- Arse Arsenal on track to win the league this season, or could something go wrong?
- How to fix the referee problem in just one very simple move
By Tony Attwood
Last season, Arsenal had no fewer than six debilitating sequences of results, which effectively meant that no trophies came our way. This is exactly what we have been avoiding this season; for this season, a bad result such as a draw instead of an anticipated victory is not followed automatically by another bad result, and quite possibly another.
For this season, every single defeat or draw has immediately been followed by a recovery. For example, last season, between 31 August and 22 September, Arsenal played Brighton & Hove, Tottenham, Atalanta and Manchester City. Three of those games were draws, losing Arsenal six points across two competitions. Obvioulsy no one said that Arsenal were out of their competitions at the time, but cumulative draws can have that effect. Teams that win competitions can lose a match, but then immediately recover with a sequence of victories.
The second poor sequence last season ran from 19 October to 10 November and saw Arsenal lose three, draw two, and win two. The games were spread across the Premier League, League Cup and Champions League and had a negative effect on two of those three (the League Cup was not affected).
Sequence 3 began on 4 January and ran across one win, two draws, and a defeat in League, League Cup and Premier League, and here this type of dip can be easily ignored because it occurs across three different competitions, but it does always have an impact.
Sequence 4 in February and March included the League Cup, the League and the Champions League and saw Arsenal go out of the League Cup, and get a win, two draws and a defeat in the League, which is not what had been happening.
Sequence five took in three matches in April; two draws in the Premier League, either side of a win in the Champions League.
In the sixth sequence, there were three Premier League games and two Champions League games, resulting in one draw, two defeats and just two victories.
Thus, looking back, we can see both that this issue of having a poor result and then either immediately or maybe in the next match but one, having a second poor result, and doing that over and over again, totally affects Arsenal’s ability to progress in all of the competitions.
But as we have seen this season, it doesn’t have to be that way. As this season shows, one bad result, such as a defeat in the league, need not affect the club in the next game, if the mental preparedness of the squad, and indeed the willingness of the manager to change the squad around, is strong enough.
This point has been seen this season. One draw or a defeat can be taken in isolation and does not have to affect the next game, the game after that and so on.
This season, the early defeat to Liverpool had hardly any subsequent effect – Arsenal won 12 and drew one of the next 13 games. The League draw away to Sunderland in November was followed by three wins, two draws and one defeat in all competitions.
The defeat to Villa in December was followed by 10 wins and two draws. The defeat to Manchester United has been followed by four wins.
And this, I think, is the secret of Arsenal’s enhanced success this season. It is not just that after an unexpected draw or defeat, Arsenal win, but that Arsenal avoid that one defeat turning into a sequence of dropped points – often in different competitions.
Now, achieving this change is not just a matter of playing better football, and looking at the sequences, it is a matter of psychology – a matter of the belief in the players that they can carry on playing their natural game and immediately get back to winning ways.
In part, this is helped by the club having a squad of top players who can be called upon, each of whom will accept the occasional missed game and then return with extra determination to show how vital each is personally to the squad. And at this point, we should note that Arsenal do not have a 25-man squad playing the Premier League but a 21 man squad this season, plus a range of under 21 players who are in the PL squad but not yet counted because of their ages.
This approach is not unique to Arsenal, but is not adopted by most clubs, giving Arsenal a huge level of flexibility when it comes to bringing in players, for they can certainly move up under 21s into the first team squad next season if they wish without having to worry about moving out players they don’t want to lose.
