- Arteta is clearly a brilliant manager. But what exactly is his next target?
- Tottenham and the Mancs. How can they both be failing while Arsenal rise up and up?
By Tony Attwood
Here, in case you have lost track are the positions of London’s leading club and the two Mancunian clubs in the Premier League…
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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10
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9
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0
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1
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15
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5
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27 |
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10
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7
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0
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3
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21
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13
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21 |
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10
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1
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5
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4
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14
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19
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8 |
Which might well explain why no one at Arsenal is complaining, although I am having my usual moans about the seemingly endless international breaks which allow our players to be injured and thus reduce the chances of another league win.
And although I haven’t seen the other main story reported so much of late from every club, surely everyone is complaining (at least behind the scenes) about the length of the time is taking to deal with the finances of Manchester City and just how many points they are going to be deducted.
My view, which of course isn’t worth anything since I don’t have a vote on league matters, is that they should be ejected from the Premier League and Football Leagues, and have to apply for a place in the North Western Regional League Division Six or whatever they have in the north. Oh yes and just for fun I’d like the people who run that league to take six months to decide on whether to accept the club, so all they can play in the coming season are friendlies against amateur teams.
Meanwhile, of course, Manchester City who are complaining about everyone else complaining about the finances of Manchester City – at least since they were declared guilty on virtually every count of breaking the financial rules. For just of late the results of both Mancunian clubs have fallen apart a bit, suggesting perhaps that what happens in one club in the north can affect another club just four miles away, given that both clubs are now looking over their shoulders. One because they are worried about just how many leagues they might be kicked down, and the other about just how bad their results on the pitch can get.
Is it pure coincidence that the two Mancy clubs have fallen apart at the same time? Have we ever seen Arsenal and Tottenham down the bottom of the league together? Maybe so but I have probably wiped it from my memory and I haven’t got time to look it up. But certainly I know that Arsenal have not been relegated for 100 seasons, which is more than can be said for the Mancunian sides.
And the funny thing about Manchester is that no one quite knows where it is all going. The last time ManC were out of the top tier was 1998/99. For Man U it was 1974/5 – at least I think that is right. (Both clubs have done a spot of zigzagging up and down so I might have missed something).
However the fact is that neither is anywhere near Arsenal’s record of 100 consecutive seasons in the top flight even if Arsenal failed to celebrate it presumably for fear of upsetting Tottenham. The supporters association of which I am a member did actually write to the club and remind them that this season was 100 consecutive seasons in the top tier, and the club replied saying that of course they knew, but they had decided not to celebrate.
Meanwhile back up north, the amusing thing is that neither club really seem to want to follow the regular paths of sacking the senior staff for some reason – as if the record of every other club sacking (except Arsenal’s) shows that sacking your manager only makes things worse.
So what has gone wrong with both Mancy clubs? Did they both spend their time thinking that they have an absolute right to be top of the league and so the league table as it reads today must be a misprint? Or are they just run by people who really don’t know how to run a football club? Or could it be they just don’t care?
I don’t know the answer but I do think the league table is slightly amusing. The Guardian, in describing the disasters of both clubs makes use of the phrase “the non‑transferable skills of the average billionaire” and I think that is right. Because the average billionaire thinks he can do it all at once – and that is where they get it wrong and Arsenal got it so right. In N5, the owners worked with one manager to put right the previous mess, and allowed gradual growth – that run of 8th, 8th, 5th, 2nd, 2nd, 2nd and then finally the title, that I have quoted so often before.
That is how you do it, but other clubs, especially it seems in the north west, just can’t wait. Indeed there is a lovely phrase in the Guardian to describe this: a “cycle of self‑consumption.” Or as they say later, “a depressed post‑industrialized city in miniature. All that remains is rust…”
Of course calamity and collapse feel strange and can send people into routines of utter denial. We saw it at Tottenham and look how long it has taken them to pull themselves back up even to a modest 11th!
So in a very real way this is all very reassuring. Great clubs can fail although Arsenal seems to have avoided such desperate slippage for rather a long time. And if they do fail, it can take a while to pull them back up.
I am still sorry that our club failed to celebrate 100 consecutive seasons in the top division but at least Untold did celebrate on their behalf. And the team did celebrate by winning the league in that 100th consecutive season. So good stuff can happen. All it needs is a very good team, an excellent manager, a willingness to give the manager time, and a desire to balance the finances without cheating…
Oh yes, and a few independent blogs that pick up on the anniversaries that the club’s highly paid executives miss, or refuse to acknowledge.
