Arsenal of as much as they could.