- How to fix the referee problem in just one very simple move
- Six points and five goals clear: but how does that relate to the use of the squad?
By Tony Attwood
It would be great to say that in terms of the way Arsenal are handling all the other teams in the league, Arsenal are clearly getting better year by year. But of course, just as Arsenal change and seek to improve each season, so do all the other clubs. Some are successful, some are not.
Plus of course, there is an element of luck in football, which, if we admit it, can make Arsenal seem a bit feeble (no team wins the league while saying “luck was with us”), but nonetheless is there. The weird decision from the ref, the ball that hits the inside of the post and goes out rather than on, the exceptionally dodgy offside call by a linesman, which on replays is shown to be wrong…. these and other incidents all affect the result of the game and have little to do with Arsenal’s marginal improvements year by year. And all that is before meeting a rival club on a day when they have multiple injuries, or indeed the reverse – when Arsenal have all the injuries.
The table below shows just how well Arsenal have been doing after 25 games in recent years. As you can see, this is not the first time we have been first after 25 matches, and nor are we at our highest number of points at this time.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal 2026 | 25 | 17 | 5 | 3 | 49 | 17 | 32 | 56 |
| 2 | Arsenal 2025 | 25 | 15 | 8 | 2 | 51 | 22 | 29 | 53 |
| 2 | Arsenal 2024 | 25 | 17 | 4 | 4 | 58 | 22 | 36 | 55 |
| 1 | Arsenal 2023 | 25 | 19 | 3 | 3 | 56 | 23 | 33 | 60 |
| 4 | Arsenal 2022 | 25 | 15 | 3 | 7 | 41 | 29 | 12 | 48 |
Of course, what affects Arsenal’s position is how well other teams are playing. Is there just one team shooting ahead of the rest of the pack, or are there three or four teams all taking points off each other at the top?
Now, given that there have only been two unbeaten seasons in the entire history of English league football, and given that the first of these was in 1889 and the second in 2004, it shows that this is rather a rare affair.
So in fact, the behaviour of other teams is a prime consideration as to how well the top team does. If Arsenal win the league and end up with fewer points than Liverpool in 2024/25 that does not mean that Arsenal this year are a worse club than Liverpool, but it could well be that there are more clubs at the top of their game this season than last.
In essence, all clubs can do is seek to improve and hope that their rivals have not improved more. And this is why it is so important that the argument against Mancheseter City’s ability to spend as much money as they wish, is so important, because season after season they have access to so much finance that they can just go on buying up all the players – not just the players they want but also the players they think ARsenal might need as well.
Of course, players want to play, but then if offered a salary of £1m a year, half of which is paid into a bank account carefully created so that it is not subject to UK taxation, that can be quite an inducement.
Now obviously I am not making any allegations in this regard against Manchester City – I don’t know what they have been doing which has caused the rest of the league to fail to agree a settlement of the current legal case between ManC and the rest of the league – but clearly there is something going on there.
But besides all this, there is something else – the actual number of points the top club gets each year in order to win the league.
Just looking at this selection of 38 game seasons, we can see that the number of points needed to win the league during the 38 game and three points for a win era varies from 75 to 100. The number of goals scored varies from 68 to 106. The number of goals conceded ranges from 15 to 45. The number of games lost is from zero to six. And as a result of looking at these examples, we might conclude that these four factors are particularly true…
- It is difficult to win the league when losing more than six games in a season.
- It is difficult to win the league when scoring under 72 goals a season.
- It is difficult to win the league when conceding over 45 goals in a season
- It is difficult to win the league when drawing over 12 games in a season.
So, going back to Arsenal’s current position, we can say that we need at least 23 goals from the remaining 13 games. Just under two a game on average, which is in effect what Arsenal are getting. In terms of goals against, we are well within the parameters of a title-winning team and well within the number of defeats as well. So yes, we are still on track.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | G | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal | 25 | 17 | 5 | 3 | 49 | 17 | 32 | 56 |
In short, things are looking fairly good, even when we take the opposition into account.
