By Tony Attwood
As we speculated a while back, Arsenal’s next kit sponsor will be Adidas, with the deal worth £60m a season. This is roughly double the size of the last deal (that’s the one that I’ll always remember as Puma released a video to commemorate the launch, which included a good five seconds looking at the cover of my book “Making the Arsenal”. I was rather pleased with that. The book is still for sale on Kindle, and I’ve got a few spare copies if anyone wants one at £10 each including postage and packing.)
That Puma deal at the time was the biggest in the club’s history. The last time we had Adidas was back in 1993/4; we came fourth that year and ended up as runners’ up in the cup winners cup.
Meanwhile back in the present, the shirt sponsorship with middle eastern regime that approves of cruel and unnatural punishments for criminals continues, and brings in about £20m each year.
Added to this is the rather curious case of the £30m arrangement with Visit Rwanda as sleeve sponsor. Actually it is amazing how visible that sleeve sponsorship is.
Of course our deals are not going to be as big as Manchester United, because of their worldwide marketing which goes back to the 1960s when Arsenal, instead of expanding their commercial base was retracting, reducing some programmes to nothing more than a sheet of paper, and by the 1970s looking to give up on the youth teams. Fortunately that team of people have now long since gone.
Meanwhile we are the second highest scoring team in the Premier League at the moment. Here is the League Table organised by number of goals scored….
| Lge Pos | Goal Pos | Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Manchester City | 8 | 6 | 2 | 0 | 21 | 3 | 18 | 20 |
| 4 | 2 | Arsenal | 8 | 6 | 0 | 2 | 19 | 10 | 9 | 18 |
| 2 | 3 | Chelsea | 8 | 6 | 2 | 0 | 18 | 5 | 13 | 20 |
| 6 | 4 | AFC Bournemouth | 8 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 16 | 12 | 4 | 16 |
| 3 | 5 | Liverpool | 8 | 6 | 2 | 0 | 15 | 3 | 12 | 20 |
| 5 | 6 | Tottenham Nomads | 8 | 6 | 0 | 2 | 15 | 7 | 8 | 18 |
| 10 | 7 | Leicester City | 8 | 4 | 0 | 4 | 14 | 12 | 2 | 12 |
| 8 | 8 | Manchester United | 8 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 13 | 14 | -1 | 13 |
| 11 | 9 | Everton | 8 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 13 | 12 | 1 | 12 |
which is not bad given that every player should have been sold in the summer because they were not good enough.
So how does this compare with seasons before the last two, when we ended up in the top four by May? In the tables that follow I am back to publishing them in the conventional order by points, not by goals scored.
Here is 2015 after eight games…
| Pos | Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Manchester City | 8 | 6 | 0 | 2 | 19 | 7 | 12 | 18 |
| 2 | Arsenal | 8 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 13 | 7 | 6 | 16 |
| 3 | Manchester United | 8 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 12 | 8 | 4 | 16 |
| 4 | Crystal Palace | 8 | 5 | 0 | 3 | 11 | 7 | 4 | 15 |
So a higher position, but with fewer points and few goals scored. That season we ended up second, winning the FA Cup.
Now 2014. In 2014/15 we came third and also won the FA Cup. After the eight games it looked like this…
| Pos | Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chelsea | 8 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 23 | 8 | 15 | 22 |
| 2 | Manchester City | 8 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 18 | 8 | 10 | 17 |
| 3 | Southampton | 8 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 19 | 5 | 14 | 16 |
| 4 | West Ham United | 8 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 15 | 11 | 4 | 13 |
| 5 | Liverpool | 8 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 13 | 12 | 1 | 13 |
| 6 | Manchester United | 8 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 15 | 12 | 3 | 12 |
| 7 | Arsenal | 8 | 2 | 5 | 1 | 13 | 11 | 2 | 11 |
So at that stage we were a long way off the pace (11 points in fact) and couldn’t even point to a free scoring team to think we might catch up – although we did.
Interesting also to go back to 2003 (you may recall that in 2003/4 we won the league without losing any games). What is interesting that year is not just that we were doing better than this year (as might be expected, it was the sublimest of all sublime teams) but in the top five clubs after eight games we had Fulham and Birmingham City.
| Pos | Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chelsea | 8 | 6 | 2 | 0 | 18 | 7 | 11 | 20 |
| 2 | Arsenal | 8 | 6 | 2 | 0 | 16 | 6 | 10 | 20 |
| 3 | Manchester United | 8 | 6 | 1 | 1 | 16 | 3 | 13 | 19 |
| 4 | Birmingham City | 8 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 8 | 5 | 3 | 15 |
| 5 | Fulham | 7 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 15 | 9 | 6 | 14 |
So actually after eight games we were better – but not that much better. True in the unbeaten season we had drawn two rather than lost two, but we had only scored 16 goals thus far – we have 19 this season. And our goal difference is only one goal fewer than then.
Maybe we are not doing so badly after all.
- “This could be the start of 4 games in which we knock in 5.” Untold Arsenal match preview
- Live match report Fulham – Arsenal : 1-5
last july, i printed out jacob steiberg’s preview of our 2018-2019 season in the guardian, because of one particular sentence i didn’t want to forget. in my opinion, our lads had delivered some of the most brilliant performances of the 2017-2018 season (leicester, chelsea, liverpool, manutd, … even atletico … in home games, milan away …) which is why when steinberg wrote “the squad wenger left behind was the worst of his 22-year reign”, i had a hunch i wouldn’t have to wait very long until that sentence revealed its extraordinary potential as an instance of unintended humor. so i put the print away, and waited.
and here we are: thanks a lot, jacob, for the fun.
Nice write up on Torreira.
https://inews.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/lucas-torreira-arsenal-song-lyrics-uruguay-five-foot-high-vieira/
Hopefully he continues to get better.
Among other things, it talks about a song for him.