A bit of argy-bargy and an exploding Neville

 

 

• The last three and a half years and the very remarkable statistic
• Does sacking the manager help clubs or is it all just knee-jerk?

By Tony Attwood

A spot of anger and a fair bit of bias is, I guess, what we normally get from the media after an Arsenal game, and the reporters have indeed been missing their chance to have a bash at the club for a while.  But last night they were able to use all that pent-up emotion, as with the headline

Disgraceful Gabriel Martinelli deserved to be whacked by Liverpool players, says Gary Neville

The article that follows that announcement is behind a paywall, although you can read a number of other raving headlines from the paper without having to pay by looking here.   And besides, you can guess what the article is all about.

But so busy are most of the journalists at finding an outlet for their pent-up anti-Arsenal anger, that quite a few don’t get involved with something as mundane as the league table.  So I’l give it below…. and just for old times’ sake drop in a spot of Tottenham at the end.

 

Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Arsenal	21	15	4	2	40	14	26	49
2	Manchester City	21	13	4	4	45	19	26	43
3	Aston Villa	21	13	4	4	33	24	9	43
4	Liverpool	21	10	5	6	32	28	4	35
14	Tottenham Hotspur	21	7	6	8	30	27	3	27

 

But I did wonder in passing what a Telegraph journalist might do if, on disagreeing with some outrageous slur or misleading political comment they published, we were to write, “Disgraceful Sam Dean deserved to be whacked by Liverpool players, says Tony Attwood.”    But then I didn’t say it, because I’m sitting alone in my office and I don’t really do much talking to myself.  And anyway, I doubt anyone would be interested.  But it really is getting a bit naff when the main headline is about a pundit telling us that another player should have hit him.   However, it was Gary Neville.

Anyway, back to the proper world, it does look as if Tottenham will avoid relegation again and indeed quite possibly get more than the 39 points they got last season, so I suspect they will consider that an improvement and so bring in a couple more managers next season (one being sacked of course, before the other gets introduced).

But this notion that a player who behaves badly or wrongly on a pitch should be hit by another player is fundamentally disturbing, coming as it does in the form of encouragement from a commentator.   If there is no action taken against the Neville character, then I guess that means that any commentator should be free to say anything which encourages violence.

And we perhaps also might remember Neville’s career as a manager.  He took the manager position at Valencia in 2015 and was sacked after a year, and that’s his entire experience.  Now it might seem a bit harsh to sack a manager after coming 12th in the league, but perhaps we should remember that the season before, the club came fourth, and the Nveillie character was brought in to take them into the top three.

 

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
10	Real Betis	38	11	12	15	34	52	−18	45
11	Las Palmas	38	12	8	18	45	53	−8	44
12	Valencia	38	11	11	16	46	48	−2	44

 

So disastrous was his tenure that it took another full season without him even to turn the club around and replace his awful transfers before the club could climb back to its normal position of the top four, and indeed win the Spanish Cup.

Now of course, a person doesn’t have to prove that he is competent as a football manager before becoming a pundit, but I think it does behove pundits to restrain themselves if their experience of handling players is as limited as it is for the Neville character.

But anyway, in all the fuss, it is easy to forget what we might have said a year ago if given the proposition of Arsenal being six points clear at the top of the league after 21 games.

 

Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Arsenal 2026	21	15	4	2	40	14	26	49
2	Arsenal 2025	21	12	7	2	41	19	22	43
3	Arsenal 2024	21	13	4	4	42	20	22	43

 

Even with the goalless draw, Arsenal are still six points better off than last season at this time, and as you can see, we have to go back to 2022/3 to find a time when Arsenal were doing better – by just two points (the two points we would have had with a single goal last night).

So certainly from where I sit, I can leave the media chappies to get into a right froth about what they saw, and instead be happy that the player has apologised for trying to lift an injured man about 15 inches over the line so that the game could continue.  But I suppose the media do like to write more about such things, than about the match.

Next up, Portsmouth away.