By Tony Attwood
Arsenal v Tottenham was a truly wonderful experience inside the stadium. The club has done more than ever before to bring supporters together and get a belief in the side going. The singing of “North London Forever” immediately before kick off, the re-invention of the clock end as a hub of noisy bouncy ecstatic support, both overlaid the normal passion of the Tottenham game.
And who knows perhaps this time the lunatic messaging in the media about Arsenal having had an easy run up to the game which made the league table in some way a false record of what had happened so far, spurred on our players (if you will excuse the expression) to greater glory.
For let us not forget the way that during the summer the usual suspects who gave their predictions for this season’s ultimate top four all predicted a top four without Arsenal. And indeed so ingrained is that vision that Arsenal simply can’t break into the cartel, that even now some of the media can’t and won’t see what is going on.
So having told us that Arsenal had had the easiest of rides thus far (total nonsense, Tottenham for one had it easier) the Telegraph proclaims today, “There is always a danger, much recent Arsenal history will show, that this flourishing of the Mikel Arteta era may just lead nowhere when pitted against stronger forces,”
Thus the last 35 games of last season, which if created into a league table have Arsenal third in the league, are as nothing – unless of course somehow in that run of 35 games Arsenal conspired only to play lower league teams.
Arsenal we are now told, didn’t win the game for “Their old rivals handed the game to Arsenal on two occasions,” Next we’ll be told that the place was “strangely quiet”! But in fact, as anyone who was actually there will attest this was the noisiest of matches against the potatoes (or spuds as some call them) in many, many a year.
Approaching the ground over 90 minutes before kick off, every pub was packed to overflowing. What’s more the overflow accommodation was itself overflowing into the street, as the sound of Arsenal songs rang from one drinking venue to the next. Before the match the biggest ever banner to be displayed at the stadium was arranged over the heads of around two thirds of the lower north bank, and almost everyone joined in the singing of North London Forever.
As for the match, “Up to the sending off they were still in this game, a shadow cast over the relentless optimism of the Arsenal approach,” says the Telegraph. What gibberish! The sending-off cast no shadow because before it, it was utterly clear that Martinelli could run rings round the entire Tottenham defence on his own and that Saliba is a defender of such staggering magnitude he could probably take care of most Tottenham attacks while sitting on the grass reading the programme.
Indeed prior to the game the entire media attitude was one that stressed that Arsenal’s squad was thin, and because of injuries, stretched as far as it could be pulled.
A penalty always looked as if it was going to be Tottenham’s only way to save the day, not least because last season they scored each and every one they were granted by PGMO, and so they duly got one and scored it. Afterwards, the Tottenham manager asked why Premier League officials did not get together each week to review what they had done. The answer of course is they don’t need to. The statistics which Untold reveals week after week, month after month, show that they know very well exactly what they are up to.
Arsenal had 65% of the possession which tells us a lot about where this team is, and where it is going. Remember once more, before the season started, Arsenal were seen as no-hopers for a top four finish in this campaign And yes I know things can still go wrong but as I suspect rarely do they go completely wrong from a position as good as this, although the media and their chums in PGMO will do their best.
And as the Observer says, “Win or lose the Gunners are enjoying themselves and it showed”.
But let us not kid ourselves that the media accepts what Arsenal are now achieving. The Mail’s headline is “Spurs boss Antonio Conte suggests referees should go back to school.”
He won’t get banned or even reprimanded for that comment, which tells us much of what is going on in football today.
Here’s the top of the league in case you missed it.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal | 8 | 7 | 0 | 1 | 20 | 8 | 12 | 21 |
| 2 | Manchester City | 7 | 5 | 2 | 0 | 23 | 6 | 17 | 17 |
| 3 | Tottenham Hotspur | 8 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 19 | 10 | 9 | 17 |
| 4 | Brighton and Hove Albion | 7 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 14 | 8 | 6 | 14 |
| 5 | Chelsea | 7 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 10 | 10 | 0 | 13 |
| 6 | Manchester United | 6 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 8 | 8 | 0 | 12 |
| 7 | Newcastle United | 8 | 2 | 5 | 1 | 12 | 8 | 4 | 11 |
| 8 | Fulham | 8 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 13 | 15 | -2 | 11 |
| 9 | Liverpool | 7 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 18 | 9 | 9 | 10 |
Here is crap from the deadwood journalists at The Telegraf…k
“For Arteta, results like these grow that elusive confidence that has flowed and mostly ebbed in the years since Arsenal last won titles. There is no doubt that he has built something, at a considerable cost when one contemplates his £265 million transfer spend, but it is moments like these that demonstrate what might be possible.”
AT CONSIDERABLE COST ?!?!!? how much are the others ‘spending’ ?!?! And for what results ?
Tony, this is top of the list for the ‘Lawrencing’ award 2022, probably almost as good as ‘only 2 scorers with more then 10 goals’ from a few years ago. Yeah. Maybe the other teams are ‘investing’ hundreds of millions while Arsenal are ‘spending’ ? Funny thing is our team is the youngest, so it is an investment, not a ‘spend’.
Sad fetish with the media. Just write about football!
It is very interesting (to me and some sociologists as well I think, although I don’t count myself as part of their number) that people who object to a point of view quite often attempt to denigrate that point of view by calling it not an argument or a viewpoint, but a “fetish”.
It is, of course, a total misuse of the word “fetish” (which actually means an object believed to have magical power to protect or aid its owner; although recently it has come to be used as an activity or object that someone is interested in to an extreme degree and that the person gives an unreasonable amount of time or thought to. And I guess it is this to which you refer Andrew.
But here’s a thought. If one allows for a moment that my writing about what the media say is not (as I contend) to counter a deliberate attempt to mislead by journalists and publishers keen to avoid a realisation by the football going public that certain issues are constnatly ignored, but is in fact simply a fetish, then what does that make your constant sniping at my work? If my concern about the media is a fetish, then surely, your concern with my work must also be a fetish.
So one may ask, why do you have such a fetish? I explain why I write about the media – but you never explain why you regularly write in to criticise my work. Would you care to do so? I’ll certainly consider your contribution for publication.
Happy days Tony. I can imagine you did enjoy this a bit 😉 Since this season I even put the noise back on when watching the games. Okay I have to endure the giberish of the match commentators but I try do do ignore them and try to listen only to the noise the crowd makes. And blimey they do seem to make some noise this season. Long may it continue
There are many reasons not to watch or read the MSM and one of them is their reporting on Arsenal, I used to be a regular newspaper purchaser, I’m from that generation, but I stopped about 16 years ago and I don’t even read the appalling and free Evening Standard anymore, nor do I read the vast majority of utter claptrap they post on the and you know what, I feel so much better for it. MOTD, my only visit to the BBC, sees me fast forwarding the analysis of games, I don’t need them to tell me the obvious and it’s refreshing. So when I come on here and Tony tells us what some dumb bell has written, say, in the Telegraph I say to myself ‘why do you do that to yourself?’ But I get it, we need to remember how ‘they’ really think about us so thanks Tony for that.
Yesterday was an amazing experience, my first game of the season. We have a wonderful team and a brilliant manager supported by some outstanding, supportive fans and we’re going to have a great season. So everyone else can put that in their pipe and smoke it.
Despite the media, the optimism is real and justifiable.
Leicester will not finish in the top 4. No team with 1 point from its first 7 games has ever done this. On the other hand, there is a 57% chance that Leicester will be relegated.
91% of teams obtaining 21 or more points in the Premier League go on to finish in the top 4.
Don’t believe me? Check out goalometer.com
I guess this is a very good and opportune time to laugh at all those (alleged) experts . Sit back and watch as they fumble and get it all wrong.
No comments needed . Laughing at their folly is recommended . Apparently its good for the soul . And health.