- Chelsea and Liverpool could miss out on Europe next season. What does that mean?
- If they had any moral fibre they would immediately resign
By Tony Attwood
In fact it is a worryingly good news day for a club that is normally surrounded by bad news. Admittedly it is quite often invented bad news, but nonetheless it is bad news. And yet at the moment, everything looks rather bright.
Let’s start on the injury front. Arsenal are recorded by EPL Injury table as having two injuries: Gabriel Jesus and Mo Elneny. The former is very much on his way back, the latter is out for the season.
Only Manchester City have that low a number of injuries. Palace and Brentford have three each, and from there on the numbers escalate upwards to Nottingham Forest with 10. Brighton and Liverpool both have seven – which perhaps helps explain why Liverpool are not functioning that well at the moment.
Moving on to the second bit of jolly information, Bukayo Saka is close to signing a new contract at Arsenal with just a few bits and pieces to be sorted. And we may note that at the moment he is equal top scorer for Arsenal with nine. And with Trossard and Odegaard on eight (although Trossard scored six of those with Brighton) this looks a rather secure situation. Indeed it is amusing to recall the tales of forthcoming doom when Jesus was injured.
Gabriel Jesus’s injury will affect Arsenal’s title hopes, was one headline. Another, although rather more garbled came from Football.London saying “Arsenal handed Gabriel Jesus injury concern with ‘massive problem’ in top four race claim.” And the massive problem in the top four race turned out to be Arsenal 16 points above Newcastle in fifth.
However it is interesting to look at the points per game at the moment, what with the top teams having played anything from 22 to 25 games at the moment. Because the points per game table turns out to be exactly the same as the league table not taking into account the number of games each team has played. Here’s the top four…
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | PPG | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal | 24 | 18 | 3 | 3 | 52 | 23 | 29 | 57 | 2.38 |
| 2 | Manchester City | 25 | 17 | 4 | 4 | 64 | 25 | 39 | 55 | 2.20 |
| 3 | Manchester United | 24 | 15 | 4 | 5 | 41 | 28 | 13 | 49 | 2.04 |
| 4 | Tottenham Hotspur | 25 | 14 | 3 | 8 | 46 | 35 | 11 | 45 | 1.80 |
And moving on we hear that Saka, is about to sign a new contract. Which is not only good news because he has played in every match this season, but also because he is the top scorer this season. OK he’s only got one third of the goals that Haaland has got, but when one looks at the top scorers in the league, Arsenal have four players between number 1 and number 11 (Saka, Martinelli, Odegaard and Trossard – although to be fair Trossard scored mosst of his for Brighton).
But the point is, no other club has four such players, and it is a great insurance against future injuries. (And to add to the feel-good factor, Arsenal are the only club with two players with six-plus assists in the league: Saka and Odegaard.
In fact to return to the young players’ contract issue, William Saliba is the only one of the kiddies yet to sign a new deal. And as is being widely recognised, having Saka, Martinelli and Saliba staying together can only make things better.
It is of course true that Manchester City are outshining Arsenal in terms of goals scored, but the key point here is the age of the Arsenal team. Until this last transfer window Arsenal had the youngest squad in the league, although it is reported that following the signing of Jorginho and Leandro Trossard Arsenal are now only the second youngest squad, having been undertaken by Southampton – who have an average age of their squad one month below that of Arsenal.
Leaving aside les anciennes such as Fulham and West Ham, the average ages of Arsenal’s main rivals are interesting… Tottenham have an average age of 27.6, Liverpool 27.4, Newcastle 27.3, Manchester City 27.2, Manchester United and Chelsea both 26.7 years. Arsenal are on 24.3 years.
So it is looking promising not just for now, but for the future. For the forthcoming league games are against Everton, Bournemouth, Fulham. Crystal Palace and Leeds United, which should make for an easier run compared to the January schedule which included consecutive games against Newcastle, Tottenham and Manchester United.
Things are looking rather promising.
I am always hopeful, but don’t fall into the trap of assessing forthcoming matches against certain teams as necessarily easy. Above all, experiece teels us that the malign PGMOL can fundamentally alter the balance in any game.
Leicester game is a clear example. We were totally dominant, but won only 1-0 and could have conceded an equaliser late on. The VAR denial of a good goal and an obvious penalty award could have been decisive on the result.
After yesterday, the usual suspects among the pundits, Keane and Neville, are talking up Man Utd as EPL champions, predicting that they are now the biggest threat to Arsenal. In terms of referee and media support, their claim may well be valid.
However, at Wembley, they were mostly second-best to a below-par Newcastle, but scored 2 lucky breakaway goals, then parked the bus for most of the game.
With the customary play-acting and crowding around the referee, and the fortuitous avoiding of a second yellow card for Fred, they are awful to watch.
They are not impressive in any positive way, in my opinion.
John L
Thank God I’m not the only one that noticed. I’m literally saying everything you said.
John L, I agree with you that there are no easy games in the PL. You can make them look easy if you score a few early goals but that doesn”t mean they are easy.
What we as fans cant help doing is looking ahead. I don’t mean just at the next game, as we know the manager always talks about, but at the next and the next and the next. It’s in a fans DNA, as it is to see disaster over every hill. We cant help ourselves.
At the turn of the year we faced a daunting diary. Everyone was saying, ‘you haven’t played anyone yet’ and as much as of course we had, there was no denying the next 10 matches were a tough run.
We had 4 tricky away matches at Spurs, Everton (new manager compounding the issue) Villa (ex manager compounding the issue) and Leicester City (just hitting form). No gimmies in that little lot.
Home was arguably even trickier including ties against Newcastle, Man Utd and Man City. Even Brentford were, as we found out, no push over.
We came out of that little lot with 14 out of 24 points. Not brilliant, but no disaster either. It much depended on how our main rival Man City did and they achieved 16 from 24 points. Not brilliant either, meaning they achieved a net gain of just 2 points.
Now given how tough that run was I would of took that all day long as they say.
So now, as fans, we cant help ourselves looking over that same hill at what’s coming up and it has to be said it is a nice little run of fixtures comprising of:
Everton Home
Bournemouth Home
Fulham Away
Palace Home
Leeds Home
And when you look at what’s coming after that I think we will need to take maximum points from that little lot, and if we do it will set us up nicely for the extremely difficult run of fixtures that follow them:
Liverpool Away
West Ham Away
Southampton Home
Man City Away
Chelsea Home
Newcastle Away
Brighton Home
We will do well to come out of that little lot unscathed, so we really do need to go into it in very good shape.
As fans we, or at least I just cant help doing that. It’s what fans do.
As for the players ONE GAME AT A TIME LADS!
This is some ride and I’m loving it. COYG
I like your comments about our schedule, Nitram. What is also happening now is that other clubs are looking at their schedules and when they see Arsenal they feel uncomfortable. This is a welcome change.
As our critics often say, we haven’t yet beaten any teams above us in the league.
Right you are John L. Isn’t life a bitch?
John L,
Wait until Amy Lawrence gets hold of that one 🤣
Nice one , John .
Arsenal cannot move on any higher at present !
Up the Gunners !