- Beware: the story about Arsenal is quite likely not true.
- All the tricks that ManC might be preparing to pull – or might not
By Tony Attwood
Are there some clubs that use voodoo in order to get an advantage over the opposition? Or could it be that Liverpool have just been better than Arsenal over the years? And if so why?
Certainly it is a fact that Liverpool have the upper hand over Arsenal in history, as indeed do ManU. ManU have won the top divisions 20 times while Liverpool are also on 20. This leaves Arsenal in third place with 14 titles – so obviously we need six years to catch them up.
Of course the reason for the difference is that Manchester U and Liverpool started winning the league in the very early days of the 20th century, before Arsenal got going, but I am still hopeful of us catching them up in years to come.
The reason for the early differential was of course that football was a much lesser sport in the early 20th century, although the pundits the answer to explain the different number of titles tends to be is a simplistic, “Liverpool were better than Arsenal” but that doesn’t really seem a complete answer.
Take the games between September 1926 and August 1954. Arsenal were regularly on top and the period contained two separate runs in which Arsenal won four consecutive matches, without Liverpool getting a look in. No, the higher number of Liverpool and ManU wins over Arsenal rather than the reverse, was that professional football was established more fulsomely in the north long before it came to London.
In fact there have been 204 league meetings between Liverpool and Arsenal – the majority of course being in the Ancien Régime (Football League Division 1) where the number of matches between the two were very close to double the number of games in the Prem. Thus again we see that with this historical advantage, it appears that Liverpool is one of the very few clubs that have bean us more than we have beaten them as we have noted.
And indeed I am sorry to have to report that there was a period in which Arsenal simply couldn’t find their way past Liverpool. For in four consecutive games from 2020 to 2022 Arsenal could not get a win and conceded 12 goals in the process. In fact in the four most recent games between the two Arsenal have not won a game. Worse, in nine games from 2015 to 2019 Arsenal couldn’t get a win either.
Indeed matters haven’t been easy of late, as in the last 13 games between the two clubs, Arsenal have won just three of the matches, Liverpool have won four and six have been draws. And to be clear this includes games both at Anfield and the Ems. Neither club has scored more than two goals in any of those games.
Arsenal are thus improving and in fact, Arsenal have won two, drawn five and lost one of the last eight meetings with Liverpool. The most recent was a draw in the Premier League on 8 January 2026: Arsenal 0-0 Liverpool. The only games in recent times in which either side has won by more than one goal in these recent games was Arsenal 3 Liverpool 1 on 4 February 2024
And to round off the awful news, the worst run of late for Arsenal came between September 2020 and March 2022 when Liverpool won four consecutive matches scoring 12 to Arsenal’s one goal (in the 3-1 defeat on 28 September 2020.)
So it makes one wonder what sort of tricks Liverpool pull. After all, even in 2015/16 when Arsenal finished second, 11 points above Liverpool, all Arsenal could manage were two draws against the club. If one believed in such things one might suggest some form of voodoo or other hocus pocus. (Actually I don’t believe in either, but I’ve wanted to use the word “hokus-pokus” in a blog for years and finally have found my chance. It is important to indulge the elderly in their whims I think.)
In the past ten years Liverpool have never finished lower than fifth and have won the league twice. But less we let their numbers lead us to be downcast, in recent times (which is to say, since 1990) Liverpool have not won the league at all, although to hear the broadcast commentators talk you might think that they had won it every season. They did have a tremendous run from 1973 to 1990, but then suddenly it was all over, the end, finished, done, concluded and stopped. From 1990 to 20019 they didn’t win the league at all.
We’ll have some more snippets later.
