Now everyone is following up our thoughts. For once, we’ve influenced the agenda. A bit.

 

• In Europe it is getting rather tight, but Arsenal are now the team in form
• “And Feyenoord are well and truly beaten now” A problem with perception down the road.

By Tony Attwood

We have been looking at the problem of Arsenal’s fixture list in a number of articles this season, without anyone else in the media taking much notice – our main point (and forgive me if you have read this comment from me a dozen times before) being that Arsenal got away fixtures against their main opponents virtually one after the other, without any of the so-called professional commentators noticing or commenting on the fact.  Although they were quite good at saying Arsenal were not doing very well.

But the truth is, a lot of travel, combined with an array of injuries, Arsenal have not made the start we might have wished for, although the last couple of matches have given us a real boost.

Anyway, having been proven right for once, I’ve noticed it has been interesting how one of two other websites have started to pick up on this issue.   And that was before the article “How Arsenal’s title prospects could be helped by a strange fixture quirk” arrived in my in box from the Athletic today.

Their point was simple, “Travel has been a major part of Arsenal’s season.”

Now this was interesting because other publications have tried to knock the idea of Arsenal having a difficult start to the season by looking at both home and away fixtures – but the point was that it was the away games, plus the injuries that screwed Arsenal.

Of course, not one has yet taken up the point of why Arsenal got such a dodgy collection of fixtures, which none of the other top clubs got, but then, that’s the sort of thing we expect from the media.

But anyway, let’s give credit where it is due, for the Athetic has eventually got to the topic and has done some calculating that I didn’t get around to.  For they say, “In their first 11 Premier League matches, Mikel Arteta’s side faced the other teams who finished in the top seven last season, with five of those six games coming away from home.”   OK that was our point, but then they added that Arsenal, “have also experienced a three-game week comprising solely of away matches, with trips to Tottenham Hotspur, Atalanta and Manchester City in September. Before the November international break, they had four consecutive away matches in 12 days.

So that is telling it as it is.  And what the Athletic did was then assess how Arsenal’s difficult fixtures have affected their start to the season.

And in doing that they managed to quote Arteta as saying, “Nobody has played the amount of away games that we have, and certainly not in the condition of playing half of those with 10 men. Nobody in the league,” without then mangling the evidence to suggest what the boss said was just the usual sort of Arsenal excuses.  (Which is what they usually say).

Better still they look forward and find that the schedule has Arsenal “leaving London just once in two months — and even that does not involve going far. After returning from their trip to face Sporting CP in Portugal this week, Brighton & Hove Albion away on January 4 could be the only time they play outside the capital until they travel to Wolverhampton Wanderers and Girona at the end of that month.”

Now that is a good one.  Indeed they also point out that we could have a match outside London if Arsenal get to the semi-final of the League Cup and avoid Brentford or Tottenham Hots.

But best of all they have got a mileometer out and calculated just how far Arsenal have been travelling – something that I didn’t even consider doing because of the level of work involved, what with getting out a map and everything.

Yet they did it and found that in the first 11 league games in this campaign Arsenal “travelled 715 miles” whereas in their next 10 they will travel “approximately 159 miles of travel,” while noting that “In the Champions League, hosting Monaco on December 11 and Dinamo Zagreb on January 22 also helps.”

And yes this is all true for Arsenal have away games at Brighton, West Ham, Fulham, Crystal Palace and Brentford.   And if results go as we hope they will we should then see a range of complaints in the media about how Arsenal’s league position is utterly false since they had had a load of easy fixtures while everyone else is having to travel around a lot.

Better still, as we all know, Arsenal do quite well in the London derbies, and as the Athletic points out “since the start of the 2022-23 season, they have played 28, won 19, drawn six and lost three in the capital.”

Of course it isn’t just this issue of travel – as I have been saying in recent articles the return of the injured has done a lot for the club, especially Martin Odegaard – although none of the media seem to want to mention that his injury came in a totally pointless international match.

The point obviously is that all clubs play the same number of away games, and London clubs do have something of an advantage in that some of their away matches are fairly close by, thus allowing players to get back home and have a proper night’s sleep after those away games.

But the point we made is that Arsenal didn’t just have a lot of travel, but that they had game after game against the top clubs (who mostly happen to be non-London clubs). 

Of course, the response to all is that life is much worse for Liverpool and ManC (and come to that ManU and Newcastle, and even Everton although they don’t really count too much).   But it is fun to read that “Liverpool have six away matches in their next 10 league games”.  Although there is one against Everton overall they will travel well over 1000 miles and then go to Girona in December too.  But we can be pretty sure that the media will recognise that.

So the message is out there, although interestingly still quite a few outlets have not quite caught on that this is quite an interesting topic.  Even more so when you consider actually who is was that Arsenal played.