- If the nutters are not stopped, Arsenal will lose their chance of trophies
- Is it really true that one more player is all Arsenal now need?
By Tony Attwood
It has been a thought of mine for some time that journalists who keep on pushing their own point of view, rather than reporting the facts and then drawing well-argued conclusions, must have some underlying reason for behaving in this way.
And of course, this is an issue at the moment as we have the unending barrage of stories from journalists concerning the centre forward that Arsenal must sign this summer, along with a regular stream of blame for them not signing such a player in January, or indeed last summer, or the January before that or…
Now generally, the tendency to repeat some unproven statement such as “we must have a new centre forward” occurs when people feel that they know, but those in power are stupid and should be replaced. In such circumstances, the re-stating of the view without any evidence means that more and more people believe it, simply because lots of commentators mention it. The lack of evidence stops being an issue even when contrary evidence abounds. The fact that Manchester City have a top striker, but are sitting below Arsenal in the league is ignored. Liverpool have a top striker and they are above Arsenal in the league, so the case is proven.
Indeed, even the idea of goals scored being equal to a position in the League is undermined with just a moment’s glance at the league table. Tottenham have scored more goals than Arsenal but are currently sitting 11 places below Arsenal in the League.
Further, Wolverhampton Wanders have the 7th highest goal scorer in the league in Matheus Cunha but are just one place above the three relegation slots. Ipswich Town have a player who has scored more goals than Arsenal’s leading scorer, but they are six points below Wolverhampton and likely to go down.
This is not to say that a goal scorer might not be helpful, but it is to say that the bringing in of any new player is much more complex than saying “He scored for club X, so he will score for Arsenal,” although it rarely works like that.
But there is still more. Playing with the big number 9, knocking in 20+ goals a season is just one way of playing, and is not always successful. Indeed, we might also notice that Arsenal did not have a single player in the top 12 goal scorers last season in the Premier League but scored 91 goals. The season before it was 88 goals. These were the highest Arsenal goalscoring totals in 70 years – and 70 years ago the clubs played more league games than now.
But Arsenal are daily being told by multiple correspondents that they need to sign a centre forward, and yet before the great injury blitz struck they were scoring at their best rate in 70 years. What are we to make of this?
I think the explanation has to be found in the personality of the writers who feel that they can look at a football match – or maybe a set of matches – and draw a valid conclusion without any serious evidence and without ever having managed a club. This in turn suggests a certain vanity within some of these writers or possibly a shared self-obsession among journalists who feel that they need to be saying what other journalists are saying because, well, journalists are saying it.
As such, there is a sort of self-centredness here which says, “if lots of people say this is true, it must be true, even though there is no evidence to back it up.”
ManC have kept on winning the League with a dominant striker knocking in the goals year after year, but this season suggests relying on one scorer is not such a good idea.
And if we look at Arsenal we might note that in 2018/19, Arsenal had Pierre Emerick Aubameyang who got 31 goals for the club, and Arsenal came… 5th in the league. The following season the same player knocked in 29 and Arsenal sank to… 8th.
This doesn’t prove that having a top striker doesn’t take a club up to the top of the league, but rather that having a top-scoring striker isn’t guaranteed to achieve that. And there we see the problem because the journalists and bloggers are often utterly convinced that a striker is needed.
Thus the critics of the management at Arsenal go on and on, full of self-regard for their own opinion, and to some degree discontent grows.
As a result of all this, these writers can develop a sense of what is known academically as “grandiose narcissism” in which they feel they understand others while others don’t understand them. They also seem to feel that they should be seen to have the correct understanding of the situation, even though there is no evidence that their ideas are valid.
But their ideas are simple and easy to understand, so the media love them, and will propagate them.
Of course this doesn’t just happen in football – it is commonplace in our society. Indeed, what happens when a group of people such as bloggers or journalists, propagate the same view over and over without any evidence has been tested in academic research many times.
Results show that these people don’t influence the situation but do tend to lose their friends.
If you want to know more about the research cited her you can find it at Büttner, C. M., Rudert, S. C., Albath, E. A., Sibley, C. G., & Greifeneder, R. (2025). Narcissists’ experience of ostracism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. and https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000547
Not everyone can be as rich as Donald Trump but they can think and talk like him as per the ‘English football experts’, who are fine example of ‘Donald Trump Speak’.
Interesting also to note that the critics are silent when events don’t suit their narrative, eg when we beat Man City 5-1 (well, we did have Havertz in the team that day, but they have already told us that he is useless, so that doesn’t count) and PSV 7-1.
Even with a team comprising a keeper and 10 left-backs, we still managed to score 2.