- In football the old order has changed, and Arsenal are benefitting enormously
- Another staggering Arsenal victory, and again no one can get near Arsenal
By Tony Attwood
At the moment, a lot of thought is going into the notion of whether Arsenal really are stronger than any other team in the Premier League.
We know of course that Arsenal are six points and six goals ahead of Chelsea so no matter what happens this weekend Arsenal will remain top – although a defeat would be a huge disappointment after 16 games unbeaten in all competitions, and there would then be a lot of media chat about the “bubble bustring” – even though it is the media that has created the notion of the “Bubble” in the first place.
But even a draw in the match against Chelsea this weekend could be painted by the media as a “setback” – a sign that all the positives they have been throwing at Arsenal’s door were really a step too far, with the insinuation that it was not them praising Arsenal, but some other disreputable publication or broadcaster…
It would be only one step on to saying that Arsenal had been playing weaker clubs, and as soon as they are up against sterner opposition, they fall apart. We would then have talk about the victories being over Nottingham Forest, Bilbao, West Ham, Fulham, Palace, Brighton… forgetting of course the last couple of games in which seven goals were scored against Tottenham and Bayern. But Tottenham are sinking, so they no longer count.
Our overall view of football does in fact depend on how strong we see the rest of the Premier League as being. We know that the French league is basically one team that wins it all the time, as indeed is the German league.
And Manchester City’s six wins in eight seasons made the Premier League look much the same. But always with Manchester City, there has been the asterisk against their name – the 115 charges of which they received for offences over a number of seasons. The fact that the case has been running for nearly three years is as big a scandal as the original offences of which they have been found guilty – although the media like to ignore that.
And maybe ManC’s tactic is that if they don’t win the league for a couple of years, everyone will simply forget about the 115 charges. That is certainly possible because Untold is one of the few places that brings the issue up regularly, although a positive mention must be made for SPORTbible and some other sites that return to the theme.
Part of the problem with ManC is that the Premier League has always been seen as a much tougher league than the French or German leagues because it has several clubs at the start of each season that could be said to stand a chance of winning the league – until ManC got their money.
The media in England didn’t seem to mind when the PL turned into a version of the German and French leagues with the same club at the top year on year, and so don’t mention the ongoing leagal cases now, but other clubs were affected. For where the winner is known in advance, they suffer from a dramatic reduction in money earned from TV rights. After all, seeing the same teams win every week is like watching a repeat of your favourite series – you might do it once, but it is not as much fun as watching it for the first time when you don’t know what happens at the end.
For once one club is in the position of Bayern or PSG, other clubs change their approach and start playing for draws in the matches against them while the big club rotates its players in league games. PSG’s top five players in terms of minutes in Europe last season played fewer than 53% of the team’s minutes in the league. That is the outcome in leagues such as France and Germany. The TV money goes down.
Clubs need a strong domestic league to keep TV money rolling in, and players in full preparation for the tougher Champions League games, which is what we see in England has. And if Arsenal do sail forth and win the league this season, we can be sure that ManC and Chelsea will be spending more and more next summer, in order to play catch-up.
The Premier League is a much tougher league to win than other domestic leagues. If Arsenal do some more purchasing in January and/or next summer, it will be with this in mind. Winning in Europe will be a bonus, but winning the Premier League remains tough because of the quality of the opposition faced week on week.
