- Tottenham do Arsenal a gigantic favour right at the end
- What a wonderful transformation: Arsenal respond 100%
And the latest from the History of Arsenal:
By Tony Attwood
Yes indeed, as correspondents reported yesterday, Arsenal are the first ever FIFA Women’s Champions Cup. You can read the full story on Arsenal’s site of course. And obviously, everyone associated with Untold in any way offers fulsome congratulations. We lost our regular women’s football correspondent a couple of years ago, and not being able to recruit a replacement, we’ve since left it to other sites to cover the women’s game, but that doesn’t stop us sharing in the joy of the occasion.
Sky also have a video online which you might like to look at, and meanwhile, the Guardian has a report which you can follow through that link.
But for now here I shall carry on with our usual coverage of the men’s game, starting, I think rather obviously, with that six-point gap. Recently, it might have seemed that we were about to be overtaken, but yes, it does seem that with the 115 charges still hanging over them, ManC can occasionally slip up a bit. In fact, if we consider this year’s fixtures for ManC, the results are won one, drawn four and lost one in the league.
Arsenal’s last six matches take us back to 30 December and the results there are, won three, drawn two, lost one. So that is 11 points in the last six games to Arrsenal and seven points to Manchester City. Both teams, it seems have decided to wobble together, leaving Arsenal still at the top of the league having wobbled less.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal | 24 | 16 | 5 | 3 | 46 | 17 | 29 | 53 |
| 2 | Manchester City | 24 | 14 | 5 | 5 | 49 | 23 | 26 | 47 |
| 3 | Aston Villa | 24 | 14 | 4 | 6 | 35 | 26 | 9 | 46 |
| 4 | Manchester United | 24 | 11 | 8 | 5 | 44 | 36 | 8 | 41 |
| 5 | Chelsea | 24 | 11 | 7 | 6 | 42 | 27 | 15 | 40 |
As we can expect, there is no grace in ManC and their fellow travellers in the media, and so we have the headline in the Guardian Guardiola complains over Solanke’s first goal after Manchester City blow 2-0 lead
But let us not be churlish, for we should mention that Tottenham have now gone four games without defeat, taking them up to 14th in the League. They have both drawn and lost more games than they have won, but if they were going to win any specific game, it was (from my point of view at least) rather nice that they could win that one.
Anyway, for Arsenal, the matches still continue at a twice a week rate, with the League Cup semi-final tomorrow at home against Chelsea and then a whopping great four-day break until we play Sunderland. And although both clubs might make significant changes for this game, what with it being the League Cup, we can see that there will be a temptation to put a lot of the regular first teamers out, when we look at the league table for the last six matches.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Manchester U | 6 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 12 | 8 | +4 | 12 |
| 2 | Arsenal | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 13 | 6 | +7 | 11 |
| 3 | Chelsea | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 12 | 8 | +4 | 11 |
As you can see, in this regard, we are on identical form with Chelsea but have scored one more and conceded two fewer.
And although it has not been mentioned in many places, Arsenal’s opponents in the league in the last six have been clubs that of late, have been doing fairly well…. including of course, in Arsenal’s 4-1 win over Villa (who are currently third).
Chelsea are one of those odd teams against whom we have had quite a bad run in the past, such as between 2004 and 2017 when we really struggled, and they seemed to have unlimited funding. In all competitions, we played them 24 times, winning just six, drawing seven.
But all bad things come to an end eventually, and in more recent times, again looking at the last 24 games, we have won 13, drawn seven and lost four. And whichever way we look at this, it is quite a turnaround. Indeed, in the last nine games (eight of which were in the League, Arsenal have won six and drawn three. Which suggests there could be a certain amount of positive feelings for tomorrow night, especially with Arsenal already being a goal up from the first leg.
