- When it comes to explaining football, maybe there just is no time to think
- I can’t remember when I have seen a worse load of tripe on a pitch than this
By Tony Attwood
You wouldn’t know it from the media, for whom the ManC cheating is still the only story, as they go on searches for explanations of the weekend’s results. But the reality is that Arsenal play Lille OSC on Tuesday 13th at 8pm at the Ems, so we can start considering exactly how this might go. Not least because not many other sites want to, but we are, after all, Untold.
The French league has a very strange look to it at the moment, and this is relevant to Arsenal as we are playing a team of whom most of us, I suspect, will have limited knowledge. For we are really used to seeing PSG winning every match and every season in France, and thus always being the obvious contender for the Champions League that we have to play. But in fact they are fifth at the moment, which really comes as a bit of a surprise. OK I know they will creep up to the top in time, but maybe there are one or two humans with human frailties in their side after all.
Of course we may be a bit fed up with Arsenal not being top of the Premier League, but our appearance in the Champions League is nothing compared with PSG, whom you may recall we played in the Champions League final. With them, just as with Bayern Munich, the game seems to revolve around an established part of the constitution which says they are the automatic winners year after year, with no one else able to come near them. Here’s the table…
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Monaco
|
6 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 10 | 5 | 5 | 14 |
|
Lille OSC
|
6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 9 | 4 | 5 | 13 |
|
Rennes
|
6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 12 | 10 | 2 | 13 |
|
Olympique Lyonnais
|
6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 11 | 4 | 7 | 11 |
|
Paris FC
|
6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 8 | 4 | 4 | 11 |
|
Paris Saint-Germain
|
6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 11 | 8 | 3 | 11 |
Their recent successes include having won the double in 2011, and their fourth league title in 2021, as well as their first Trophée des Champions the same year. Lille are in fact the fourth-best French club in the 21st century.
So the oddity is not with them being second so much as PSG being sixth. The general feeling seems to be that they are slightly inconsistent this season, having had more problems than normal with injuries, and perhaps also being distracted by European games. Other excuses claim that the squad is suffering somewhat from having been deliberately structured around established stars rather than being built around the new players who have been brought in for the new era. But of course that is not Arsenal’s problem.
But at he same time we should not think of the club Arsenal face as being complete outsiders. They had a very successful spell in the post-war period and became known as “The War Machine,” although they are still only considered the fourth-best team in the French league this century.
Looking at the broader picture Lille won the Champions League in 2020/1 but the following season were knocked out by Chelsea .
In the 2021–22 season, Lille won its first Trophée des Champions, the equivalent of the Community Shield, defeating PSG and then got to the round of 16 in the Champions League where they were beaten by Chelsea. According to the more academic of reports they are seen as the fourth best team in the country behind PSG, Lyon and Marseilles.
Of course France at the moment doesn’t have the sort of distraction we have in England with working out what to do with the wretched Manchester City, and it is possible that other sides in Europe will see this as the perfect moment to play English clubs. There is also a certain amount of mumbling going on in some quarters that it is not just ManC who are bent, but all English teams, and with all English football looking inward at the moment there is no countering of such notions.
So it will be good if Arsenal can step forth tomorrow and show Europe that not every club is occupied with the doings of Manchester City, and hence that not every English club is cheating.
We know that Saliba and Christos Tzolis will not be available for this match but so far there are no reports of other players who are not going to make it to France.
