- Arsenal v Real Madrid. A TV problem, a possibly faltering Real Mad… maybe this is the moment.
- At last at last. Uefa defeaated, St Tots Day is here
By Tony Attwood
First off, the great news. Despite all the attempts by Uefa to take supporters to court and get a legal ruling prohibiting the chanting of “Uefa Mafia”, the mighty Uefa has lost and their silly turnips of a legal team were pretty much told by the court not to be so pathetic in trying to ban a chant just because they didn’t like it. Free speech, the mighty Uefa were told, is more important than the feelings of a bunch of very old men creaming off the billions that Uefa make each year. Actually, to be clear I don’t have evidence I can produce to back up that creaming-off claim so I’ll ask you to put that down as a spot of hyperbole (which is a bit like super bowel but closer to the real world.) (Nor am I sure they are all very old, but they might be.)
Anyway overall it has taken a spot of cutting and pasting but I have managed to put together a comparative last six-game table for the two clubs. Real Madrid come out better than Arsenal but not by too much, and the home turf might just help a bit.
Last six games
| P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | PTS | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | Real Madrid | 6 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 11 | 8 | +3 | 12 |
| 9 | Arsenal | 6 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 5 | 4 | +1 | 9 |
Real Madrid came third in their league in 2017/18, and the same again in 2018/19. Since then it has been a case of Title winners followed by runners’ up across the last five seasons. But we might care to note that 2004/5 only two teams have won the league in Spain: Real Mad and Barcelona. Before that, there was a spot of variation with Deportivo La Coruna winning the title in 2000 and Valencia in 2002, but that was clearly thought by everyone to be far too exciting and so the modern era of two winners began, with just the two interruptions from Atletico Madrid stopping the flow.
And much as I would love Arsenal to win the league a lot, part of me also wants a spot of competition. But of course, it was this dreaded notion of “competition” that ManC wanted to get rid of with their six wins from 2018 to 2024 paid for by their state sponsors. They also tried persuading the media then to see that as a celebration of wonderful football rather than a dire warning about what happens if one team is able to spend anything it likes.
A lot of leagues – still talked up by the media – have gone this way. Bayern Munich for example had 11 successive wins and are six points clear at the top of the German league once again.
These clubs of course gain an absolute certainty about themselves that they are going to win, and anything other than the title is seen as a failure. Competition effectively dies. They can also buy any player they want although don’t always get that right!
Real Mad have won 36 titles and Barcelona 27. Compare that with the English league in which Manchester United have won the league 20 times and Liverpool 19, with Arsenal in third place with 13.
And in case you are interested Tottenham are in the elite group of clubs that have won the League twice, alongside Preston North End, Derby County, Burnley and Portsmouth, which about sums them up. Indeed when I come to think about it seems rather funny that Tottenham, with a win total the same number of times as the likes of those clubs, is talked up as a big club while the others are not. I suppose history doesn’t mean anything any more – at least it doesn’t when it doesn’t suit Tottenham. But we ought to add, I suppose, that Real Madrid have won their pot 15 times.
And just one other bit of chart analysis that we can offer which does make the situation look a little more balanced – it is the last ten league games of the two clubs, as supplied by The Fishy
| Pos | Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 | Real Madrid | 10 | 5 | 2 | 3 | 16 | 11 | +5 | 17 |
| 3 | Arsenal | 10 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 15 | 7 | +8 | 19 |
Whereas the last-six-game table showed Arsenal behind Real Mad this ten-game table shows the broader picture. Arsenal are doing better, although to be fair, not that much better. More tomorrow.
