- Are Arsenal the only bottlers or is that just another stick with which to beat us?
- The kindness of footballers, and the appalling behaviour of the media
By Tony Attwood
As I have mentioned before we don’t have a women’s football correspondent to pick out the nuances of life in the women’s game but I can report Arsenal beat Liverpool 4-0 yesterday in front of a crowd of 35,628. When I started watching the men’s game as a child that would have been seen as a good crowd of Arsenal.
As a result although having played one more game than the clubs around them Arsenal are in second place in the women’s league, three points above Manchester Un, with a goal difference that is 11 better than the team below. The top three qualify for next season’s Champions League and Arsenal are seven points ahead of Manchester C in fourth. Arsenal are 22 points above Tottenham Ho (just thought I’d mention that too for completeness).
Over in the men’s game the Guardian also publishes its team of the season thus far, and wouldn’t you know it there is not a single Arsenal player in that team. Yet despite that Arsenal are second in the league, 10 points above the club in fifth place – although that club, I am told, will probably qualify for the Champs League too. But of course, we don’t want to deal with such lowly positions.
Elsewhere in the news most of the price rises for season tickets have come in now With inflation running at three per cent Arsenal’s prices are rising by between three and five per cent. Ipswich Town and Southampton supporters have each seen their team win once at home, as the club have taken the Premier League cash to help their longer-term security rather than spend it all on players.
Outside the Premier League Huddersfield Town are more or less doubling most of their season ticket prices Manchester United (who increasingly look as if they ought to be called Manchester Disjointed) have prices going up by five per cent.
Mind you at this time of year most of our thoughts turn to the predictions made by the so-called journalists just to give us a laugh. These people are paid to write about football so you might think they know a bit about it, but
Back at the start of the season, the Guardian did a preview in which they said, “Is there a club that sparks greater existential debate than Tottenham? After all, what is their purpose? It doesn’t appear to be winning trophies given they’ve now gone more than 6,000 days without doing so. Perhaps it’s purely to entertain – “to dare is to do”, and all that – but, if so, then what was with hiring managers for whom playing exciting, appealing football appeared to be anathema?” The average prediction of their reporters for Tottenham was fourth. And they did indeed get one of those numbers right. They are 14th rather than fourth, just 15 points adrift of fourth.
Mind you the Guardian also reported Arsenal would finish one place above where they are now.
In other news, Lewis-Skelly “became England’s youngest debut goalscorer” and got a rating of eight out of ten from the Telegraph for the game which raises the question, what would he have to do to get nine?
Elsewhere we also have the story of “Man Utd and Man City academy players at centre of age-fraud claims” which comes from Redit. The story which is published in several sources but not particularly liked by the media, although the Telegraph ran the story that “Photographic evidence casts doubt over the eligibility of six foreign-born players and raises the prospect that some may be adults.”
While much of the media has laid off this tale The Telegraph has really picked up on it, and of course it is quite a thing to make a child undergo scientific testing to verify his age. Such tests are, we are told “subject to immigration control” upon entry into the UK.
These tests are particularly carried out apparently on youngsters who “do not have sufficient evidence to demonstrate their age, and either their claim to be children is doubted or they claim to be adults but are suspected to be children”.
So what if there is some age cheating going on in football clubs? Well that then suggests there might be trafficking going on with clubs closing their eyes to such matters. The rules say children must have moved with their parents or legal guardian and come to the UK for reasons other than football. Obviously, this is a total tragedy for children to be manipulated in such a way and we can only hope the FA have got it in them to take the issue seriously for once.
