- How Arsenal are already managing the rest of the season
- What does the failure of a new football financial deal mean to PL clubs?
By Bulldog Drummond
We are all so used to Bayern Munich sauntering away with the German league that it seems strange that they are not at the top. Still that’s what you get when you sign a centre forward from a dodgy club.
Bayern Munich won the league in Germany for the last ten seasons in a row. No sweat, just a gentle stroll in the park. In all those years Bayer Leverkusen managed to come third twice, but no higher.
And now, really oddly, Bayern Munich are second, ten points behind Bayer Leverkusen. OK Munich have scored ten more goals, but they have also conceded 13 more goals.
So anyway, Arsenal are going to play Bayern Munich in the next round of the Champions League. And although that is a bit of a time away, let’s take a peek at how the two teams are doing, not least because we can’t rely on the general media even to try (or to get it right if they do try).
In this mini-table below we have the German league leaders Bayer Leverkusen, then Bayern Munich whom we are playing and then Arsenal.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bayer Leverkusen | 25 | 21 | 4 | 0 | 63 | 16 | 47 | 67 |
| 2 | Bayern Munich | 25 | 18 | 3 | 4 | 73 | 29 | 44 | 57 |
| 1 | Arsenal | 28 | 20 | 4 | 4 | 70 | 24 | 46 | 64 |
If we estimated Bayern’s progress over the next three matches we might expect them to win two of the games in hand (compared to Arsenal) and maybe draw or lose the third so they really are running neck and neck with Arsenal. Indeed even their goal difference is very, very close to Arsenal.
And of course, I would imagine Bayern are going to be pretty annoyed at not winning the league this year so they will be focussed on the Champs League as much as ever.
The aforementioned Kane is also top scorer in the league this season, so for him, it is life as usual. Being top scorer, and not winning the league. Who would believe it? He could have stayed at Tottenham and done that.
His team has three wins two defeats and a draw in the last six games which also isn’t that impressive.
And we might compare the two clubs over the last six matches since we have been using that metric through much of this season.
| Club | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 | Bayern Munich | 6 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 17 | 11 | +6 | 10 |
| 1 | Arsenal | 6 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 26 | 3 | +23 | 18 |
Which actually leads us on to taking a peek at the Premier League’s last six games’ table because, well actually I don’t know why, apart from the fact that at this moment in my life I actually quite like looking at the last six games table…
| Pos | Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal | 6 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 26 | 3 | +23 | 18 |
| 2 | Manchester City | 6 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 9 | 3 | +6 | 14 |
| 3 | Tottenham Hot | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 15 | 8 | +7 | 13 |
| 4 | Liverpool | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 14 | 7 | +7 | 13 |
| 5 | Aston Villa | 6 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 15 | 11 | +4 | 12 |
| 6 | Manchgester U | 6 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 11 | 7 | +4 | 12 |
And that is not all, because after an incident with fireworks being thrown in the match between Bayern and Lazio in the previous round Bayern are now not allowed to have any fans in the away section for this match.
Now under Article 38.01 of Champions League regulations, Arsenal have to make 5% of the ground available to visiting supporters. As we all know that is the lower tier to the right of the clock if you are standing at the clock end.
Arsenal’s current capacity is stated as being 60,704 which means 3,025.2 people (I am not sure Arsenal do actually allow the 0.2 people to get the number right, so maybe we should say 3,000. That means three thousand more silver members will be able to come along
And goodness me, it appears we are still there at the very top. Well what do you know? And even though the story that “Since 2016, no one has done better than Granit Xhaka” is still doing the rounds and some of the people who howled for him to go are now saying it was a mistake, we’re still top of the league.
In fact, all the huge changes that were threatening the beautiful game have turned out to be media hogwash, as we now have “Saudi Arabia’s professional league has attracted late-career stars with hundreds of millions, but it apparently doesn’t interest many people.”
Although another headline, this one in the Telegraph says that “Saudi Arabia make a renewed play for Premier League stars with Richarlison a target”
So there we are. Nothing much is happening but it is always possible that something might happen sometime soon.
Reading comments, I find it truly fascinating.
Basically, Arsenal have no chance because of Kane and the fact that they always lost to Bayern, last time 10-2 on aggregate.
Yet that was so long ago the I believe there is not a single player from today’s squad who was on the field….maybe Mr Arteta himself ?
Do we wannt believe that there is a DNA that gets injected to players ?
That the young Gunners even care about the past ? Like they’d be running around during thegame watching a replay on their smartphone.
So much for stupid commentary.
I did not read one comment saying for example that the Bayern team may have experienced players….but well, they are older…. way older then the Arsenal players ?
Or that Arsenal are a fully functionning unit, whereas Bayern and their coach are a rather fully functionning non-unit ?
In other news Arsenal Women are in action this evening taking on Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in the WSL. Chelsea are top, level on points with Man City but ahead on goal difference. We are in third place three points adrift and with a much worse goal difference. Whatever the result Chelsea will remain top and we will remain third but it is still a game where not losing and preferrably winning if of vital importance to us. If we are to have any chance of winning the league (and I know that can only happen if both Chelsea and City drop points) it is vital that we win all of our remaining games and somehow improve our goal difference by somewhere near 2 goals a game.
The match is on Sky Sports with a 7pm kickoff.
COYWG
interesting bit on everton
https://www.standard.co.uk/business/everton-bidder-777-partners-buy-football-software-tech-premier-league-ownership-investment-firm-unicorn-sportstech-b1145653.html
Chelsea women won 3-1 game over in 30 minutes. The best we can now hope for is third place. We were slower and less determined than chelsea. Second best all game . Not good enough Eideval, you need to do far more to earn your salary.