Burnley v Arsenal: the history between the two clubs

 

 

 

From the Arsenal History website today: Celebrating the anniversary of the release of the “Arsenal Stadium Mystery” movie

• Burnley v Arsenal. The habits of the referee, and the injury latest
• Burnley v Arsenal: tackles, fouls and yellow cards – and the interesting numbers for Liverpool
• Burnley v Arsenal: could Burnley’s recent home scoring bonanza save them against Arsenal?

By Sir Hardly Anyone

We have found quite a few odd facts about Burnley v Arsenal in our previous previews but here’s one we missing: Burnley have scored nine times in the 17 Premier League games between the two clubs and Arsenal, but have only ever scored once a game – which is an all time record of non-scoring.

Arsenal have managed seven goals in a game against Burnley just once – in 1937.  Six has been scored against them three times (the last in 1929) and five against them four times, the last in 2018.  Mind you Burnley has scored five against Arsenal twice, both at Highbury, once in 1953 and again in 1960.

In 1959/60 Burnley  won Division 1 – which actually was the top division of the time (in the era before they started playing with the names of the league.  In that season the table showed…

 

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Burnley	42	24	7	11	85	61	24	55
13	Arsenal	42	15	9	18	68	80	-12	39

 

These were strange days indeed – and not just because it was two points for a win and teams were separated when need be by goal average not goal difference.  But the figures above give you a clue – a team could lose 11 games in a season and win the league.  Using the old system of counting last season Arsenal would have had 58 points – above Burnley’s title-winning season while playing four fewer games.

Since their heady title-winning day, however, Burnley have been on an expedition and by 1985/6 were in Division 4.  They then started a climb back and first hit the Premier League in 2009/10.  They went down and came back up again in 2015/16 and had another promotion last season but are in danger of yo-yoing back down, although with the parachute payment which undoubtedly will secure their financial survival.   (The capacity of Turf Moor stadium is under 22,000 so every little helps).

Also helping is the fact that as far as I can see the Premier League is the only league in the world that has parachute payments and these work out as 55% of the equal share of broadcast revenue paid to Premier League clubs in the first year after relegation; 45% the following year and 20% in the third and final year.   I think I am right in saying that the parachute payment is cancelled however if the club comes up – but it is a subject that is rather difficult to find authoritative texts on.

Thus it is a funny thing but the exact amount of money clubs have received each year in parachute payments is rather hard to find – if you can find a source quoting exact amounts please do write in and let me know.

Anyway, back to today, now reminded as we are that although Burnley are by all standards quite a small club that wanders around the leagues, Arsenal have not found it at all easy to beat them of late.  Although Burnley have only won one of the last 19 games between the clubs, if we look just at the last six games the results are just two wins to Arsenal, three draws and one win to Burnley.

For the first five of those games no team scored more than one goal (Arsenal beating Burnley 3-1 earlier this season, to make the exception).    So anything other than an Arsenal win is going to be the shock of the day.   Looking at the stats of the two clubs indeed, one might expect Burnley to be playing for a goalless draw.

Next up, the Arsenal team, and then its a 3 o’clock kick off – how strange is that!