“Arsenal dont look like champions” as we reveal the line up tonight. Maybe.
By Tony Attwood
If you have a spare moment, just compare these headlines which appear in the last few days on the websites of two English newspapers.
First headline: Tottenham are back
It is far too soon to start proclaiming “Tottenham are back”, particularly with a trip to Chelsea around the corner, but there are signs that the club’s slow start to the Premier League season will eventually be viewed as an outlier in a more positive campaign…
Second headline: Arsenal’s Declan Rice strikes late
Arsenal’s Declan Rice strikes late to deny Bayern Munich after Harry Kane penalty
Reading those two openers, both of which are from the Telegraph newspaper this morning, and not having watched or read about any of last night’s football, it would, I suggest, be difficult for you to reach a conclusion other than Tottenham are on the way back up and Arsenal are on the way back down.
And yet it was Bayern 2 Arsenal 2, and Nottingham Forest 0 Tottenham 0. And the headline over the Forest match report reads, “Maddison and Kulusevski bring feel-good factor back to Spurs.”
In fact we have got to the stage where the media isn’t even trying to hide its anti-Arsenal bias and pro-Tottenham sentiments. They are just there, open and blatant. An Arsenal away draw with the eternal champions of Germany, with the Arsenal star player missing for most of the game was a stupidenous result, while whatever else Tottenham have been up to we still may note that they are near the foot of the Premier LEague. And really, when it comes down to it, they haven’t been doing much.
At least in the past the media made some basic attempts to try and hide their pro-Tottenham sentiments, even if they could do nothing about their anti-Arsenal views. But now even those basic attempts have gone.
At least the Guardian has the decency to pose their celebrations of Tottenham’s “return” as a question, writing, “Kulusevski and Maddison return to form but are Tottenham also back?”And one really does have to wonder how on earth such headlines can be written after one game, and with a league table that reads…
The Premier League table if you care to read it shows Arsenal second and Tottenham 16h, but such matters are now considered details, along with the fact that this was a tough game for Arsenal, made all the tougher by Saka’s injury. According to the media, he was “still moving in a very limited way as he left the stadium.”
Arteta is quoted as saying, “It doesn’t look good at all but we have to wait and see,” and he confirmed that the medical team were concerned.
As Arteta pointed out later in the same interview, “This is man-to-man for 96 minutes in every action. There’s no breathing. The stress, the quality, the intensity, the level that you need … it’s unbelievable. It’s the highest level. And those things happen, unfortunately.”
Arteta, like all of us, wanted a win not a draw, adding that “You could see that right from the beginning – the mindset, the purpose and the intention that the team has, to be very dominant, to come here and cause problems to Bayern. To press them and attack them…. We were the better team in the first 25 minutes, we got the goal … unfortunately we also got the injury of Bukayo, which was a big setback.”
So it looks like we will be without Saka for a while, including of course Everton at home on Saturday, although after that is a League Cup match which he woouldn’t have played in anyway.
Still at least we now seem to have moved away from the ceaseless “boring boring Arsenal” reportage in the media, with just the anti-Arsenal support trotting it out when other words fail them. And for a moment the media have stopped trying to excuse the total collapse and failure of ManU. They made eight signings and had seven sales with a net spend of £98.7m in the summer and still lost 4-1 to Como. “Oooops,” seems the most appropriate word at this point.
Still, watching last night it was rather difficult to equate what we saw with the headline from the Telegraph that Morale has plummeted at Arsenal as job cuts spread discontent
How do you measure morale? I’ve no idea, and since the Telegraph reporters don’t work at Arsenal I doubt that they can measure Arsenal’s morale either. But we could try this: Try this “Arsenal are rotten – led by a cross-country runner in Declan Rice – and almost as offensive as Manchester Cheaty.” Football 365 produced that one.
And one thing strikes me. For most people, watching professional football is a hobby and one that can bring enjoyment. But for some of these commentators they seem to have picked a hobby that makes them utterly miserable and negative. I mean, wouldn’t stamp collecting be more satisfying?
Perhaps we can help them on their way….
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