- Fifa, Uefa and FA are not above the law after all.
- Pre-season is about tactics, and liaison with foreign fans, not about winning
By Tony Attwood
Villareal ended last season in fifth place in the Spanish League, 18 points behind Barcelona who were of course, followed by Real Madrid, and Atletico Madrid, finished in the top three positions.
Looking through their results for the season, they mostly won or lost by a single goal, although they occasionally got hammered by a top club and dished out the same to the passing lower club. The table below shows thee results for the two teams from their leagues last season
| Pos | Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | Villareal | 38 | 20 | 10 | 8 | 71 | 51 | 20 | 70 |
| 2 | Arsenal | 38 | 20 | 14 | 4 | 69 | 34 | 35 | 74 |
As we can see there is a similarity between the two side,s although Arsenal clearly had the better defence. But the Spanish league really does now let three teams to battle it out. Mostly either Barcelona or Real Madrid win, with Atletico Madrid providing a bit of a sideshow.
Since 2012/13 only one club beyond the three big ones has ventured into the top three – and that was Girona in 2024. To put this another way, the 36 top three spots have been shared by three teams, except for once.
Thus in playing Arsenal, Villareal will consider it to be a bit like playing Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid or Barcenlona as they do twice each season. And we might note that in their home game with Real Madrid, Villareal in 2023/24 drew 4-4 at home, but also lost 4-1 away.
Concerning goals, as we all remember, last season was pretty feeble for Arsenal in that regard, scoring 69. But that was only two fewer than Villareal – and we might care to remember the two seasons before that Arsenal scored 89 and 91. So a return to the goalscoring prowess of those two earlier seasons could see Arsenal knock in maybe three or four.
But Villareal have had some success, winning the league most recently in 2003/4 but their points total of 74 points that season has been bettered by every league winner since. And indeed in the 2001/2 season when they also won the league, they managed to do so with even fewer points!
Of particular interest to Arsenal (well to me at least) is that one of the club’s previous managers was Unai Emery – he joined in the summer of 2008 at the start of his managerial career. And he started with a bang, winning four of the first five games, taking the club to the top of the league.
But then they slumped and the club admitted they had debts of over £350m and no way of paying them off. It looks, from the outside at least as if the manager had been insisting on paying top prices for players he rated and nobody had reigned him in. Quite extraordinary!
As a result of that, the players were not paid and over the next ten games they managed to get just five points, as well as being knocked out of European competitions by Dynamo Kyiv.
So they did what clubs do – they borrowed money and they started winning again, and there was talk of qualifying for the Champions League, but they didn’t. And they sat on this accumulated debt. The question is, did the manager not know that when he was lashing out massive amounts on players, the money wasn’t there?
Certainly, the main players in the team didn’t like the look of things and men such as David Villa were sold simply to balance the books. Thus, when the same manager came to Arsenal, bought a player most people had never heard of, for an astronomical price, and then found he was not that good, it was not the first time he had done such a thing
So, faced with a massive debt crisis, the club had to sell, and David Villa went to Barcelona and David Silva to ManC. Simply to try and reduce some of the debt, while Juan Mata later followed, going to Chelsea. Then they said they would build a new stadium. At which point, Peter Lim became the owner.
By 2015/16 things were going downhill, and Nuno resigned, and the one and only Gary Neville became manager. He was sacked after gaining the lowest win percentage in La Liga history for a Valencia manager: three wins in 16 games.
Arsenal did have dealings with the club, buying Shkodran Mustafi in 2016, but most people avoided doing anything with the club because of its toxic reputation and regular talk of the club being sold. But to be fair, things have picked up of late and in 2019 they won the Copa del Rey and reached the semi-finals of the Europa League. So then the club fired their top two men for criticising the owner. They have now had six managers and six sporting directors since 2020.
In desperate financial trouble, they started this decade selling anyone and everyone for any price they could get just to avoid being suspended from the league for having too much debt. In January this year, it was reported that a new stadium would be ready in 2027. It was ever thus.
