By Tony Attwood
Arsenal play Tottenham Hotspur in their next pre-season “friendly” and it is interesting in the build-up to be reminded of just how Tottenham Hotspur ended last season. They were of course, on two different trajectories – one trying to avoid their worst end-of-season position since 1977 when they were relegated, and the other finding themselves in the final of (and eventually winning) the Europa League, their first trophy since the League Cup in 2008. And let’s be fair, all trophies count, and they all feel good, even if we might be haughty and dismissive of certain cups.
But for Tottenham, despite all the celebrations, there might also now be a little spot of worry along the way concerning just how they performed in the last dozen games in the Premier League. They won one of those games (beating relegation certainties Southampton) and drew against Bournemouth at home. The rest were lost. The goals recorded were 11 goals scored and 27 conceded. Not that good. Lowlights included a 1-4 home defeat to Brighton and a 4-2 away defeat to Wolverhampton. The 5-1 hammering away to Liverpool was perhaps expected and explicable.
So Tottenham ended up 17th in the league while the only three teams that managed to do worse were relegated. It was their worst season since 1976-7. In fact Tottenham even managed to lose more games last season than in 1976-7 despite actually playing four matches fewer. But they did get to the semi-final of the League Cup and as noted, won the Europa League.
The big difference in the clubs’ last season was in defence, in which Arsenal conceded 34 in the league to Tottenham’s 65 – and it looked toward the end as if they were going for the double (double the number of goals Arsenal conceded that is). As a result Arsenal’s goal difference was 36 better than Tottenham’s.
In this summer’s window Arsenal have a net expenditure of £186.5m while Tottenham have a net expenditure of £105m. They have lost ten players but it seems only that Pierre-Émile Højbjerg going to Marseille for £17m brought in any of the readies.
In pre-season, Tottenham have beaten Reading 0-2, drawn with Wycombe 2-2, and then on the same day drawing 0-0 with Luton (although elsewhere it seems to be reported as 0-2). It’s an ok run of results but doesn’t really compare with Arsenal’s victories over Milan and Newcastle.
However it seems Tottenham will have Maddison fit again after a knee injury at the end of last season – and of course they now are not thinking about the Europa League. For Tottenham and their fans in the media, it is always time to march forward to better things.
But what they have got to shake out of their system is the fact that their last league victory was Tottenham 3 Southampton 1. After that, they played clubs not certain of going down and lost seven and drew one.
Since both teams are effectively away for this match coming up in Hong Kong, we can do a comparison based on last season’s away match table for the Premier League for Arsenal and Tottenham. And considering how awful everyone says that Arsenal were last season, it is still utterly remarkable to note that Arsenal were the second best team in the league not only overall, but also in terms of away games. Here we compare Arsenal’s away record in the last campaign with that of Tottenham H.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Arsenal | 19 | 9 | 8 | 2 | 34 | 17 | 17 | 35 |
| 17 | Tottenham Hotspur | 19 | 5 | 2 | 12 | 29 | 30 | -1 | 17 |
As we can see there really is quite a difference here, not just with Tottenham losing 12 away games to Arsenal’s two, but Arsenal having an 18 goal GD better than Tottenham.
Largely this is due to Tottenham have averaged 69 goals a season across the last three campaigns while Arsenal have averaged 83. Arsenal’s average of course was depressed by last season’s decline due to the injuries to Saka, Haverrtz, Odegaard and Martinelli at different times through the season – each of whom was a regular taker of goals previously.
Tottenham have spent money on five players this summer (at least up to lunchtime on 30th July): Mohammed Kundus for €63.80m frm West Ham, Mathys Tel for €35.00m from Bayern, Kevin Danso for €25.00m from Lens, Luka Vuskovic for €11.00m from Hajduk Split and Kota Takai for €5.80m from Kawasaki Front. A quick look at the indexes suggest three of those (Danso, Vaskovic and Takai) are centre backs, but I am sure Tottenham know what they are doing.
More tomorrow..
