- Why do some clubs get good press and others don’t?
- Arsenal’s recent match overload could be telling in the game against Southampton
By Tony Attwood
So in the space of a few days we have gone out of the two domestic cups, which just leaves the Champions League and the Premier League – with the former up next, with the away game at Sporting at 8pm on Tuesday.
Goodness knows what team can be put out by then, but the injury list now has Martin Odegaard and Jurrien Timber passed fit with Eze and Merino absolutely ruled out.
In between those two extremes, we have eight players who are in recovery mode and each rated as having somewhere between a 25% and 75% of playing. We’ll have a closer look before the match on Tuesday, but it does look as if we are being well and truly caught out by the approach of defenders across the league and in internationals, which says, “the only way to stop Arsenal players is to kick them”.
Meanwhile, there are of course, a couple intersting stories that the media has set up for today, such as
Fifa now charging fans up to £8,300 for World Cup final tickets and Slot calls out players for lack of effort after City capitulation
But today, by and large the players are are having a day off today, and no one does much on Easter Sunday except see their family (which is where I shall be going at lunchtime so I am not sure if there will be further news later).
And yet it is a good moment to reflect on what has gone on so far. Arsenal are still top of the league for example, and Tottenham and West Ham are slogging it out to see which one goes down… Here’s an extract from the table…
| 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 | 31 | 15 | 10 | 6 | 56 | 43 | 13 | 55 |
| 4 | Aston Villa | 31 | 16 | 6 | 9 | 42 | 37 | 5 | 54 |
| 5 | Liverpool | 31 | 14 | 7 | 10 | 50 | 42 | 8 | 49 |
| 17 | Tottenham Hotspur | 31 | 7 | 9 | 15 | 40 | 50 | -10 | 30 |
| 18 | West Ham United | 31 | 7 | 8 | 16 | 36 | 57 | -21 | 29 |
And there is a point in bringing this up…
Journalist Adrian Clarke wrote recently that “With so many changes, I expected the Liverpool dip, but they are too good not to recover to claim third place in my opinion, while Chelsea I view as the best of the rest. They will be inconsistent, but with so many good players they really should make the top four.”
I find “too good not to recover” an interesting concept, since it suggests not just that Liverpool will win games, but others will dutifully draw or lose. OK not as silly a thought as Chris Waddle predicting that Chelsea would win the league, but still a bit lopsided.
The BBC did an analysis which asked a load of pundits for their view and then concluded with the prediction from Opta’s computer.. Now if you have a long memory and regularly read my ramblings, then first, many thanks, and second, you might recall that I have repeatedly got a bit uppity at journos calling the Opta computer a “supercomputer” which it clearly isn’t. Or not even remotely like one. So maybe I’ve had a tiny impact – or maybe someone else said it too.
Anyway, Opta had Liverpool to win the league, Arsenal to come second, Manchester City third, and Chelsea to come fourth. Chelsea are currently six points behind fourth, which is not impossible to make up, but not that easy this late in the season.
Now, as we look at what is coming up and see that ManC is on the menu, we normally then comment about how their money has allowed them to buy everyone and win everything. But a quick double check on Google’s AI system with the question “Are Manchester City out of the Champions League?” the answer comes up “City are out of the Champions League despite a courageous effort that saw us play with 10 men for more than 70 minutes. The Blues, 3-0 down from the first leg, came racing out of the blocks looking for the goal that could possibly spark a memorable come back.”
So AI refers to Chelsea as “us,” which is one reason why I am really suspicious about AI. Increasingly, it seems to express opinions generated by people deliberately feeding opinions into the system.
Anyway, on 12 April Chelsea are at home to Manchester City and on 19 April Manchester City are at home to Arsenal, so those games look like being rather important. All we can hope is that some of Arsenal’s currently injured players come back pretty quickly.
Next season we need a full squad of 25, plus our wonderful up-and-coming youngsters, in order to cope with aiming at four trophies. And wherever possible, we need to be rotating the team so that when the players are injured in those wretched internationals, we have backups ready to move in and keep the winning runs going.
