- Why ignoring a topic in football is infinitely more dangerous than disagreeing with it
- Arsenal scoring five on three occasions…. and the club with 50% more yellows than Arsenal
By Tony Attwood
As you probably know perfectly well (but I’ll put in the league table just in case you missed it) we are nine points behind the leaders after 13 games. Is that too big a gap to surmount? Or put another way, is it all over bar the shouting? (Although those fellows from up north do seem to be doing an awful lot of shouting).
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Liverpool | 13 | 11 | 1 | 1 | 26 | 8 | 18 | 34 |
| 2 | Arsenal | 13 | 7 | 4 | 2 | 26 | 14 | 12 | 25 |
| 3 | Chelsea | 13 | 7 | 4 | 2 | 26 | 14 | 12 | 25 |
| 4 | Brighton and Hove Albion | 13 | 6 | 5 | 2 | 22 | 17 | 5 | 23 |
No – it just means that Arsenal have to win three games while Liverpool lose three games. Assuming that Arsenal won those games by 2-0, 2-0 and 1-0, that would give Arsenal 34 points as Liverpool have now and a goal difference of +17. If Liverpool lost three games by a single goal each team, their goal difference would be +15. Arsenal would be top of the league.
OK that is fantasy stuff, but do fantasies ever happen?
Last season after 13 games Manchester City (the eventual winners) were just one point behind Arsenal in second place. In 2022 Manchester City were two points behind Arsenal after 13 games. In 2021 Manchester City were one point behind Chelsea after 13.
So that seems to suggest this is an abnormal season. But wait, for in 2020 Manchester City were eight points behind Liverpool at this stage. OK that is still one short of the gap of nine points now, but it is worth taking a look.
On 17 December 2020 the table read, with most teams having played 13 games as in the chart below. The “Change” column shows the rise (+) or fall (-) in the position of the club between the 13 game marker and the end of the season. Most notably we can see that Manchester City rose from 9th to first.
| Team | P | W | D | L | GD | Pts | End Pos | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Liverpool | 13 | 8 | 4 | 1 | 10 | 28 | 3 | -2 |
| 2 | Tottenham Hotspur | 13 | 7 | 4 | 2 | 13 | 25 | 7 | -5 |
| 3 | Southampton | 13 | 7 | 3 | 3 | 7 | 24 | 15 | -12 |
| 4 | Leicester City | 13 | 8 | 0 | 5 | 7 | 24 | 5 | -1 |
| 5 | Everton | 13 | 7 | 2 | 4 | 5 | 23 | 10 | -5 |
| 6 | Manchester United | 12 | 7 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 23 | 2 | +4 |
| 7 | Chelsea | 13 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 12 | 22 | 4 | +3 |
| 8 | West Ham United | 13 | 6 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 21 | 6 | +2 |
| 9 | Manchester City | 12 | 5 | 5 | 2 | 6 | 20 | 1 | +8 |
| 10 | Wolverhampton Wanderers | 13 | 6 | 2 | 5 | -4 | 20 | 13 | -3 |
| 11 | Aston Villa | 11 | 6 | 1 | 4 | 8 | 19 | 11 | 0 |
| 12 | Crystal Palace | 13 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 1 | 18 | 13 | -1 |
| 13 | Leeds United | 13 | 5 | 2 | 6 | -2 | 17 | 9 | +4 |
| 14 | Newcastle United | 12 | 5 | 2 | 5 | -5 | 17 | 12 | 0 |
| 15 | Arsenal | 13 | 4 | 2 | 7 | -5 | 14 | 8 | +7 |
And yes I have gone all the way down to 15th because I wanted to include Arsenal. But just to confirm that I am not making this up, the end of the season it read…
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Manchester City | 38 | 27 | 5 | 6 | 83 | 32 | 51 | 86 |
| 2 | Manchester United | 38 | 21 | 11 | 6 | 73 | 44 | 29 | 74 |
| 3 | Liverpool | 38 | 20 | 9 | 9 | 68 | 42 | 26 | 69 |
| 4 | Chelsea | 38 | 19 | 10 | 9 | 58 | 36 | 22 | 67 |
| 5 | Leicester City | 38 | 20 | 6 | 12 | 68 | 50 | 18 | 66 |
| 6 | West Ham United | 38 | 19 | 8 | 11 | 62 | 47 | 15 | 65 |
| 7 | Tottenham Hotspur | 38 | 18 | 8 | 12 | 68 | 45 | 23 | 62 |
| 8 | Arsenal | 38 | 18 | 7 | 13 | 55 | 39 | 16 | 61 |
Now this was a season of quite large changes, and not all seasons change like this, but changes on a fair scale can happen – and for all sorts of reasons. It can be a new manager coming in, it can be players being injured or recovering, it can be the positive attitude of players after a couple of wins which then leads from those victories being the base for a non-stop charge up the league. It can be referee vagaries…
And of course the reverse can happen as well. So the point is, making predictions based on the league table now can be a dodgy business. Not always of course, for sometimes the club top after 13 might win the league – but it is not guaranteed.
And as a prime example of this consider this headline from the Guardian today: “No Arsenal player is benefiting more from the captain’s return than his ruthless buddy on the wing, as West Ham found out”.
And I think what we could also note is the fact that very few people in the media anticipated that after six Premier League and Champions League games, starting 19 October and ending 10 November 2024 in which Arsenal won one, lost three and drew two, scoring four and conceding seven….
… Arsenal would then go on a run of three games in the same competitions in which they won all three, scored 13 and conceded three.
Of course, that’s only three games, but we can get some glee out of the way the journalists tried to handle it. I thought the Guardian came out rather well with, “Oh for heavens’s sake, get a room. Actually don’t. This is, on reflection, a global spectator sport. But show a little restraint. People are watching. Including, it seemed for much of the first half at the London Stadium, the entire West Ham defence.
“There were times during those 49 wild minutes when Bukayo Saka and Martin Ødegaard seemed to be playing pretty much in the same pocket of air, like a pair of hummingbirds, beautifully conjoined.”
And now compare that to the shitstorms and endless criticisms whenever Arsenal lose a point….
The fact is, things change although some clubs are persistently presented in a positive light, as with, for example, “Owners determined to turn Aston Villa into elite club, says Dean Smith” three years ago with the subheadings including
- Villa have long-term plan to compete in ‘upper echelons’ and Club want to ‘emulate and surpass’ Leicester’s progress
Aston Villa are currently 12th in the table (many pundits were predicting a top four finish this season), and since that article was written Leicester have been relegated although to be fair they have now come up again and are sitting 15th in the PL.
Even the big seven clubs are not guaranteed a place in the top seven. Manchester United are ninth and Newcastle are 11th. Replacing them are Brighton and Nottingham Forest.
It turns out the man on the terracing was right. It is a funny ol’ game..
If a 9 point gap can be created in a third of the season, it is obviously possible for it to be overturned in the remainder.
I am afraid that the malign PGMOL influence is the key factor which makes it improbable in the current season. As Nitram said in a previous thread, wait and see what happens if, in their view, any “risk” of Arsenal closing the gap emerges.