By Bulldog Drummond
Apparentlhy some of Arsenal’s squad posted selfies after their 4-2 extermination of Tottenham and the Tiny Totts manager said such activity as this should be saved for winning trophies.
That must mean that they have only have two occasions for doing that in the past 25 years, although of course camera phones haven’t been with us for 25 years. Still, selfies are a bit silly I guess and I am sure the Tottenham players don’t want to over do things like that.
Selfies only really started in around 2002. So really, how many times have Tottenham had the chance for their players to take selfies, under their manager’s dictum?
Since 2002 they have won the League Cup in 2008, so that makes it, err, hang on, got to add this up, errr, once.
And for Arsenal since 2002. Well there was the league in 2002 and 2004. And the FA Cup in 2002, 2003, 2005, 2014, 2015, and 2017.
We have five Community Shield wins since then, but maybe that is stretching it a bit. So we’ll say that against Tottenham’s one go with the cameras our lads have had eight without counting the community shield.
It does seem a trifle tough on Tottenham although I wonder if part of Tottenham’s empty trophy room problem is maybe down to their not having what our manager called “a lot of excitment to win.”
Anyway Mr P could be off to Manchester Disjointed according to some speculators so he could try again there.
Meanwhile our boss said, “Sunday for us is a big reality check in our way. We need to improve and also we need to continue in our process. It’s not a good result but this reality gives us more motivation to continue to work hard, finding a new thing to work on each day, and also it makes us demand a lot from ourselves.
“We can win, we can lose. We’ve won matches playing worse than we did on Sunday. Football is like that. But we need to continue improving.”
Anyway, overall we have won 82 of these games against Tottenham’s 63 victories with 51 draws, so even the recent difficult times we have had against the Tines have not brought us down to their level.
But really it hasn’t been too bad. Let’s go back to 2013 since when there have been 13 games…
| 01 Sep 2013 | Arsenal v Tottenham Hotspur | W | 1-0 | Premier League |
| 04 Jan 2014 | Arsenal v Tottenham Hotspur | W | 2-0 | FA Cup |
| 16 Mar 2014 | Tottenham Hotspur v Arsenal | W | 0-1 | Premier League |
| 27 Sep 2014 | Arsenal v Tottenham Hotspur | D | 1-1 | Premier League |
| 07 Feb 2015 | Tottenham Hotspur v Arsenal | L | 2-1 | Premier League |
| 23 Sep 2015 | Tottenham Hotspur v Arsenal | W | 1-2 | League Cup |
| 08 Nov 2015 | Arsenal v Tottenham Hotspur | D | 1-1 | Premier League |
| 05 Mar 2016 | Tottenham Hotspur v Arsenal | D | 2-2 | Premier League |
| 06 Nov 2016 | Arsenal v Tottenham Hotspur | D | 1-1 | Premier League |
| 30 Apr 2017 | Tottenham Hotspur v Arsenal | L | 2-0 | Premier League |
| 18 Nov 2017 | Arsenal v Tottenham Hotspur | W | 2-0 | Premier League |
| 10 Feb 2018 | Tottenham Hotspur v Arsenal | L | 1-0 | Premier League |
| 02 Dec 2018 | Arsenal v Tottenham Hotspur | W | 4-2 | Premier League |
Six wins out of 13 for us, four draws and three defeats. I suppose the journalists consider Tottenham a difficult team for us because we have only beaten them six times in 13.
And last of all for the moment, Arsenal have given this injury update:
Stephan Lichtsteiner
Fit and in full training following knock at Southampton (a).
Hector Bellerin
Left calf. Being assessed ahead of Tottenham Hotspur (h) on Wednesday, December 19.
Sead Kolasinac
Right thigh. Being assessed ahead of Tottenham Hotspur (h) on Wednesday, December 19.
Shkodran Mustafi
Right hamstring. Being assessed ahead of Tottenham Hotspur (h) on Wednesday, December 19.
Emile Smith Rowe
Right hip. Expected to return to full training in December.
Dinos Mavropanos
Groin injury. Expected to return to full training in December.
Rob Holding
Left knee. Recovering after surgery.
Danny Welbeck
Right ankle. Recovering after surgery.
One ok and three being assessed. It could be worse.
Last of all Four-Four-Two has a headline about Emery giving youngsters a chance for the Tottenham game, but it turns out they are restricting themselves to Maitland-Niles and Eddie. We shall see.
- What’s £400m between friends? How some clubs have upped the game.
- Criticising the clubs while whipping up a storm. Arsenal v Tottenham
- Have you heard the one about the Arsenal team to face Tottenham?
Obviously Arsenal surged far ahead as Spurs were struggling under or recovering from the Sugar years and as Arsenal were simultaneously thriving during Wenger’s earlier years. But since Spurs finally started to get their act together and challenge consistently for top four places from season 2009-10, the Premier League record stands at 7 wins apiece and 5 draws – with Spurs having a home game in hand.
So the outcome of tomorrow’s encounter with Spurs looks OK injury-wise.
I hope the bizarre defeat last Sunday will have no adverse effect on our lads. Too many mistakes, it wasn’t true.
In one way I’m not unhappy that our unbeaten series has come to an end. We should now forget it and proceed to prosper in League and Cups and forget about records.
We have much to be happy about so far this season but there is still work to be done.;)
@ Jim B
If Spurs “finally got their act together” in 2009-10, why have they only beaten Arsenal, as Bulldog clearly demonstrates, 3 times out of the last 13? Talk about perverse logic!
@ Mikey
You ask why Spurs have only beaten Arsenal 3 times out of the last 13 games. There are many reasons for that – not the least of which is that, for all that Spurs finally started to challenge consistently for the top 4 in 2009-10, they nevertheless started a long way back from Arsenal and have been operating on a budget (transfers and wages) that has been as little as 60% of Arsenal’s. Another reason could be that two of the games in question were cup games in which Spurs fielded a significantly weakened team. Quite possibly Arsenal did too – which would serve only to demonstrate Arsenal’s greater strength in depth at the time. A final reason could be that Spurs have played one less home game than Arsenal over the period in question.
But here’s another question for you. Did it occur to you that 13 was a peculiarly random sample size for Tony……sorry, Bulldog…..to choose? No? In which case, allow me to introduce you to Tony’s…..sorry, Bulldog’s….particular modus operandi. He is most adept at setting forth a case with the support of highly selective data. Why 13 games? Well, it’s not because something particularly significant happened at that time. It’s not because it’s a useful, round number. Nope. 13 was the chosen sample size for no other reason that it most suited Bulldog’s purposes. It was a very carefully and deliberately chosen number of games, designed to show Arsenal in the best possible light and, by comparison, Spurs in the worst. That is all.
Of course, you could claim precisely the same about my data – except that there is a clear rationale for my choice beyond merely showing Spurs in the best possible light and Arsenal in the worst. Season 2009-10 was the year that Spurs finally managed to beat Wenger’s Arsenal in the Premier League. Before then, there was no useful comparison to be made. Arsenal were clearly far superior with the occasional draw being the best that Spurs could muster during the Wenger years. 2009-10 is also the year that Spurs finally cracked the top four for the first time since the advent of the Champions League. Another reason for choosing 2009-10 as the starting point is that it seems neater to have a sample size of 10 seasons. Furthermore, unlike Bulldog, I didn’t selectively begin the sequence with a win or two for my team. In the interests of fairness, I began the sequence with a win for Arsenal – the first north London derby of the 2009-10 season.
However, if you are determined be beguiled by Bulldog’s ever so random choice of sample size and consequently insist that Spurs haven’t got their act together, despite all evidence to the contrary beyond mere meetings between our two clubs, then I will happily bow out of this discussion in the knowledge that no amount of logic (however lacking perversity it might be) will ever convince you.
What is random about taking recent matches?
My, point, Tony, is that there was nothing random about your choice at all!
Sure, you chose recent matches. Perfectly reasonable and understandable. But you were very careful to start the sequence with three wins for Arsenal (during the AVB / Sherwood hiccup). Hence a peculiar sample size of 13 games and not, say, a more normal sample size of 10 games. Had you chosen the latter, of course, the record would have shown three wins apiece and four draws.