Arsenal have been poor all season.

 

 

• When it comes to Arsenal v Tottenham, it really is all going Arsenal’s way
• Two defeats in two games: what can Arsenal learn from this?

By Tony Attwood

“Arsenal have been poor all season.”   

That was the comment in a recent post to this site.  It’s not one I agree with but of course, as long as the comment is not abusive or simply repeating past comments, up it goes.

But is this true?  Have Arsenal been poor all season?   Obviously, you’ll know the current league table which shows Arsenal in second place with the third-highest goal-scoring record, the best defensive record and the second-highest goal difference in the league.

So if that is being poor all season, then wow, what is it going to be like when Arsenal are not poor all season?  I think it would be fairly fantastic.

But maybe we should pause and think just how far this poverty of performance has gone.  So let us look back to Arsenal after 20 games last season.   As it happens after 20 games last year Arsenal were also on 40 points as now, but had scored two goals less and conceded two goals more.  So on that basis this season is actually better than last season.  Yet because the journalists were not feeding us the lines about Arsenal being poor all season, no one said it.

So really this is two seasons of poverty – and we have to remember that for most of this season and all of last season, we had Saka in the team, so it is nothing to do with him.

In fact what this “poor all season” means, given that this season is virtually identical to last season, is that coming second is now defined as being “poor”, and of course if that is something you agree with, well, you just have to live with the knowledge that for most of your life Arsenal going to be poor.

My point is not that Arsenal are as good as I want them to be – obviously not, since I want to see Arsenal win the cups (now impossible of course) and the League (still possible).   And so maybe we should be demanding more transfers – or at least the transfers that will do what is necessary to reach the heights of the league winners.

After all, Arsenal were close two seasons ago, getting the same goal difference as the league winners (+62) and being just two points short of the 91 that ManC got.  So that’s the level we have to aim at.

And it is true that as matters stand at the current rate of two points a game Arsenal are not going to get anything like 96 points.

But the fact is that results are not the same through each season – and as we have discussed here many times before, most teams get blips at some stage in the season, which is to say a downturn over a few matches and then a return to form.

Indeed just a few days ago I wrote a little piece which opened with the question  “Is there an Arsenal crisis or is it just a media crisis?”

As we have noted many times, the football media is not interested in insight.  Rather they make assertions which are not only unproven but also often bear no relation to the facts, then move on from there as if the assertions were facts.

And as we have also explored before, Arsenal’s performances are best explained through excellence combined with a few blips.   The performance of some supporters can be best explained by “If we don’t win the next match the manager should go”.

In this regard, you might remember the curious reader who after Arsenal 0 Aston Villa 2 last season, demanded the immediate sacking of the manager.  Who knows what would have happened if this sacking had occurred, but what we can say is that in terms of points in the league the newcomer could not have done any better than Mikel Arteta, since his side then went on to win all six remaining league games scoring 16 goals along the way.  I recall that being quite jolly – although of course, we did not win the league.

And yes a new manager might then have carried that form into this season.  But the fact is that most managers fail, and so it is more likely that if we had changed managers then, the new manager would quite possibly have had to contend with the same number of injuries as Arteta has had this season, but might not actually managed to have Arsenal in second place, despite all those injuries.

As Aesop said, “Be careful what you wish for”.  And old Aesop, he knew a thing or three.