By Tony Attwood
There was a comment recently on this site from Nittram that I thought was so very apposite, and I’d like to re-use it here:
Writing of the media and I guess bloggers too he said
“Winning ‘trophies’ is all that matters. Right up until we do, then of course it means nothing.”
How very true. And it made me think of other things we could count but which is not done because it is realised the counting says something in Arsenal’s favour. Then I found an example…
This example is not one drawn from detailed historical data but from today’s Guardian which is running the story about the 100 best male players in the world. It is unleashing more of their opinion (although to be fair if you click on the player’s picture you do get some data, although not too much) for it is little more than opinion with just a handful of statistics reported, (and even those can easily be missed if one doesn’t click on each picture individually). They are revealing the answers day by day. Today they have got to Best male players in the world 11 to 100. I presume the top ten will be revealed tomorrow.
Naturally being an Arsenal fan I had a look for Arsenal players and was quite content to see eight in the top 89. Here they are with their positions…
- Bukayo Saka 13th
- Martin Odegaard 18th
- William Saliba 28th
- Declan Rice 34th
- Gabriel Magalhães 57th
- Kai Havertz 78th
- David Raya 86th
- Riccardo Calafiiori 97th
Now this is a bit of research done across the whole of the world, as the title says, so not just England, and I wondered how many players other Premier League clubs have listed here – remembering of course the counting will change when the top ten is revealed presumably in a day or so. And of course it is just opinion, nothing more…
So here are the totals by club, for the best male footballers in the world numbers 11 to 100, according to the Guardian.
- Arsenal: 8
- Real Madrid: 8
- Manchester City: 8
- Liverpool: 7
- Barcelona: 6
- Bayern Munich 3
- Chelsea: 2
- Tottenham Hots: 2
- Nottingham Forest: 0
I thought I would include Nottingham Forest as they are currently fourth in the League and obviously have mighty ambitions what with the signing of Edu and all.
Among the more interesting listings I thought were just two ex-Arsenal men that I noticed, both of whom had disciplinary issues before they left Arsenal: Emiliano Martinez of Aston Villa at 23rd in the list (he played 15 games for Arsenal and was sent on loan to Oxford I think), Granit Xhaka at 26th (who you may recall was extensively booed by a section of Arsenal fans, with much media encouragement).
So we wait to see what the final totals will bring tomorrow. But meanwhile we do now know that Arsenal will play Newcastle at Emirates Stadium in the first leg of their tie before the second leg at St James’ Park.
The draw also sets up what the newspaper calls “the tantalising possibility of a North London derby in the final of the competition.” I am not quite sure why it is tantalising, since of the last eight games between the two clubs, Tottenham Hots have won one game, there has been one draw, and although my maths can be a bit sloppy I think that means Arsenal have won six. Which I think is 75% in terms of victories. Or 88% of the games in which Arsenal have avoided defeat.
The games will be played in the weeks commencing 6 January, and 3 February.
In the meanwhile, the Guardian is telling us about 10 things to look out for this weekend and in doing so they included a thought that I think some people missed about the way Palace played the last game, noting that, “part of the plan for Palace was to leave three players up the pitch to give their opponents something to think about on the break.”
Yes it was an interesting trick, but of course Arsenal will be aware of that now, and will also have Saka on the pitch from the start in tomorrow’s game.
I noticed today that another BBC “football expert”, Chris Sutton gave his objective analysis of this weekend’s game. He opened with the sentence, “This is a rematch of Wednesday’s Carabao Cup quarter-final, when Arsenal scored from open play. I guess Christmas miracles do happen.” Clearly another expert who pays zero attention to facts in order to have digs at Arsenal’s expense.
Just for the record, eight teams have scored more goals from ‘open play’ in the league than Arsenal so far this season (and none of them has played as many top sides away from home as us!). In the Carabao Cup, only two teams have scored more from open play than us whilst 89 teams have scored fewer (Chelsea have scored only half as many as us and Man City even less than that). In that Cup, 18% of out goals have come from set pieces. 39 clubs have scored a higher percentage of their goals from set pieces……including 8 teams who have scored 100% of their goals in this manner. In fact seven Premiership teams have scored a higher percentage of their goals from set pieces than Arsenal.
Just for good measure, in the Champions League, the average number of goals from open play is 5.8, Arsenal have scored 8 from open play. The average scored from set pieces is 1.64, Arsenal have scored three (exactly the same as Liverpool).
As I said in a previous post, it’s funny how the media decided to go apoplectic after their darling Man U got beaten by two set piece goals. Still never the the facts get in the way of a derogatory story about Arsenal……
“Set-piece” references in media seem to have taken over from “dark arts”
Mikey
As I, and others have said many times, of course they all know the real statistics, and if they don’t they must be even more stupid than they seem, which is a possibility of course!!
But honestly, they know, which is why we keep using the word ‘agenda’ when talking about the media
The dictionary meaning of the slang term ‘To Have An Agenda’ is:
“It means that they are working a plan against you. This means that they are being manipulative or misleading, or both”.
Which is exactly what Sutton is doing, and what the media do to us all the time. To deny this is ridiculous.
Which moves me on to John L’s point.
First we had Dark Arts. An absolute crock of shite dreamt up by Pep simply as a ruse to deflect attention from the fact Man City are seriously under performing this season, and of course the media lapped it up. Now we have this set piece nonsense.
Anybody who is honest enough to put their partisanship aside knows that, but that doesn’t stop the World and his dog jumping on the Arsenal bashing band wagon.
Nobody else gets that accusation thrown at them. Not even Arne Slot who, as I pointed out in an earlier article, openly admits he tries to influence referees, and has just served a touchline ban. All we get is an article saying ‘Arne Slot opens up on mistakes’. So trying to cheat by influencing referees is just a ‘mistake’, but scoring from corners is a Dark Art!!
You couldn’t make this crap up, but they do.
The phrase “dark arts” is misleading when used by the media. “Dark Arts” is merely a reference to Mikel’s hair colouring.