- Arsenal are only six goals away from being top of the league
- Two Arsenal players in danger of serious injury as prices rise and rise
By Tony Attwood
In the old days, some websites published a London League table based on the results of London clubs playing each other in the Premier League. It does of course take a bit of time to work out and I have to admit is not something we have done, hoping that someone else would do it for this season. So first off, a request. If you have such a table, and would like to have it published, we’d be happy to do that – and of course give full credit to you.
We can of course produce a league table of the seven Premier League London clubs extracted from the whole PL table, but a league table made up of results against each other takes a bit longer than I have got today. Or come to that this week. But if you do know of somewhere where this is tracked, please let me know, and we’ll publish it with of course a link to the site that has done all the work.
But even without the ability just to track games between the seven clubs, we can see that the difference between the teams in Ldonon in the Premier League this season is quite dramatic and does emphasise just how far down the rankings within the capital the likes ot Tottenham Hots have slipped. They are, as you can see seven points behind Brentford, and have only West Ham as a London club below them.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Arsenal | 29 | 16 | 10 | 3 | 53 | 24 | 29 | 58 |
| 4 | Chelsea | 29 | 14 | 7 | 8 | 53 | 37 | 16 | 49 |
| 8 | Fulham | 29 | 12 | 9 | 8 | 43 | 38 | 5 | 45 |
| 11 | Brentford | 29 | 12 | 5 | 12 | 50 | 45 | 5 | 41 |
| 12 | Crystal Palace | 28 | 10 | 9 | 9 | 36 | 33 | 3 | 39 |
| 14 | Tottenham Hotspur | 29 | 10 | 4 | 15 | 55 | 43 | 12 | 34 |
| 16 | West Ham United | 29 | 9 | 7 | 13 | 33 | 49 | -16 | 34 |
We did of course get a table of London clubs against each other at the end of last season thanks to 90 mins which of course showed Arsenal winning that league within a league with seven wins, three draws and two defeats in games against the other London teams.
But what was particularly noteworthy last season was the Arsenal goal difference in these games of +17. The nearest rival in goal difference was Chelsea with +7.
Of course it might be argued that notions such as the London table are really rather outdated, and perhaps it is noted that we are not so parochial as that any more. But the thought of this table has come back to me following all the hoo-ha Tottenham made about having the biggest stadium, and not having any debt (because the debt is technically held by the criminally convicted owner) and all that sort of thing. Tottenham really were making a big fuss, and it seems a shame not to see how this related to games against other London teams.
Anyway, if you do know of someone who is keeping track of the imaginary London :eague created from games between the seven clubs, it would be nice to see it. Please do comment – if possible with a link to where it is published. Or email me a copy of the table to Tony@schools.co.uk
But this does take my ruminations onto the question of whether goals matter. And the answer has to be, not as much as you might think, because as we can see, Tottenham have scored more goals in the league than Arsenal this season, but sit 14th in the league. This is quite simply because they are 13th worst club in terms of the number of goals conceded. In fact they might well end the season conceding twice as many goals as Arsenal.
And what you might not have caught up on from last season was that last season 14 of the 20 Premier League clubs did indeed concede twice as many goals as Arsenal or more. In fact Sheffield United conceded over three times as many goals as Arsenal last season.
Of course things seem a little more balanced this year, but looking forward it does seem as if we will have the pleasure of Sheffield United and Burnley back in the Premier League next season, so we might see a few more goals rolling in.
