• Arsenal see off Man U with a greater understanding of how the game works

• Football in England is policed by football clubs and a secret cabal.

by Tony Attwood

Between 2007 and 2014, an average of 32 direct free-kicks were turned into goals each season, “but in 2023/24 only 11 direct free-kicks found the back of a Premier League net.” according to the Premier League’s official site.

But last season, up until the final round of matches that figure had collapsed to nine, although two on the final day took it up to double figures.  Even so, 11 was  a record low for goals scored from such situations in one season.

So, as ever football changes; that is part of the attraction of the game.  Yet that decline has to be compared with the fact that last season, a record number of goals were scored in the Premier League: an average of 3.28 goals per game.   The previous record was from the season before:  2.85, a game, also a record (figures from the BBC).

All of this means the number of goals is growing, and surely that is what people want.   And Arsenal of course have been among the leaders in this revolution.  Indeed the last time Arsenal exceeded the goal tally of each of the last two seasons was in 1952/3 when, in winning the Football League Division 1, they goal 97 goals and conceded 54.   

Of course these days Arsenal are not the top scorers in the League, but when you consider that in2020 Arsenal got 55 goals, and the number of goals has risen each season since, you might agree that this is not only good for Arsenal, but rather good for football.   Most fans don’t want to see goalless draws and 1-0 victories.

Except the headline, “‘They’re a disgrace’ – Man United fan rips into Arsenal tactics as Dimitar Berbatov brands them ‘new Stoke’,” does suggest not everyone agrees.

That headline comes from TalkSport, choosing as news to report one disgruntled ManU fan’s comments, as a headline.  Obviously I could write the headline “TalkSport is destroying football journalism; they are an utter disgrace” which would not be far from how I feel, but it wouldn’t actually be that interesting.  Just my opinion – unless I could show how they are destroying football journalism. 

But to give the talking sprouts credit they do admit that Arsenal, “had the lion’s share of chances against their old rivals, but it was from corners where they were at their most deadly yet again.”

So yes we would perhaps agree, but inevitably the Sprout had a few ManU fans calling in (possibly from Cornwall, but I’m not too sure of that) and so they have taken one such who announced that “Arsenal are a disgrace of a team…  They’re a set piece team, they can’t play any more, they’re a disgrace and they know it.”

Now these are interesting claims.   And let’s take the last one first – that Arsenal know they are a disgrace.   It is not clear if “they” means the manager and his coaching team, the owners, or maybe the team itself, or maybe us fans, or maybe all of us, but as a fan I can say “no, I don’t know it.”   But the rantist continued, “When Stoke were doing it, it was bad for football, they’re basically Stoke in disguise. Well done, you scored two goals from set pieces and you created absolutely nothing.”

He then concludes, “They’re not going to win the league,” although that actually was only a conclusion in the sense that the rantist was then stopped, for this clearly wasn’t a drawing together evidence which led to an inevitable outcome.

Dimitar Berbatov also found it important to express a view without statistics or coherent evidence.  “Probably the Premier League is the only league in the world where there are so many players around the goalkeeper who are pushing and shoving, making chaos.”

Certainly, Arsenal do put players around the keeper, but as I watch the games what I see is a lot of two-way pushing and shoving.   There is nothing in the rules that says one cannot place players around the keeper, and in fact if the keeper or other defenders then push the Arsenal player that should be a penalty.  If the reverse it should be a free kick to the defending team.  But Arsenal are not getting penalties.

My assumption (not being able to check this with PGMO given their abject secrecy and fear of openness) is that PGMO don’t want to keep giving penalties for pushes in the box, because if they did, every corner would immediately become a penalty, because this is what so many defenders do.

So when the objector talking to the Sprout said regarding the pushing, “Normally it’s a foul,” I can’t agree.  It simply isn’t.

There is of course nothing to connect Arsenal with Stoke City – I can’t remember them attacking let alone filling the opposition penalty area with players when they got a corner, but of course the Sprout won’t follow the facts, instead they suddenly switch decades and say, “Arsene Wenger used to complain about Stoke during their top flight stint from 2008 to 2018.”   Yes he did, because their level and violence of their tackling was excessive.   They would foul, not just to stop a player, but to inhibit or injure, that was what marked them out.  

The claim is then made that at a coaching conference, Patrick Vieira said, ‘We used to hate going to Stoke. You were the only club that Wenger actually talked about and worked on before. We just couldn’t beat you.’

Of course I don’t know what Patrick actually said, but in Wenger’s time as manager Arsenal played Stoke 23 times.  Arsenal won 14 of the games, three were draws and six were Stoke wins.  It is something of a shame that Talk Sport can’t actually check their facts. But they don’t, and that is a fact.