You build a super new stadium, and then slip towards relegation…

 

 

• The difference between this Arsenal season and last season in 6 sequences
• Arse Arsenal on track to win the league this season, or could something go wrong?

By Tony Attwood

 

I think it is fair to say that even by their own modest standards, Tottenham have been slipping a little bit of late, and even the normally pro-Tottenham media has mentioned it in passing.   Although I have not heard too many comments comparing their home and away results, which does throw a particular light on things

For at home, Tottenham have only won two games this season – the same as Burnley and one more than Wolverhampton Wands.   And that, we must remember, is in their wonderful new stadium that is bigger than Arsenal’s and has lots of corporate facilities, and all sorts of things like that.  Yet the table reads…

 

 

Yet they started off very well, winning their opening games at home to Burnley and then away to Manchester City.  And that turned out to be their problem, because if a club wins its first two games, scoring five goals and conceding none, it is fairly easy to get carried away. 

For after those two games, the league table read, on 28 August last year, 

 

But then something very interesting happened.  Tottenham, perhaps carried away by their success, then lost their next league match at home to Bournemouth.   Arsenal coincidentally also lost their third match, although perhaps there was a little more excuse because Arsenal were playing Liverpool, and the ref was a trifle eccentric.

But Arsenal took note, buckled down and proceeded on their long unbeaten run.   Tottenham, it seems to me (and of course, this is just my opinion) assumed they could wallop Bournemouth in their next game.  After all, they had held PSG 2-2 in normal time just two weeks earlier.

And I think self-belief got the better of them, the media and their fans, and yes things jogged along nicely – and by 18 October they were fifth in the league with the third best goal difference..

Which meant that when the really bad run started on 19 October with four defeats and two draws across the next seven league games, they were still believing in themselves, as ready to rise up the table.  

But as the dire run took hold, Tottenham fans began to get irritated.   And perhaps persuaded by the fact that Tottenham normally change their manager every 18 months or so, demanded exactly that change, not having had a new man in control for a while.  The locals got restless.

So now we have a situation in which, away from the Lane, Tottenham really are not that bad.  Not as good as in their imaginations, but still they are seventh in the away games league

Away games only

 

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Arsenal	12	7	3	2	18	9	9	24
2	Chelsea	13	6	4	3	25	15	10	22
7	Tottenham Hotspur	13	5	4	4	20	19	1	19

 

And that has stopped reporters realising (or perhaps admitting) that from the start of this year Tottenham hasve played eight games home and away and not won any of them.  That ability to win away games, where their own supporters were not getting more and more irritated at them, has left them.

Today, Tottenham sit 16th in the League, and the demands for a new manager (which as an Arsenal fan I encourage) have returned.   Not, I hasten to add, because I want Tottenham to recover, but because this is the “solution” they have been using for years.

Mikel Arteta joined Arsenal as manager on 22 December 2019.  Sine then, Tottenham have had José Mourinho, Ryan Mason, Nuno Espirito Santo, Antonio Conte, Cristian Stellini, Ryan Mason again, Ange Postecoglou (who actually won them a trophy) and Thomas Frank.   And no one has managed to tell them that endlessly changing managers generally doesn’t work.   Yet the fans are calling for another change.  You really do have to love these Tottenham fans.

Meanwhile, Arsenal prepare to play Brentford away, in a somewhat more positive frame of mind than Tottenham are able to muster at this moment.   One can only hope that the Tottenham board and their fans never realise just how difficult a time Mikel Arteta had in his first season at Arsenal, and how we all stayed positive, otherwise one day they might give Tottenham a manager a fair chance to turn things around.   

But as long as they keep on sacking the managers one after another, as their fans demand, we’ll be ok.  Not just because those managers take a while to get things sorted, but also because each sacking means that fewer and fewer top candidates are willing to apply next time around.