By Tony Attwood
One of my biggest gripes about football concerns the media’s general overview of each club – or put another way the bias which is the starting point of each report on a club.
To give one example we might take the article headlined “What your club must do this summer” from the Telegraph.
Inevitably there is the headline therein proclaiming that “Arsenal (still) need a striker”. In the detail of the article they then say, “From back to front, Arsenal are in need of the following: a back-up goalkeeper, a defensive midfielder (or two), a centre-forward and a winger. Depending on possible departures, they may also be on the hunt for another defender.” Which when you come to think of it is quite a list. Half a team in fact.
Meanwhile, by way of comparison, the Tottenham review in the same article starts, “New head coach Thomas Frank will no doubt have already had a good look at the squad. He would have identified the forward positions as being an area that could be strengthened, while a deep-lying midfielder could be of benefit. ” Note, not “must have” or “need” but “could”.
It really makes one wonder if those writing any of these pieces actually remember what the league table looked like at the ennd of the season just finished:
| Pos | Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Arsenal | 38 | 20 | 14 | 4 | 69 | 34 | 35 | 74 |
| 17 | Tottenham Hotspur | 38 | 11 | 5 | 22 | 64 | 65 | -1 | 38 |
Tottenham avoided relegation because we are in the era in which the three that come up then go down again. And in essence, to be much better those promoted clubs they have a few things to sort out. Here is their comparison with the clubs that came up.
| Pos | Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Leeds United | 46 | 29 | 13 | 4 | 95 | 30 | 65 | 100 |
| 2 | Burnley | 46 | 28 | 16 | 2 | 69 | 16 | 53 | 100 |
| 4 | Sunderland | 46 | 21 | 13 | 12 | 58 | 44 | 14 | 76 |
| 17 | Tottenham Hotspur | 38 | 11 | 5 | 22 | 64 | 65 | -1 | 38 |
Now the article in the same series of pieces as that which proclaims Arsenal’s needs, suggests under the “what they need” heading that Tottenham just need “one or two” changes to the squad. So how can it be that Arsenal need so many players while Tottenham appear only to need one or two?
The answer of course comes from the fact that when journalists write about clubs they don’t use the same metrics by way of comparison. For example, with Arsenal and Tottenham one might consider the league positions of the two clubs across the last three years.
For Tottenham, the trend from 2019/20 is one of a general holding of places in the range of fourth to eighth, followed by a sudden and complete collapse to 17th. Interestingly the goals scored have not been the problem – they have stayed in the range of 61 goals to 74 goals each season, irrespective of where they ended up in the league table. Indeed last season in coming 17th, Tottenham ended up scoring more goals than in 2019/20 when they came sixth! Quite an achievement.
But the problem, which seems often not to be mentioned in the reviews now being published in the media, is that between 2019/20 and 2021/22 they held the defensive position of conceding a slowly declining number of goals: 47, 45 and 40 acorss those three years. But then suddenly the numbers jumped. For the following three seasons (up to 2024/5 just concluded) the number of goals conceded rose to between 61 and 65 per season.
In short from 132 goals across three seasons (2019/20 to 2021/22) to 189 goals against in the seasons that followed. That is a rise of almost half as much again.
Now with such a huge leap in goals conceded, we might compare this with Arsenal’s decline in goals scored. Again taking the period 2019/20 onwards. For the first three of these years Arsenal scored 56, 55 and 61 goals. For the second run of three years (ie 20222/23 on to today) Arsenal scored 88, 91 and 69.
So yes last season was a drop by a quarter from the previous two seasons; not good but far less than the rise Tottenham Hots saw. in the goals conceded.
Of course, we can say both teams suffered last season – Arsenal by a decline in the number of goals scored and Tottenham by the dramatic rise in the number of goals conceded. And yet for Arsenal, the media story is that Arsenal must, must, must buy a new centre forward, even though the forwards that they had the season before last are now back to fitness for the coming season.
Everyone talks about Arsenal’s decline in goal scoring (although they don’t look for an explanation, while few seem to mention that rather than decline, Tottenham’s defensive ability suddenly fell off a cliff, and has stayed there.
It’s actually not that complex. Tottenham are now letting in 65% more goals than they did when they were doing well. Arsenal have had one season of a decline following a catastrophic run of injuries. Yet it is Arsenal who we are told, need to buy buy and buy again.
And why is this? Largely because there seems to be a general tenedancy to be much more lenient about Tottenham’s woes and much less congratulatory about Arsenal’s successes across the media. And it goes on, year after year. As for why, we can only assume.
