By Tony Attwood
Imagine 70 years of pretending to be a big club but not winning anything, and then selling the club to Saudi Arabia and going bonkers over winning a trophy that Arsenal use to give run outs to their reserves and youngsters. Can you imagine what the press would make of Arsenal in such a situation? Desirion is hardly the word.
Amd doubly so when they realised that a place in play off round of the Conference League is the reward.
But still this is the media and this is the league table….
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Liverpool | 29 | 21 | 7 | 1 | 69 | 27 | 42 | 70 |
| 2 | Arsenal | 29 | 16 | 10 | 3 | 53 | 24 | 29 | 58 |
| 3 | Nottingham Forest | 29 | 16 | 6 | 7 | 49 | 35 | 14 | 54 |
| 4 | Chelsea | 29 | 14 | 7 | 8 | 53 | 37 | 16 | 49 |
| 5 | Manchester City | 29 | 14 | 6 | 9 | 55 | 40 | 15 | 48 |
| 6 | Newcastle United | 28 | 14 | 5 | 9 | 47 | 38 | 9 | 47 |
| 7 | Brighton and Hove Albion | 29 | 12 | 11 | 6 | 48 | 42 | 6 | 47 |
As a result of their achievements, Newcastle will enter the play-off round of the Conference League. Then if they win that, they will go into a knock-out round playing with other winners into another play off round, which will include these Conference play off winners and 12 teams eliminated from Europa League playoff round. It all sounds extremely exciting.
Dutifully the media is full of excitement about this, while not really noticing that Arsenal remain 11 points above Newcastle and, indeed 10 points above last season’s champions, and other trivial details. Althoug,h to be fair the Telegraph does enter a spot of balance into all this saying in its headline that Newcastle would be ultimate feel-good story – if not for the fact that the league cup was won on Saudi Arabian Riyals.
Anyway, at Arsenal, Merino will presumably continue as what the media call a “makeshift striker”. He has now scored four goals.
The comparison with figures from the 29 game mark over the past four years, shows a decline this season in goals scored compared with the last two, undoubtedly in part if not in total from having the entire front line decimated.
But even with such injuries as suffered this season, we still have the best Arsenal defence at this point of any of these four seasons and are still way above the 2023 team on goals scored. Which if you think about it is not bad.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Arsenal 2025 | 29 | 16 | 10 | 3 | 53 | 24 | 29 | 58 |
| 2 | Arsenal 2024 | 29 | 20 | 5 | 4 | 70 | 24 | 46 | 65 |
| 1 | Arsenal 2023 | 29 | 23 | 3 | 3 | 70 | 27 | 43 | 72 |
| 5 | Arsenal 2022 | 29 | 17 | 3 | 9 | 44 | 34 | 10 | 54 |
Of course Arsenal’s task is not the same as that of Tottenham Hotspur, where the need is to stop losing games. Tottenham were above Arsenal at this point in 2022 but are now 19 points below Arsenal, having spent millions and millions on strikers, while letting in 19 more goals. Even the rather awful Manchester United of this season are now three points ahead of Tottenham Hots.
Amazingly, despite having no forwards, Arsenal are still the fourth highest scoring team in the league with a total of 53 goals – two fewer than the clubs occupying second and third place in the goal scoring table Our top scorer is still Havertz with nine.
But let us (since no one else wants to) compare this with other clubs’ top scorers and also include these clubs’ current league positions in the same table.
This table puts clubs in order of the goals scored by their top scorer for the League, and as we can see Arsenal are 14th in this table although being second in the league on points.
And let’s check a few other issues too. The number of goals scored by the clubs has Arsenal in fourth, and in fact they are only two goals behind Mancheseter City in second, when it comes to goals scored. We can also see from this table that having a top scorer doesn’t guarantee top place in the league table – although of course this season Liverpool have achieved both. For just out of reach of our table Brentford have two top scorers. Mbemo has 15 in the league but then Wissa has 14 goals in the league. And yet as a club they are still 11th in the league.
In short, scoring goals does not guarantee a high place in the table.
| Club | Player | Player Goals | Club goals | Club goals pos | Lge pos | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
1 |
Liverpool
|
M Salah
|
27
|
69
|
1
|
1
|
|
2 |
MancC
|
E. Haaland
|
21
|
55
|
2
|
5
|
|
3 |
Newcastle
|
A. Isak
|
19
|
47
|
10
|
6
|
|
4 |
Nottm F
|
C. Wood
|
18
|
49
|
7
|
3
|
|
5 |
Brentford
|
B. Mbeumo
|
15
|
50
|
6
|
11
|
|
6 |
Chelssea
|
C. Palmer
|
14
|
53
|
5
|
4
|
|
14 |
Arsenal
|
K. Havertz
|
9
|
53
|
4
|
2
|
Of course having one or more top scorers helps, but having such players does not guarantee success. If a top scorer did indicate success then Brentford would be fifth in the league and Arsenal would be 14th.
Now obviously if Arsenal had scored just one more goal against each of Liverpool, Chelsea, Fulham, Everton, Brighton, and Aston Villa , (which is six goals in total), Arsenal would have turned those drawn games into wins, thus giving Arsenal 12 more points and Liverpool one fewer taking Arsenal top of the league.
Of course that didn’t happen, but that shows how close Arsenal have been, and it is likely that victories of this nature (against these or other teams) could have been achieved without the mass of injuries that Arsenal have suffered.
This is speculation, but speculation is helpful when one of the options being considered is the transformation of the team from a club that scores from multiple different players to one which is dependent on a single player knocking in a fair percentage of the goals.
In short, you can rely on the media not to tell you the full story.
