By Bulldog Drummond
- Arsenal v Liverpool: all the form of late points to a draw
- Arsenal v Liverpool: This is Arsenal’s best position since 2014.
- Chelsea score yet another own goal, and the tackles / fouls / yellow ratio with Liverpool
And so with the three teams below us who have pretensions of European football next season now having played three more games than Arsenal the top four positions are looking even more secure
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Manchester City | 29 | 22 | 4 | 3 | 68 | 18 | 50 | 70 |
| 2 | Liverpool | 28 | 20 | 6 | 2 | 73 | 20 | 53 | 66 |
| 3 | Chelsea | 28 | 17 | 8 | 3 | 57 | 19 | 38 | 59 |
| 4 | Arsenal | 26 | 16 | 3 | 7 | 43 | 29 | 14 | 51 |
| 5 | Manchester United | 29 | 14 | 8 | 7 | 48 | 40 | 8 | 50 |
| 6 | West Ham United | 29 | 14 | 6 | 9 | 48 | 36 | 12 | 48 |
| 7 | Wolverhampton W | 29 | 14 | 4 | 11 | 29 | 23 | 6 | 46 |
Chelsea seem to have given their PR department over to Bonkers Incorporated, and we now just have to wait to see what this will do to their results. Do they develop a siege mentality or was the suggestion that their game against Middlesborough be behind closed doors just part of a regime that might best be described as “New Daft”. We shall see as the days go by.
Shutting up would of course be their best option but the club and its supporters seem to be congenitally incapable of following that approach. The media thus are just waiting for their next outburst and each glorious bit of nonsense makes their situation worse.
But back to Arsenal. Of course, we need to get something out of those three games, in hand against Manu, Wham and the Wobbleyous. And tonight is the first chance.
The news that the media is focussing on, is that Liverpool can win their third consecutive away match at Arsenal for the first time in their history. The recent results having been…
| Date | Match | Res | Score | Competition |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 Jul 2020 | Arsenal v Liverpool | W | 2-1 | Premier League |
| 3 Apr 2021 | Arsenal v Liverpool | L | 0-3 | Premier League |
| 20 Jan 2022 | Arsenal v Liverpool | L | 0-2 | League Cup |
Countering that is the rather jolly stat that Arsenal are unbeaten in all eight of their midweek Premier League home matches under the current manager. That is five wins and three draws. The stats of this nature go on beyond this but really it gets a bit ludicrous after that so we’ll leave that.
The referee is Andre Marriner. He has overseen two Liverpool and two Arsenal games so far this season, and here is his record… All figures are per game except the fouls per tackle figure, which is, rather obviously, fouls per tackle.
| Team | Fouls | Fouls/Tackles | Pen | Yel | Yel |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Liverpool | 10.50 | 0.72 | 0.00 | 0.50 | 1 |
| Arsenal | 6.00 | 0.41 | 0.50 | 1.00 | 2 |
As we can see, under Mr Marriner’s guidance Liverpool commit more fouls per game, undoubtedly because a much high proportion of their tackles are called as fouls than is the case with Arsenal. It is a chink of light and maybe could be a deciding factor.
And although the run of results against Liverpool has been awful (one win in the last 18 with no Arsenal goals in the last five meetings) all such runs do eventually come to an end. And if that happens tonight this will be the first time that Arsenal have won six Premier League games in a row since Unai Emery was sacked.
Indeed mentioning Unai Emery reminds me that we have not looked at the win percentages of our managers for a while.
If you are a regular reader you will know that the last three permanent managers we have had, have also been the most successful in terms of win percentages. It has taken Mr Arteta a while to overtake Mr Emery on that score (due to his two major redevelopments – one in terms of the no-tackle tactics and the other by building a totally new defence) but he is getting closer and closer…
| Manager | From | To | Games | Win % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arsène Wenger | 1 October 1996 | 13 May 2018 | 1,235 | 57.25 |
| Unai Emery | 23 May 2018 | 29 November 2019 | 78 | 55.13 |
| Mikel Arteta | 22 December 2019 | Present | 119 | 54.62 |
Back with the current matches, maybe we should just have a reminder of recent results, since it was not too long ago that Arsenal couldn’t go into a game without being told how many games we had lost… All games have been in the Premier League
| Date | Match | Res | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 23 Jan 2022 | Arsenal v Burnley | D | 0-0 |
| 10 Feb 2022 | Wolverhampton v Arsenal | W | 0-1 |
| 19 Feb 2022 | Arsenal v Brentford | W | 2-1 |
| 24 Feb 2022 | Arsenal v Wolverhampton W | W | 2-1 |
| 6 Mar 2022 | Watford v Arsenal | W | 2-3 |
| 13 Mar 2022 | Arsenal v Leicester City | W | 2-0 |
And here is a thing. Although they won’t publish the last six games table, the BBC in their preview have finally admitted that “Only Liverpool have won more points than the Gunners in the last six matches.” In terms of comments that is almost a breakthrough.
Next… the team
folarin scored a wonderful henryesque curler from outside the box against birmingham yesterday
2 goals 2 assists already, an fa cup quarter-final ahead; attaboy indeed
Unai Emery 23 May 2018 29 November 2019 78 55.13
Mikel Arteta 22 Dec 2019 Present 119 54.62
I did a piece in the last article showing how the much touted notion that Arsenal have been in terminal decline over the last 10 years is palpably untrue. At the end of the article I conceded that on the back of a 6th, 5th, and 2 x 8th placed finishes, it is arguable that that is indeed a decline when compared to the previous 12 or 13 years, despite the fact we still managed to win an FA cup.
What I said in fact was that “okay, we’ve had what for us is 4 disappointing seasons. But this is nothing if compared to the barren spells that Liverpool, Man Utd, Chelsea, Man city and Spurs have endured, yet the way they talk you’d think we were the only team that ever had a ‘rough patch’, and of course nobody else’s ‘rough patch’ was anything like as bad as ours”.
But as you can see from Tony’s statistics, even that ‘decline’is grossly exaggerated as in fact our last 2 managers have the 2nd and 3rd highest win percentages in the clubs history. So even in ‘decline’ we aren’t actually doing that bad, at least nothing like as bad as we are made out to be.
If you was an Alien listening to the media and had never seen us play or seen these stats, you’d think we were perennial relegation fodder.
My point is, not that we are where we want to be. Not that we haven’t all been disappointing with our fall out of the top 4. Not that we all haven’t been disappointing with the length of time since our last title.
But rather with the notion that we have been in terminal decline for 10 years or so being a gross exaggeration.
As is the implication that as a club we get everything wrong.
We’ve had a few bellow par years. That’s all. Nothing more than all top clubs go through at some time.
But of course with us, it’s made to seem like the end of the World.
As for tonight. I think we will lose. For a few reasons.
1) Liverpool can smell blood. Man city are stumbling and Liverpool must feel a win tonight will be a psychological stab to the heart of City.
2) Again, psychologically Liverpool have us on the back foot. Our record against them is recent years is poor and only recently they beat us at the Em’s.
3) They are better than us, it’s as simple as that. We are closer, in fact much closer than some might think (See my last 52 game table elsewhere), but they are still a better team.
Non of this means that if we bring our A game and Liverpool are slightly off the pace, that we cant beat them, but on balance I feel we will be on the end of a narrow defeat.
But this isn’t our critical match. How we perform against our other top 4 rivals, Chelsea, Spurs and West Ham, are THE games.