- The light at the end of the Arsenal tunnel is just the express train heading right at Tottenham
- Why is there no asterisk whenever a league table is published?
By Tony Attwood
For most clubs, the key issue is winning trophies, something that, as we know, Arsenal have only done once in the last four games. Although we could also say Arsenal have only lost once and drawn twice in the last nine league games. And indeed, during those last nine league games, Arsenal have scored 19 goals, which really doesn’t seem too awful to me. But the new mentality seems to be “you are only as good as your last game”. Although, come to think of it, not many people made much of a fuss when Manchester United won just three games of the 13 played they played between 1 November last year and 11 January 2026. But then perhaps different rules apply.
But obviously, the current Arsenal form it is not good enough for some people. So let’s try this another way.
In the last six league games, Arsenal are the third-best-performing team in the league. Or from a broader perspective, in the last ten league games, Arsenal are the third best performing team in the league.
Now I know we would like Arsenal to be the best performing team in the league at every moment, but I doubt if any team has been in that position all the way through a season. Maybe they have, but if so, it has been very rare, and I think before we aim for heights such as that, we ought to consider more reachable targets.
The fact is that even though Arsenal have just lost three of the last four in all competitions, most clubs that win the league get a blip somehow at some point. Indeed, we have devoted multiple articles to the issues of blips, and it is very rare for clubs to overcome them completely. Can you remember the moans in 2003/4 when we went seven games, which included three draws and four wins each by just one goal? Or the three draws and one win in November/December. Or the four draws and one win in April/May?
Probably not, because we remember the good times. Or at least we used to. Now it seems we just remember the slip-ups, and so voices are raised against Arsenal, and its management, and there is a fair chance that those raising these issues might at some stage succeed in getting this season’s most successful league manager kicked out of the club.
At which point, we might look at Tottenham, ManU and other clubs that seem to make a habit of the roundabout approach to managers and see where it has got them. We have seen the successes of men like Sean Dyche, Thomas Frank, Ruiben Amourin, Enzo Maresca at Chelsea.
So are these people who are so critical of Arsenal, saying that the one thing Arsenal will get right, having got it so wrong with the appointment of Emery and Arteta, as they see it, get it just right with the appointment of the next manager? Personally, I don’t think Arsenal are far worse at appointing managers than anyone else, but if they are, and the club needs to change again, where is the proof that the next man willl be better? Surely we are better off keeping the man we have rather than risking everything on someone else.
Of course, you might say that Manchester United, for all their managerial changes, are doing ok of late. This decade, they have had eight managers, and they have won the FA Cup once and the League Cup once. So yes, that is a model that can work, a bit, but it is not a model that brings sustained success in winning the League. Across recent seasons, they have ranged between second and 16th in the league. Even in his initial seasons, when Arteta had to recover from the chaos of the previous regime, Arsenal didn’t finish below eighth. Can you imagine what the current bunch of nay-sayers and their pals in the media could say if Arsenal did a ManU and dropped down to 16th?
I really do find it quite extraordinary to see and hear people demanding a change of manager for Arsenal just at a time when Tottenham are demonstrating to the world what happens to clubs that keep changing managers. Is the idea really that it might be a good thing to see Arsenal relegated, just as we are celebrating the 100th consecutive season in the top division?
Of course, what we choose to celebrate is a matter for us. But it is a choice, and looked at in detail, Arsenal have the fourth best record in the Premier League (behind the two Manchester clubs and Liverpool) across the entire existence of the League. I would like to see that improved, of course, but simply sacking a manager (as all the records of recent seasons show) is much more likely to cause a club to decline than to cause a club to rise up. It is the tactic all our competitors would love to see Arsenal adopt.
Ferguson became Manchester United manager in 1986, and it took seven years for him to win anything with that club. In his first six seasons, the club came 13th, 11th twice, sixth, and second twice. Arteta, in his seasons at Arsenal, has come eighth, eighth, fifth, second, second, second. I would say that puts Arteta above the ManU manager.
Somehow ManU kept their nerve with Ferguson. I can only hope the Arsenal board are not weaker than that at ManU.
