Arsenal v Tottenham. Objectivity and perspective, not quite the same thing

By Bulldog Drummond

It seems many of us have different definitions of fairly ordinary words.  “Objectivity” I take to mean working hard to take out any sort of bias.  “Perspective” I think means in the context used, “a point of view”.  Which is how one person can say to another, “You’re approaching the problem from a completely different perspective.”  It is harder to say “You’re approach the problem from a completely different objectivity.”

Unless you believe in alternative realities I suppose.

“But my little piece Arsenal v Tottenham: a little bit of perspective” brought loads of comments such as “why do you choose an arbitrary point in 2013 to go to?” (in relation to analysing club spending).  Well, that was the perspective (although to be honest, I didn’t actually choose 2013 – the statistical data base I was using chose that date, so I took it, as it seemed a fair enough starting point.)

There was also the comment, “There’s nothing quite so funny as an Arsenal fan pretending to be objective while patently twisting facts and figures”, which really means I suppose that the humour in one’s life must be fairly limited.  Personally I found the recent TV dramas like “Upstart Crow” and “Quacks” more amusing.  And I quite like “Have I got news for you”.

Anyway, what is so often noticeable is that people write in and tell us scribblers how we could have made our articles better, but then never submit articles themselves.  Unless they run their own blogs.  But if they do, why not confess it.

Still, we seem to collect more advisers than doers.   Collecting this sort of data and then trying to bring a consistent perspective to it does take time though so maybe they are very busy people.

So, to move on with some more perspectives, using perspective in the way that I think most people tend to use it, and in the way that my Oxford English Dictionary uses it, and not suggesting it means “being objective”… Arsenal are four points behind Tottenham with both sides having scored the same number of goals in the League.

Arsenal’s last six games read

while Tottenham come up with

It is interesting that there has been quite a different level of games – Arsenal playing a completely separate Europa League team while Tottenham’s first team are engaged most of the way through because of matches against Real Mad, who I suspect must have been really miffed with that defeat at Wembley.

However if there is a worry it might be for Tottenham with the regular injury tables:

However matters are alleviated with Physioroom’s club by club analysis – most of the wounded will be fine for saturday it seems.

Arsenal’s deadmen list looks like this…

My usual protest here at Physioroom including Santi Cazorla when he is not in the 25 list and so could not play anyway.

So there we are a few more perspectives, not much in the way of being objective – but then, I doubt that many fans of a particular team could ever be objective about their team in relation to others..  Funny that so many people expect those of us who write Untold to be that.  Not the funniest thing, not as funny as some of those TV shows, but odd funny.  If you know what I mean.

• Arsenal v Tottenham: a little bit of perspective
• 2 years 5 months after it was predicted, “New Thierry Henry” will finally sign for Arsenal!
• Why, as another Fifa corruption case starts, will the FA not say, “we don’t deal with crooks”?