- How journalists invented and explloit the “Arsenal are cheats” fantasy
- Mansfield v Arsenal: Mansfield’s famous man and the Arsenal team
By Tony Attwood
There was an article recently in the Athletic with the headline Why is everyone so upset about Arsenal’s game management? which is a question I have been pondering of late.
Now it is hard to prove exactly why journalists write, and editors then publish bickering pieces about Arsenal, so I welcomed this investigation. My own opening thought was that if football club managers are good at anything, it is making up excuses. And this is very understandable since the number of winners each season is small – there are 20 league clubs and only three domestic trophies. Maybe half a dozen of the clubs in the Premier League at most start the season hoping to win one of them
The rest, like Brighton, are left with excuses, including the latest one: “There are no clear rules anymore. How much time you can spend for a corner? How much time can spend for a throw-in?” Which really is the scrapping off so much of the barrel, that there is not much barrel left.
But the reality (which is conveniently forgotten) is that teams only get throw ins etc when the opposition has done something wrong. You can’t get free-kick because of something you do yourself. You get one because the opposition has fouled your player or failed to defend in a way that takes the ball up the field.
And part of the reason that Brighton got seven minutes extra time in which to try and score againsts Arsenal was because of their protesting, taking time to take free kicks etc, and through players being injured.
Now it could be that the manager is arguing that the Arsenal players injured themselves in order to extend the game, but that seems unlikely. Or maybe took too long to take corners…. but there are already rules that allow referees to penalise players who deliberately waste time. And it has already been agreed that from next season, refs will be encouraged to penalise time-wasers in terms of free kicks and throw-ins.
Yet the Brighton manager still felt the best way to use his post-match interview iss to blame Arsenal without quoting any figures but just saying “they take too long” without putting forward details of how long other clubs take.
In fact, we can see just how weird the whole thing gets because the essence of his complaint turned out to be that the way Arsenal take corners, “disturbs the rhythm of the game” for the other team.
And yet, data shows that 13 of the 19 other Premier League clubs have spent longer restarting matches this season, often on multiple occasions. In fact, data from the New York Times and the Athletic show that in different matches, Newcastle (twice), Aston Villa , Bour nemoiuth, Leeds, Brentford, Burnley, Chelsea, Tottenham, Wolverhampton, Sunderland, West Ham, Newcastle, Palace, Fulham, ManU and yes Brighton, have taken longer than Arsenal to do restarts in specific matches. It is in short not an Arsenal issue, but a tendecy in the game.
The problem is thataccuracy in managerial complaints is rarely a key issue. The point of the manager’s rant was to deflect from the result, and in that, he was successful. Now this is not to say that taking one’s time over a throw in etc is right – it is to say that most clubs do it because they find it is to their advantage. And if clubs as a whole don’t like it, they can approach PGMO and see if they can get the refs’ behaviour changed.
Now supposing we do say that is too long – then what else will the team do if it wants to waste time? Well, the obvious answer is to play short passes from one player to another. Forcing a club to take thorw in more quickly isn’t actually going to do very much.
How fast clubs take throws doesn’t coincide with where a club is in the league. Yes ManC are the fastest this season, but Wolverhampton are tenth in this league, so being faster at throw-ins isn’t actually a guarantee of domg well.
And that is an important point, because there is a benefit in taking fast throw-ins – which is that the opposition doesn’t have time to rearrange their defence to counter the attack that might well come from the throw-in. They are in fact, hindering themselves. Now I know that if a club does take a lot of time at the end of a game to take a throw-in they might be wasting time, but they can do that anyway by just passing the ball to each other. Speeding up a throw, hardly makes much difference.
Brighton also complained about the time it took Arsenal to take a goal kick. But the fact is that Arsenal got 12 goal kicks in the Brighton game – and each of those was caused by a Brighton player kicking the ball over the Arsenal goal line. Was that Arsenal’s fault?
The fact is that many managers believe it is to their advantage to get their fans to chant, ‘Same old Arsenal, always cheating,’ but watching the game it is hard to see that this makes any odds.
In fact, clubs have always played at their own speed, and it has always been up to the opposition to try to disrupt any slowing down of the game. And while thinking about some of these incidents, we might remember that ball girls and boys are not allowed to hand the ball back to a player after it has gone out. The ball must go on a cone.
And there are always plenty of balls available.
