- A bland banner erected because of time shortage… Arsenal’s PR reaches a new low
- Why are Tottenham so much better at home than away?
By Tony Attwood
For years, for decades even, football journalists have told managers how to do their job. By and large the managers have put up with such nonsense, realising that while most journalists have never been managers, the few who have, have turned to journalism because they were useless managers. (And besides, when their playing career ends they might be reduced to journalism too).
When you consider it, the notion of a person who has never managed a football club at all, or if she/he has, has not managed successfully at the highest level, telling a current manager how to do the job, is frankly ludicrous. But that is what our daily diet of football commentary in print, on radio and on screen, amounts to.
But maybe now it is time for us to turn this around, and so just as journalists tell managers how to do their job, maybe it is time now for us supporters to tell journalists how to do their job.
At the moment I see some journalists telling Arteta that his management style is all wrong, what with all this intensity of his on the touchline. As well as telling Arsenal that they were wrong to manufacture their own banners rather than let the supporters get on with their own arrangements (a point I do agree with).
The latest journalistic strut is to attack Martin Ødegaard, not because he is a useless player (even journalists can see that he is not) but because he wasn’t at his best in the last match. And so as they turn to an ex-footballer come in and talk it turns out to be Mark Lawrenson who has never ever had a good word to say about Arsenal because of his own playing background. We might also note that although he played, he has never, ever managed.
His latest knock-down of Arsenal is that the captaincy of the club should be given to Declan Rice and taken away from Martin Ødegaard. And this of course without knowing how Martin Ødegaard does his job as captain away from the actual games. The games of course are the bit we see, and obviously important, but there is a lot more to captaincy than that.
The dislocation to the team as a result of such a move could be catastrophic, and having made that move there would be no going back. Indeed the insanity of the idea can be seen from the fact that the evidence to support this proposal comes in terms of goals and assists, (as if clubs give the captaincy to the player with the most goals and assists – I don’t recall Tony Adams and Patrick Vieira doing that a lot).
Then the Guardian having run all this stuff, has the temerity to say, “The visit of Bournemouth to north London is an opportunity for Ødegaard to rebuild his confidence ahead of the second leg in Paris next week that will determine his side’s destiny.” Or put another way, the writer is saying, “Here’s 700 words on Ødegaard being rubbish. Now Arsenal should publicly humiliate him by taking the captaincy away, in order to rebuild his confidence. Do you think anyone interested in anything other than undermining Arsenal would ever write such stuff?
Anyway let’s return to reality with home and away issues.which do tend to give a fair level of indication of how the game might go. However it is true that with the return game in Paris coming up, we can’t be too sure who will be playing, or how well they will be concentrating. Hopefully, the older ones will have told the younger players not to read the mindless tripe in the newspapers.
Arsenal are second in the league of course and Bournemouth are 10th, 17 points and a goal difference of 22 behind Arsenal. But when we compare the Arsenal home figures with Bournemouth away results, the difference is 12 goals and 11 points.
Which means Arsenal have two advantages. One is that Arsenal are overall a better team, and the other is that Arsenal at home gain a second advantage over Bournemouth away. Here are the home and away figures …
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Arsenal home | 17 | 10 | 6 | 1 | 33 | 15 | 18 | 36 |
| 5 | AFC Bournemouth away | 17 | 6 | 7 | 4 | 32 | 26 | 6 | 25 |
But of course as we know, results can change over time so we always also have a look at the last six games,
| Pos | Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 | Arsenal | 6 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 11 | 5 | +6 | 12 |
| 11 | Bournemouth | 6 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 6 | 7 | -1 | 6 |
Arsenal in these six games are performing at within a fraction of their overall performance this season. Bournemouth however are performing at considerably under their average performance for the season. We’re catching them in a bad run.
More shortly…
