100 years since Chapman came to Arsenal: Latest article:
Chapman leaves Huddersfield and replaces Knighton at Arsenal
PSV v Arsenal
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By Bulldog Drummond
There seems to be little interest in Europe in copying the English media’s nonsensical drivel about imaginary supercomputers telling us what is about to happen. Indeed, the fact that after the events which these imaginary machines predict, there is rarely much crowing about how our supercomputer got it right, gives us one clue as to why.
And indeed, this does, by and large, tell us that the supercomputers constantly mentioned in the media are indeed imaginary, invented by the Sun and the like to heap negativity upon Arsenal.
In fact to be fair, there is only a minimal amount of interest in the round of 16 in Europe over tonight and tomorrow. For as the Athletic says via the New York Times website “Premier League observers should focus on what promises to be a feverish battle to finish in the top five, with every club down to Spurs in 12th deemed by Opta’s supercomputer to have at least some chance of finishing in the division’s upper quarter.”
(And just in case your maths are in slippage mode in the morning, I should add that “upper quarter” is posh talk for “Top Five”).
That prediction, I think, is one we might care to hold onto and, indeed, come back to at the end of the season.
Why only down to Tottetnham Hots when in fact Manchester Un and West Ham Un both have exactly the same points as the (in the eyes of the Athletic) mighty Tottenham Hots?
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Arsenal | 27 | 15 | 9 | 3 | 51 | 23 | 28 | 54 |
| 5 | Chelsea | 27 | 13 | 7 | 7 | 52 | 36 | 16 | 46 |
| 12 | Crystal Palace | 27 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 35 | 33 | 2 | 36 |
| 13 | Tottenham Hotspur | 27 | 10 | 3 | 14 | 53 | 39 | 14 | 33 |
| 14 | Manchester United | 27 | 9 | 6 | 12 | 33 | 39 | -6 | 33 |
| 15 | West Ham United | 27 | 9 | 6 | 12 | 32 | 47 | -15 | 33 |
The upper quarter takes us down to Chelsea in fifth place, ten points above the mighty Tottetnham Hots who are in 13th, and in a nice round of symmatary, also 13 points behind Chelsea. Now, for Tottenham or the other unmentioned clubs to get up to fifth to qualify for next season’s Champions League (assuming the Premier League gets five teams in the competition next season, which is certainly not certain(, that means that in five forthcoming games Chelsea have to lose and Tottenham Hots have to win four and draw one.
But in looking to see if this is likely, we might mention that in the last six games, Chelsea and Tottenham have both done the same as each other – with three wins and three defeats while other clubs such as Crystal Palace, Everton and Fulham have done much better.
So the notion that Tottenham could now, suddenly, out of the blue, climb the table from 13th up to Chelsea’s level or above is some sort of fantasy nightmare in which the whole of football is turned upside down, inside out and round about. And yet the Athletic takes this as a serious possibility!
But other than this, there seems to be a complete lack of interest in the Champions League in some of the media. In the Telegraph for example there doesn’t seem to be a mention of it at all although Arsenal do get a headline lower on the football page with “Arsenal eye transfer guru who signed Rodri and Antoine Griezmann as Edu replacement” – a story which tells us “Former Atletico Madrid sporting director Andrea Berta has emerged as a contender for similar role at north London club.”
So, there’s nothing on tonight’s game, although elsewhere they do have the story about “Three strikers who slipped away now making mark across Europe,” which tells us of “Centre-forward injury crisis that has derailed title bid could have been mitigated had club held on to one of a trio of young attackers.” It refers, of course, to Arsenal, as their negative stories so often do.
And as ever there is nothing about the fact that these young players, like the Arsenal management, and like all football “correspondents” (or fantasits as I think they might be better named) had to make forecasts as to their chances of getting a game within the current squad, and whether if they did they would be any good.
What they might have done instead is mentioned the BBC article on this subject that took a wider view and which noted that in May 2019, Marcus Rashford and Jesse Lingard posted the same cryptic message on Instagram which read “0.012%”. It referred to the research which showed that only “180 of the 1.5m boys playing organised youth football in England will ever play a single minute in the Premier League.”
So the ceaseless knocking of Arsenal is, well, ceaseless and the previews of tonight’s game are, well, non-existent. The Sun does have a bit on the game, but it comes in an article which starts with the waring that, “Taking one of the betting offers featured in this article may result in a payment to The Sun.”
Really, the contempt in which Arsenal is now held by the media has to be seen to be believed.
