Arsenal: the underdogs; exactly when we shine

by Tony Attwood

From NBC Sports to the Guardian, the scribblers are out doing their guesswork as to where various clubs will finish in the League.

To remind ourselves this is what the BBC gave us this time last year.  This is Phil McNulty’s prediction showing the predicted position on the left and the actual position on the right, along with the difference.

Predicted	Club	Actual	Diff
1	Manchester City	2	-1
2	Liverpool	1	+1
3	Tottenham Hotspur	6	-3
4	Chelsea	4	0
5	Manchester United	3	+2
6	Arsenal	8	-2
7	Everton	12	-5
8	Leicester City	5	+3
9	Wolverhampton Wan	7	+2
10	West Ham United	16	-6

The lower half

Predicted	Club	Actual	Diff
11	Watford	19	-8
12	Southampton	11	+1
13	Bournemouth	18	-5
14	Aston Villa	17	-3
15	Burnley	10	+5
16	Crystal Palace	14	+2
17	Sheffield United	9	+8
18	Brighton and Hove A	15	-3
19	Norwich City	20	-1
20	Newcastle United	13	+7

The bigger errors in prediction came with clubs placed to be near the bottom – Sheffield Utd and Newcastle.  But the range is typical, most pundits getting up to three positions correct, with some predictions up to seven or eight places out.

One prime reason for this is that the pundits tend to look at the league tables for the season, and how much clubs are spending on players in the summer, with the bigger spends doing better.  Yet the figures we have come up with show that spending (along with a managerial change) usually makes the club to worse in the first half of the following season, with the table for the second half of the previous season being a better guide.

Generally speaking most pundits are rather bit boring, for as with NBC Sports top of the league is the same as most clubs…

1. Manchester City
2. Liverpool
3. Manchester United
4. Chelsea
5. Arsenal
6. Tottenham
7. Leicester City
8. Wolves
9. Everton
10. Southampton

Now Untold didn’t do too well last season with its prediction either as we criticised the media’s general prediction of Arsenal finishing in sixth.  We thought they would be higher, it turned out we were all wrong as the club finished up lower.

That poor prediction was caused primarily because none of us foresaw that the campaign to get Mr Wenger out, would then continue, stoked of course by the ever willing media, with a campaign to get Mr Emery out.

So is it worth our while having another go having got it so wrong before?   After all what we we know about Arsenal that others don’t?

First that results come out of the blue.   Herbert Chapman came to Arsenal in 1925 and in 1929 we came 14th.  However we won our first trophy. The FA Cup.  The following season we won the league with a record number of points.  No one predicted that – not after having come 11th, 10, 9th and 14th in the previous years.

Our league win in 1948 came out of nowhere as well.  The previous season we had come 13th.

Some of us are just about old enough to remember the first double.  The season before that we came 12th in the league.  Yes we did win the Fairs Cup, but only 12 wins in the league was pretty dire.

By 1989 it was 18 years since we had last won the league.  The season before we came in sixth.  Our top scorer, Alan Smith had got a mere 16 goals.  The next season, playing two fewer games we got ten more points and beat Liverpool! at Anfield in the last minute of the last game to win the league.

In Wenger’s first season we’d come in 3rd – an improvement on the fifth of two seasons before, and the style and approach was revolutionised, so maybe just that once we really did think that the league was a possibility in the manager’s second season, and so it turned out to be.  Although doubters were there many – especially if anyone had mentioned “a second double”.

But what about our four in seven seasons cup run?  In those four seasons we have ended up fourth, third, fifth and eighth.

So my point is that Arsenal wins are often not expected – at least certainly not by the media, who seem to make predictions by and large based on “same as last year but throw in the tweak” (meaning change the positions by one or two so as not to make it look like you have just copied last season’s results).

Thus the consensus is that Arsenal, without another managerial change, will finish fifth or sixth, but let’s remind ourselves of just how things ended up…

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts
1	Liverpool	38	32	3	3	85	33	52	99
2	Manchester City	38	26	3	9	102	35	67	81
3	Manchester United	38	18	12	8	66	36	30	66
4	Chelsea	38	20	6	12	69	54	15	66
5	Leicester City	38	18	8	12	67	41	26	62
6	Tottenham Hotspur	38	16	11	11	61	47	14	59
7	Wolverhampton Wanderers	38	15	14	9	51	40	11	59
8	Arsenal	38	14	14	10	56	48	8	56

But as shown in a recent article, our form in the second half of the season was somewhat different from that in the first half.

If we take the league table just based on results of PL games played after Arteta arrived (which we published a couple of days ago) we can see that in the Arteta part of the season Arsenal were actually 5th and were the biggest movers in the upper part of the league.  Here, once again, is the league table just showing the games in the second half of the season

	Team	Movement	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Liverpool	–	20	15	2	3	39	19	20	47
2	Manchester City	+1	19	12	2	5	52	23	29	38
3	Manchester United	+5	19	11	5	3	36	13	23	38
4	Chelsea	–	19	10	4	5	36	27	9	34
5	Arsenal	+6	19	9	5	5	31	20	14	30
6	Tottenham Hotspur	–	19	8	6	5	34	20	14	30
7	Wolverhampton Wanderers	-2	19	8	5	6	22	16	6	29
8	Sheffield United	-1	19	7	4	8	16	22	-6	25
9	Leicester City	-7	19	6	5	8	26	23	3	23

Arsenal and Man U were the big improvers, while Leicester collapsed in the aftermath of the publicity concerning their strange statistics in the tackles / fouls / yellow cards chart.  Wolverhampton struggled as they ran out of money – something that will continue.

If we put that improvement of six places down to Mr Arteta, then there is every reason to think that with his own choice of players coming through we might be able to transform one of those defeats and two of those draws into wins, across the whole season.  That would make us serious top four contenders.

That is not much of a change.

Yet of course that depends on one of the clubs above us slipping backwards rather than them all improving on the performance in the second half of last season.   Chelsea and Man U look to me to be the most likely; Chelsea because they are making a lot of changes to the squad at once, and Man U because I am not sure that they can sustain the huge improvement we saw in the second half of last season.

But of course that might be wishful thinking.

So I’ll predict Arsenal coming in fourth.  And the only difference between my predictions and those of the pundits is that I don’t just base it on transfers, but on tactical changes, and a hope that at last the anti-Arsenal Arsenal of “supporters” groups and journalists, will quieten down a bit.  I don’t expect them to support the club, but a little less negativity could do the world of good.

Oh yes, and there is the fact that we’ve won more trophies than other clubs in the last seven years.

• Arsenal’s record breaking cup final run and Arteta’s amazing Wembley record
• Arsenal finally back on track after 2 years of avoidable chaos
• Arsenal’s victories in cup and shield were predictable, for anyone who wanted to look
• How Arsenal has taken on the media, and the club is winning
• Which of the “big six” have won the most trophies in the last seven years?