Tottenham v Arsenal: injuries, managers and number of trophies

Posted on by Tony Attwood

By Bulldog Drummond

As things stand Arsenal have three first team players listed as injured ahead of the derby game on Thursday, and Tottenham have four.   Interestingly the three clubs with the worst situation in terms of injuries are Leeds, Norwich and Watford, all three residing down in the basement.

You’ll know our three injuries well enough: Ben White, who has been reported as being hopeful for the Tottenham game, plus Tierney and Partey who it has been suggested are out for the rest of the campaign.

As for Tottenham Tanganga is out for the rest of the season, Doherty is reported as being assessed, Reguilon is probably out for the rest of the season and Skipp has had his operation and is in recovery, so again not able to play this season.

But looking through the various statistics relating to these two teams, the one thing that stands out, alongside Arsenal’s ability to win the occasional trophy against Tottenham’s inability so to do, is the number of managers.

In the chart below we can see the list of Tottenham managers and their dates, and then in the right column with a certain level of approximation to match the dates, the Arsenal managers

Tottenham FROM TO Arsenal
Antonio Conte 02 Nov, 2021 Present Arteta
Nuno Espirito Santo 30 Jun, 2021 01 Nov, 2021 Arteta
Ryan Mason 19 Apr, 2021 29 Jun, 2021 Arteta
Jose Mourinho 20 Nov, 2019 19 Apr, 2021 Emery/Freddie/Arteta
Mauricio Pochettino 27 May, 2014 19 Nov, 2019 Wenger
Tim Sherwood 16 Dec, 2013 13 May, 2014 Wenger
Andre Villas-Boas 03 Jul, 2012 16 Dec, 2013 Wenger
Harry Redknapp 25 Oct, 2008 15 Jun, 2012 Wenger
Juande Ramos 29 Oct, 2007 25 Oct, 2008 Wenger
Clive Allen 26 Oct, 2007 29 Oct, 2007 Wenger
Martin Jol 05 Nov, 2004 26 Oct, 2007 Wenger
Jacques Santini 03 Jun, 2004 05 Nov, 2004 Wenger
David Pleat 21 Sep, 2003 03 Jun, 2004 Wenger
Glenn Hoddle 02 Apr, 2001 21 Sep, 2003 Wenger
David Pleat 16 Mar, 2001 02 Apr, 2001 Wenger

Now I know that the Wenger era was an exception but even so if one goes back further, Arsenal managers do generally tend to stay for quite a while.  Bruce Rioch was an exception lasting one season, but most other permanent managers have stayed for quite a long time.   Indeed it could be said that occasionally we keep managers for longer than we ought to…

George Graham stayed almost nine years, Don Howe two and a half years, Terry Neill six and a half years, Bertie Mee 10 years (which most certainly was far too long, given that his achievements stopped with the double), Billy Wright* three years, George Swindin* four years, Jack Cryaston* two years, Tom Whittaker nine years, George Allison six years (excluding the second world war), Herbert Chapman nine years, Leslie Knighton* six years.   (Managers marked with an asterisk* were those who won nothing).

That gives us 11 permanent managers before Wenger with an average tenure of five and a quarter years.

During the same period Tottenham have had 19 managers, as far as I can work out, excluding the obviously temporary ones.  And I would stress again I am not counting the Wengerian era since that was quite clearly so unusual.

And there is one other little bit of history that I would like to consider before I turn it in for the day.

Tottenham have built up a reputation for being one of the big clubs on the basis of a collection of 17 trophies in their history.

  • League winners: 2 (Arsenal 13)
  • FA Cup winners: 8 (Arsenal 14)
  • League cup winners: 4 (Arsenal 2)
  • Cup winners cup and Uefa winners: 3 (Arsenal 2)

Arsenal’s total is 31 trophies – almost double Tottenham’s number of trophies.

And it is not that Arsenal have been winning trophies for longer than Tottenham.  Tottenham in fact won their first major trophy (the FA Cup) in 1901, 29 years before Arsenal won their first major trophy (coincidentally also the FA Cup).

But it is also true to say that for the last five years Tottenham have ended up above Arsenal in the League, so we can perhaps hope that this year that run will come to an end.

Arsenal v Tottenham: the free video collection

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5 Replies to “Tottenham v Arsenal: injuries, managers and number of trophies”

  1. OK, Manager wise, it’s a joke, we’ll give you that, while we can’t argue our trophy record over
    the past 30 years is anything other than appalling.
    But Redknapp and Poch aside (and we did have really good sides under those two,
    albeit with no luck on the trophy front) Mr Spurs himself, Billy Nicholson, from the
    later 1950s to the early 1970s, remains one of the great managers in football history,
    not merely the best one in Spurs’ history. While Keith Burkinshaw in his 8 year tenure also left a fine legacy, in setting up top quality Spurs teams throughout the 80s. ‘Proper managers’.
    And, despite winning the FA Cup in 1991, Terry Venables ‘could’ have been a ‘proper’ manager
    for Tottenham too, if he hadn’t been so intent on fighting Alan Sugar for control of the club.
    But the days of all the ‘proper managers’ died with the demise of Wenger and Ferguson.

  2. Well,

    guess what : another Leeds redcar, without VAR need – after all it was a Chelsea player being fouled – but from what the picture shows, no questions about it.
    As long as it is not an Arsenal player….

  3. Leeds now have 2 red cards in 2 games. No mention of disciplinary problems by the wise old heads in the media. The narrative doesn’t fit.

  5. @c b waters

    Fully agree. Proper manager looks like something of the past. I never understood why Poch was fired from a sporting point of view.
    I do him being very unhappy and vocally so about the lack of budget.
    Then again, Mr Wenger was part and parcel of building the new stadium and was involved from A to Z.
    Poch was not, so the choices were not his and it always seemed to me he provoked his exit.
    But then again who are we to know….

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