If PSG and Arsenal played in the same league….

 

 

• How Arsenal can win the league again next season
• Arsenal could run out of players at the start of next season

Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
PSG	34	24	4	6	74	29	+45	76
Arsenal	38	26	7	5	71	27	+44	85

 

So obviously, both were first in their respective leagues as we know, and Arsenal got nine more points, while PSG got a goal difference that was one goal better.    But Arsenal also played four more games.

Now, what we can do is average the two clubs’ results out for 34 games, which of course, means doing nothing to PSG’s totals but adjusting Arsenal’s numbers down by 0.89 to account for the number of games difference.  When we do that, we get figures that suggest that PSG are the slightly better club.

 

Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
PSG	34	24	4	6	74	29	+45	76
AFC averaged to 34	34	23	6	5	63	24	+39	75

 

The results of the two clubs are very similar except when it comes to goals, where PSG gained a goal difference that was six better than Arsenal.  But of course, there is a difference in the quality of the teams in each league, although that is much harder to translate into numbers. 

We might consider, for example, the distance between the fourth club and the 14th club (and you could choose any positions to do this) to get an idea of the strength of the leagues.   In the Premier League, the difference was 18 points, while in the French league, the difference was 21 points.  This suggests that perhaps the French league was competitively slightly weaker overall than the Premier League.

But when we look at the list of champions over the last 14 years in France, we find that we have one club (PSG) winning the league 12 times, and two other clubs winning the league once each.  Looking back over the same 14 years in the Premier League, we find that yes, there is of course a dominant club (Manchester City* – now with an asterisk to indicate the enquiry into their financial dealings) but instead of winning the leage 86% of the seasons under investigation, they have been limited to 50%.  Still a lot, and still showing a lopsided competition, but not quite as lopsided as the French league. 

The other winners in the chosen period in England are one each for Arsenal, Manchester United, and Leicester City, and two for Chelsea.

So we can conclude that the Premier League, although heading in the direction of the German League and French league, in becoming far less competitive through being dominated by a single club, has not gone nearly so far down that route as other leagues have.  We might also note that the last two seasons (without Manchester City winning the league) were the first two seasons since 2016/17 when in fact, there was a run of three seasons without ManC winning the league.

So although the Premier League has suffered from the domination of one club as the French league has (and indeed as the German league has), it has not been quite so comprehensive a domination as elsewhere, leaving other clubs such as Arsenal some hope of breaking into the monopoly.

Last season was the 127th league season in English football, and part of its strength has been the variation in the teams that have won the league.   24 different teams have won the league, with Liverpool and Manchester United at the top with 20 wins each and Arsenal third, with 14 titles.   

Tottenham Hots, as you perhaps know, have won the league twice – their last title coming over half a century ago, in 1961.  One other (admittedly not nearly so important, and so which hardly gets a mention) is the number of times a club has been runners-up in the league.   Arsenal are again in third position, with 12 (ManU have the most with 17), while Tottenham have been runners-up five times. 

These figures take into account all the league campaigns from the start of the original Football League, but excluding the wartime leagues in which players who were not registered with clubs could nonetheless play for those clubs, thus allowing players who were stationed near a league club, but not registered there, to get a game.

And one snippet to end with.  24 clubs have won the top English league (since the league was started in 1888), including, of course, the seven that have won the Premier League since it started in 1992.  To compare this with our starting point, PSG have won the league 14 times, exactly the same number as Arsenal, but for PSG, 12 of those wins have come in the last 14 seasons.   The old London phrase “Johnny-come-lately” seems to spring to mind.