From 16 December 2020 to now: just how far have Arsenal come?

 

• Being in a league means lots of travel and endless defeats
• Another staggering win, as Arsenal players take another kicking

By Tony Attwood

You know pretty much how the league looks today, but with a handful of minutess to spare I thought it might be interesting to know a little bit about how the league looked around about five years ago.

Now we all know how the league table can change quite quickly – here for eample is the top of the table on 15 October this year.

I chose yesterday as my set date without any particular thought except I knew it was very early on in Arteta’s reign – he joined in 2019, and we all know it took a while for him to get rid of the players he didn’t want, and bring in those he did.   So here is the league table on the date early in his Arsenal career.

Arteta actually joined on 26 December 2019. so I have given him a year to start to get himself together and get the team he wants.  Below is the league table for one yuear on from his signing as manager, with today’s league position or indeed league in the final column.

 

	Team	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Today
1	Liverpool	13	8	4	1	29	19	10	28	6th
2	Tottenham Hotspur	13	7	4	2	25	12	13	25	11th
3	Southampton	13	7	3	3	25	18	7	24	Tier 2
4	Leicester City	13	8	0	5	24	17	7	24	Tier 2
5	Everton	13	7	2	4	23	18	5	23	9th
6	Chelsea	13	6	4	3	26	14	12	22	4th
7	West Ham United	13	6	3	4	21	16	5	21	18th
8	Manchester City	12	5	5	2	18	12	6	20	wnd
9	Manchester United	11	6	2	3	19	17	2	20	8th
10	Wolverhampton Wanderers	13	6	2	5	13	17	-4	20	20th
11	Aston Villa	10	6	0	4	21	13	8	18	3rd
12	Crystal Palace	13	5	3	5	19	18	1	18	5th
13	Leeds United	13	5	2	6	22	24	-2	17	17th
14	Newcastle United	12	5	2	5	16	21	-5	17	12th
15	Arsenal	13	4	2	7	11	16	-5	14	1st
16	Brighton and Hove Albion	13	2	5	6	15	21	-6	11	10th
17	Fulham	13	2	3	8	12	22	-10	9	14th
18	Burnley	11	2	3	6	6	18	-12	9	19th
19	West Bromwich Albion	13	1	4	8	10	26	-16	7	Tier 2
20	Sheffield United	12	0	1	11	5	21	-16	1	Tier 2

 

So across eight years the league table hasn’t changed as much as I might have expected.  Three clubs have disappeared from the league, but all of these are only one division down.  But there have been some big declines.  For example, West Ham and Wolverhampton looked fairly solid in the table above, but in contrast, Arsenal have gone up 12 places between the two marker points that make this table.

It is also interesting to note that in the table above, Sheffield United had a record somewhat similar to Wolverhampton’s this season, although much of the media seems to want to treat the Wolverhampton decline as a first-time-ever event.

But most of all, what comes across to me is the stability of the league.   Fr as noted, only three teams that were there in 2019 are not in the season this campaign – although we are of course only partway through this campaign.    

In this regard, the last six games table can often help, and here indeed we do find Arsenal slipping a bit of late (they are sixth in the last six games table, seven points adrift of Aston Villa).

But what particularly struck me was the changes in Tottenham Hotspur’s performance across recent times.  They are 11th in the league today, but in the last six games table, they are 17th.    That might be put down as one of those occasional blips just found because of a run of injuries and/or particularly difficult fixtures.  But in Tottenham’s case this could also be seen as the rise up the league being the blip, and the lower places in the league being a more normal position for their squad.

Now I look at these tables not just to have a bit of a smirk about Tottenham but also to try and understand how the volatility in the league tables works,  because there is no doubt that when managers are sacked it is often because of poor performances in recent games, resulting in media pressure.

Yet the position of a club in the league as we can see, can be very volatile over relatively short periods of time.  The last six matches are not always a true reflection of the club overall.   It can be – and for Wolverhampton this season it seems to be, but that is not always the case.  

There are calls for Tottenham to have a new manager, based on the fact that in the last six games they have been poor.   But consider the league table on 9 October this year.  It showed Arsenal at the top as I am sure you will remember, followed by Bournemouth in second place and Tottenham in third.   But now in the last six games table, Bournemouth are 18th and Tottenham 17th.

Now of course, to be successful, clubs have to be successful all season, but what happens is that in the media, an occasional drop in form is invariably followed by a demand for managerial change, which mostly doesn’t solve the problem

And yes, of course, top managers will stop dramatic drops in form happening, but not many managers have that knowledge and experience.  And this is what neither the media nor some fans want to give managers – time to learn how to put it right.  Everyone wants success now, which is why I am so grateful the Arsenal board allowed Arteta to take Arsenal to 8th in his first two seasons and 5th in his third.  They were giving him time.

The media needs a story, and so the “manager under pressure” tale is used; some fans lap it up, and instability swamps the club.   Tottenham might well remove their manager as some of the media currently suggest, but I am not sure that will be a solution to their ongoing inability to win the league.   A manager who could do that at Tottenham will probably need three or four years of rebuilding before a consistent challenge is made, and rather amusingly for us, a lot of Tottenham fans and the media won’t give the club that.