Après moi le déluge – Sporting v Arsenal and the record run of wins

By Bulldog Drummond

Of course Mr Wenger never repeated the saying attributed to Louis XV, nor the variant Après nous le déluge – which Madame de Pompadour is supposed to have uttered.  He made no comment as far as I know about what might happen after he left Arsenal.

Nor did Untold, save to point out that without the same sort of money as Manchester City and Chelsea have access to (and indeed which we have subsequently seen Liverpool! spending) we could not expect Arsenal to challenge immediately for the title.   All we said was, if we could fix the away form, we would get back to our regular position of somewhere around third.   (There are several articles on it on this site, examining exactly how that might happen).

So no déluge for us, but for Sporting, well, that’s a different matter as I suggested in the earlier articles.  Although the déluge is less a tidal wave and more the occasional breaker hitting the shore.   They have won five and lost two in the league this season, and won both their Europa games.   And they are actually joint top scorers in the league at the moment with 16 goals in seven games.    That is 2.28 goals per game.  Not bad at all.

So thinking of goals, let’s have a look at our recent winning streak but with a twist… instead of giving the score, let us focus just on the number of goals scored by Arsenal in each game.

I make that 31 goals in 11 games.  And because some readers don’t like me including the League Trophy that is 28 in 10.  Which gives us 2.8 goals per game.

Of course to a degree that is cheating because I have taken out the first two games of the season.  Add them in and you get 30 goals in 12 which gives an average of 2.5 per game.  Still more than the opposition tonight, and still enough to suggest a few goals in Portugual.

What is interesting is that last season Arsenal were the third highest scorers in the League with 74 (a fact oft forgotten), which gave us an average of 1.95 goals per game in the league.  This season just taking the league games we are on 2.44.

So whichever way we add it up, we are scoring quite regularly.  Second highest scoring team in the league with six more goals in the league than the all conquering Liverpool! and the goal machine Tottenham.  Funny, this isn’t mentioned much in the media.

Now, returning to the table above, not once have we scored fewer than two goals in any of these games – in fact not in any game since the very first game of the season.    That must be getting close to being a record in itself.

I know that the 1987/8 run of consecutive wins included quite a few that were 1-0 victories.  But not for our Mr Emery.  Oh No!   Score one?  Go out and get another.

That’s what makes it all rather jolly.  Just in case you are interested here is the record run in the league and cup from 1987/8