By Tony Attwood
The pain of the Arsenal draw this weekend was perhaps lessened a fraction by the draw between those teams from somewhere in the northwestern part of the country.
“I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” said my pal (who when he heard I was writing about our conversation demanded my absolute promise that I wouldn’t mention his name – and of course I always keep my promises – at least some times) “we’re always crap in midwinter.”
Now that wasn’t a view of Arsenal I fully recognised so I thought I would go and have a look, although even I, in my advanced years, could remember that Arsenal were poor in part of December and January last year.
In fact, between 23 December and 7 January last winter, Arsenal played four games, losing three and drawing one. Then things picked up again.
My memory is not so good over longer periods so I looked up January 2023 That month started ok, but at the end and into Febraury we had one of those infamous dips that got me quite agitated last season (a dip being a time when instead of there just being one odd defeat and then we return to winning ways, the defeats and draws go on).
In late January 2023 and on into February we had a run of three defeats and a draw, although perhaps slightly excusable by the fact that two of the games were against ManC who at that time were winning everything.
So then I went back to January 2022, and this too was another grotty period. Five games, three defeats, two draws. Now the damage was slightly lessened by the fact that one defeat was in the FA Cup and another in the League Cup, but the fact is from 1 January onward we played five games, didn’t win any of them and scored just one goal.
It was all getting rather depressing by this time, but I forced myself back one more year and found that in 2021 things were slightly better with seven games – which is interesting in that the media are currently saying Arsenal are in trouble just because they are playing seven games – but for Arsenal it is not a new thing.
Anyway 2021 wasn’t too bad with four wins, two draws and a defeat – the defeat being 1-0 to Southampton and the draws were both goalless affairs – one with Crystal Palace and one with Manchester United.
I decided to round this little escapade off by going back to the start of the decade, the 2019/20 season. And at last, I found an unbeaten January – but even there the results were not that wonderful since of the six games played three were draws.
The wins were against Manchester United in the league and Leeds United and Bournemouth in the FA Cup. The draws were with Palace, Sheffield United and Chelsea.
OK Arsenal are not very good in January. But the fact is there really doesn’t need to be quite so much doom and gloom, although I know that is what the media always wants to spread. Yes we are six behind Liverpool and they have a game in hand, so it will require a collapse by them for Arsenal even to have a chance of catching up.
And also yes, I am sure someone is going to say that “Runners’-up is not a trophy” just like they used to say “fourth is not a trophy”, and of course that is true. But I’d still sooner have Arsenal in the runners’ up position than where for example, and not to put too fine a point on it, Manchester City are (and just in case you haven’t noticed they have a worse attack than Arsenal, a worse defence than Arsenal and six points fewer than Arsenal).
Arsenal currently have 40 points from 20 games. A year ago it was also 40 points from 20 games, which can lead people to say there is no progress. But this year Arsenal have achieved 40 points from 20 games with a whole array of injuries which we didn’t have to deal with last year.
Of course, we have slipped back from two years ago, but then again the injury problem is different. It really doesn’t seem so appalling as the media likes to suggest. Indeed they seem to have forgotten what it was like in 2021 after 20 games….. when we had ten points fewer, had lost eight games and were ninth in the league.
Of course I want Arsenal to win the League, but I am not going to demand wholesale changes just because we haven’t got there yet.
For some reason I always thought November was our ‘difficult’ Month?
Maybe that’s our problem.
We are crap in November. Crap in January. Bottle it in May. And on top of that we don’t have a ‘proper number 9’.
No wonder we don’t win anything!!!
Oh, how I wish we were more like Spurs then perhaps we would.