Arsenal v Vitória de Guimarães: how the visitors are doing this season

Posted on by Tony Attwood

By Bulldog Drummond

Vitória Sport Clube also known as Vitória de Guimarães, play in the Portuguese first division, but are outside the traditional top teams from that league: Benfica, Porto and Sporting.

Indeed since the Primeira Liga was created in Portugal in 1999/2000 only these three teams have won the league, and Sporting have only won it twice.  In 2008 Vitória de Guimarães came third in the league – equalling their best ever performance.

In the league this season their most recent results have been

Date Home team Score Away team
01/09/19 Porto 3 – 0 Vitoria Guimaraes
08/09/19 Rio Ave 1 – 1 Vitoria Guimaraes
14/09/19 Vitoria Guimaraes 5 – 1 Desportivo Aves
22/09/19 Tondela 1 – 3 Vitoria Guimaraes
29/09/19 Vitoria Guimaraes 1 – 0 Paços de Ferreira

So they are getting the victories but not when it comes to playing the big teams.

In the Europa League they started in the second qualifying round…

Date Round Home team Score Away team
08/08/19 Q2 Ventspils 0 – 3 Vitoria Guimaraes
14/08/19 Q2 Vitoria Guimaraes 6 – 0 Ventspils
22/08/19 Q3 FCSB 0 – 0 Vitoria Guimaraes
29/08/19 Q3 Vitoria Guimaraes 1 – 0 FCSB
19/09/19 Group Standard Liège 2 – 0 Vitoria Guimaraes
03/10/19 Group Vitoria Guimaraes 0 – 1 Eintracht Frankfurt

So they did only just make it through the final qualifying round and have lost both the games in the group stages without scoring a goal, but on the other hand they kept the scores against them down to a reasonable level.

Here’s the Portugal league table

Team P W D L F A GD Pts
1 Famalicão 7 6 1 0 16 7 +9 19
2 Benfica 7 6 0 1 16 3 +13 18
3 Porto 7 6 0 1 16 4 +12 18
4 Vitoria Guimaraes 7 3 3 1 12 8 +4 12
5 Tondela 8 3 3 2 10 9 +1 12
6 Sporting CP 7 3 2 2 11 9 +2 11

Sporting, one of the big three, are continuing to find it hard going.  Famalicão were promoted last season and play in a very small stadium whose capacity is currently 5300 but is being upgraded to 7500.  It is owned by the company that also part owns Atletico Madrid, which probably accounts for its sudden rise to the top.

All of which suggests a league in a certain amount of turmoil of the type that arrived in England with the influx of money into Manchester City, and which I guess will continue to wrap itself around leagues throughout Europe.

So all in all we are playing an up and coming team that suddenly finds itself overtaken by an even faster up and coming team with more money.

Squaka give us a predicted line up of

Martinez;

Bellerin, Mustafi, Holding, Tierney;

Ceballos, Torreira;

Maitland-Niles, Willock, Saka;

Lacazette.

And it is difficult to find much wrong with that except that Martinelli doesn’t get a game.

So after 21 consecutive seasons in the Champions League under Mr Wenger, we are now into our third season in the Europa having reached the semi-finals first time around, and then the final itself second time around.

But the disadvantage of being in this competition is the lack of the money that the Champions League generates.  The advantages are that the earlier games are easier and so allow more time for the back up players, youth players and players returning from injury to get match experience.   And there is a chance of getting to the final.

However as losing finalists last season Arsenal earned €4.5m.  On the other hand in the Champions League teams get €7m million for each win and €900,000 for every match they draw.   So a typical group stage campaign of say four wins and two defeats gives €28m – as opposed to the  €4.5m as losing finalists in the Europa.  It is the huge gap in money that causes concern.

More on the game shortly.

 

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2 Replies to “Arsenal v Vitória de Guimarães: how the visitors are doing this season”

  1. There is no doubt that participation in the CL is rewarded far more than playing in the EL. But to suggest that for a win in the CL group stages brings with it €7 million appears to be incorrect. It’s €2.7 million

    Indeed the link below does documents just how much is paid to the participants of both competitions.

    By my calculations ignoring TV distribution Arsenal banked around €21 million from UEFA which to put in perspective isn’t far short of the sum that the four English teams were paid before the tournament even kicked off

    https://www.uefa.com/insideuefa/stakeholders/clubs/news/newsid=2562024.html

  2. And that is why it was imperative for Arsenal to qualify for the CL during our austerity years.

    Using todays figures, even if we’d won the FA Cup every year between our triumphs in 2005 and 2013 we would of won a total of £56 Million.

    Using todays figures just qualifying for, and then reaching the round of 16, wins a total of £32 Million.

    So just 2 seasons in the CL wins more money than WINNING the FA Cup 8 years in a row.

    For a Club in our position, when given the choice of CL qualification and FA Cup glory it was a no brainer.

    Wenger was famously quoted as claiming CL qualification was a trophy and was endlessly mocked with ‘4th is not a trophy’.

    Well no it wasn’t, it was actually much much more than that, our very existence at the top level depended on it.

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