- Poor Tottenham: posh stadium, but not the results to go with it
- Most wins, fewest defeats, lowest goals against, top of the league…
by Tony Attwood
What makes the media so negative about Arsenal when we have a league table for Christmas that shows Arsenal top?
Actually, there is no particular reason except that this is what the media does. So now we are reminded that in 2023/24: Arsenal were top on Christmas Day, but they slipped down to 4th with poor December results, and a good run for ManC. The implication is that it has happened before, so it will happen again. Not, mark you, to other clubs, but to Arsenal.
In fact, there are no serious attempts to compare Arsenal with what happens to other clubs; there is just the assertion that Arsenal slips up every time. And it raises the question, does being top at Christmas actually enhance or reduce a club’s chances of winning the league? Or come to that, bearing in mind tomorrow’s match, the League Cup.
What journalists do is suggest there is a negative pattern that will do Arsenal down, (for example, suggesting that a team that is top of the league at Christmas will always slip down the league later). The problem is that because many journalists are fairly lazy, they don’t actually go back and look at previous seasons overall, but instead cite one or two examples.
Likewise, they don’t ask if the fixture list been even, or has the top club by chance been playing lots of games we’d rank as easy. Nor indeed examine the return of injured players to give just one other example. Or come to that, the level of backup players in a squad.
And most certainly, they don’t look at referees and how some referees give lots of home wins, and others oversee lots of away wins. In fact, you never see an analysis of past referee behaviour ahead of an Arsenal game, and yet you see speculation on vast numbers of transfers that Arsenal might make, but in the end, never do.
In fact this time the referee is Stuart Atwell, and what we can say about him is that although he does give more fouls against away teamsthe difference is tiny – about 4% this season, while the number of fouls per tackle and the number of yellow cards is very similar between the home and away teams – yellow cards for example this season being 24 for the home team and 26 for the away team.
But what is in Arsenal’s favour is that he does seem to oversee home wins. Of his 11 games in the Premier League this season, 54.5% have been home wins 18.2% have been away wins and 27.3% have been draws. Which suggests that if Arsenal can play their normal game, they should be ok and not suffer from referee bias.
But we can’t except that this game can be a walk over, for Palace are not a bad team away from home this season, although they have been beaten in the Palacial grounds three times. Here is the comparative league table for Arsenal home and Palace away
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Arsenal home | 8 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 20 | 3 | 17 | 22 |
| 2 | Crystal Palace away | 9 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 12 | 9 | 3 | 16 |
So that should give Arsenal quite a benefit. As should the results of the last six games…
| Pos | Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | Arsenal | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 11 | 5 | +6 | 13 |
| 10 | Crystal Palace | 6 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 7 | 10 | -3 | 9 |
In fact, however we see it, Arsnenal at home currently has the advantage over Palace away.
The one thing that could upset this is the fact that leaving aside things like the Full Members Cup, the only trophies Palace have won have been won very recently: the 2024/25 FA Cup and the 2025 Community Sheield. So one could say they have got a bit of experience in winning these things of late.
But one might also say that they are not fully adapting to their new status as trophy winners. You might recall that they were not allowed to play in the Europa League this season, having won the FA Cup because their owners already own a club playing in that competition. So they were moved (very much to their annoyance) to the Conference League.
That seemed to upset them, and perhaps as a result, in that league they are currently tenth, having won three, drawn one and lost two. That is enough to get them into the play offs but not enough to get them directly into the knock out rounds. (The rules are the same as in the Champions League of which Arsenal are top.)
So everything thus far seems to be pointing towards an Arsenal win tomorrow…
