- Arsenal: the magic of turning draws into victories
- Sometimes tArsenal journalists have only as much idea as I do.
By Tony Attwood
There is a fascinating headline in the Guardian which, when combined with the opening to the following paragraph, really made me think that someone at the Guardian is getting the hang of the way football clubs operate. The headline for an article written by Jonathan Liew (which means he wouldn’t have written the headline) reads “Liverpool may end up getting rid of Slot purely because they cannot think of what else to do.”
And I thought, “yes that is quite possibly so.” For, as the opening of the article says, “The head coach is not responsible for many of the problems at Anfield but he is the most obvious target for those seeking reasons for the team’s decline.”
And then following that, I thought, “But isn’t this the way most football journalism goes?” Take, for example, the headline, ““Owen says Gyokeres is not the answer to Arsenal’s goalscoring problems”
Now that headline presumes Arsenal have goalscoring problems. So let’s see just how far Arsenal are behind everyone else, in terms of conceding goals.
The best way to do that is to look at a Premier League table, not in points order but in the order of goals against. And then, because a diminution in goals scored can be because so much effort is put in defence, we can looki at goals scored. Here, first, is how the table would in the order of goals scored
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal | 31 | 21 | 7 | 3 | 61 | 22 | 39 | 70 |
| 2 | Manchester City | 30 | 18 | 7 | 5 | 60 | 28 | 32 | 61 |
| 3 | Manchester United | 30 | 15 | 9 | 6 | 54 | 41 | 13 | 54 |
| 4 | Chelsea | 30 | 13 | 9 | 8 | 53 | 35 | 18 | 48 |
| 5 | Liverpool | 30 | 14 | 7 | 9 | 49 | 40 | 9 | 49 |
| 6 | Brentford | 30 | 13 | 6 | 11 | 46 | 42 | 4 | 45 |
And I guess while we are at it we can have a shifty at the way the table runs with goals against – I won’t take up all your computer space with this, but you can get the idea from the top three.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal | 31 | 21 | 7 | 3 | 61 | 22 | 39 | 70 |
| 2 | Manchester City | 30 | 18 | 7 | 5 | 60 | 28 | 32 | 61 |
| 6 | Chelsea | 30 | 13 | 9 | 8 | 53 | 35 | 18 | 48 |
But maybe there is something else we can look at, such as goal difference. Arsenal, in fact, are still out in front, but it is interesting how quickly the GD total declines so when people start talking about Aston Villa being a club challenging for upper positions, their goal difference might be noted as out of line with the clubs currently at the top.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal | 31 | 21 | 7 | 3 | 61 | 22 | 39 | 70 |
| 2 | Manchester City | 30 | 18 | 7 | 5 | 60 | 28 | 32 | 61 |
| 6 | Chelsea | 30 | 13 | 9 | 8 | 53 | 35 | 18 | 48 |
| 3 | Manchester United | 30 | 15 | 9 | 6 | 54 | 41 | 13 | 54 |
| 5 | Liverpool | 30 | 14 | 7 | 9 | 49 | 40 | 9 | 49 |
| 7 | Brentford | 30 | 13 | 6 | 11 | 46 | 42 | 4 | 45 |
| 4 | Aston Villa | 30 | 15 | 6 | 9 | 40 | 37 | 3 | 51 |
As you can see, Arsenal are top of the league in terms of goals scored, goals conceded and goal difference. And yet we still have the pesky media running headlines like “Michael Owen has expressed reservations about whether Viktor Gyokeres can fully resolve Arsenal’s goalscoring concerns.”
Now that headline is typical of journalism because it contains a false assumption as a fact, ie that Arsenal actually have goalscoring concerns. But as we can see, Arsenal have scored the most goals, conceded the fewest goals and thus have the best goal difference.
And yes of course, ManC have a game in hand and, if they win 2-0 they will be the top scorers in the league. But to have the best goal difference they would have to win that game in hand 8-0. And although that is possible, I suspect it is rather unlikely to happen.
So let me go back to that headline, “Liverpool may end up getting rid of Slot purely because they cannot think of what else to do” One might transform it into something along the lines of, “Arsenal could be said to have goalscoring concerns because the pundits have spent too long down the pub and by the time they got back were too pissed to come up with anything serious to say.”
Now of course, I don’t know if the author of the article is a drinker or not – and I am not intending to accuse him of anything other than using language which appears to suggest Arsenal have a problem which they don’t have.
Of course, you could say this is all semantics, but I would suggest that it is a little more than that: it is a style of writing which is created to give the impression that Arsenal have some difficulty, that us poor ordinary everyday fans don’t see, and which in their crafty underhand way, the club is hiding from most of us.
So the suggestion is that these journalists who are specialists in unravelling the truth have found these conniving players and managers out. When in fact the only person who is doing the misleading is the journalist.
There used to be a distinction between reporting and opinion. First the line was blurred and now it’s gone. Just writing and publishing opinion is much less taxing than digging out the actual facts, as been pointed out here many times. I think the readers have become lazy also and accepting. Sad.