In September last year Manhchester United scored seven goals in one game – just as Arsenal did earlier this week. Although for ManU it was at home, and against a team from the third tier of English football: Barnsley. Barnsley are currently tenth in league one.
Unfortunately for ManU and their ever-demanding fans who, backed by a compliant media, seem to have an extraordinary sense of entitlement, the club only won one game of the next eight, and on 28 October they were 14th in the league.
Even more unfortunate for the club, they have only won two of their last seven games in league and cups and just three of the last 11 league games. Even Tottenham Hots beat them, although that was only by one goal to nil. ManU’s two victories have been against relegation-threatened teams: Leicester in the FA cup and Ipswich in the Premier League.
Arsenal on the other hand, despite having no one who can score a goal (at least according to the media and those fans who believe the media – which is an odd thing to do, but some people apparently still do it), and abjectly failing to sign anyone in the last window, while utterly refusing to take the masses of advice thrown at them daily by bloggers and journos alike, somehow managed not only to score seven goals away from home, they did it by having six different scorers. Quite a decent trick for anyone who can manage it.
Now serious complaints are being made about this. For everyone knows (at least all journalists seem to know) that to score goals you need a goal scorer – and by that they mean a TOP goalscorer, not some guy who we’ve never head of from a club we’ve never heard of. I mean having six different players scoring goals is certainly against the spirit of the game if not the laws of the game, and I can imagine there being all sorts of demands made to stop this happening again. Typical Arsenal, one might imagine the journos saying, having six different players scoring. Whoever heard of such a thing.
ManU have of course reacted to their poor form of late. In the last three campaigns they have come sixth, third and eighth, and we can emphasise with that a bit by the fact that after Arteta took over, Arsenal came eighth, eighth and fifth. The question is can ManU now rise from 14th back up to eighth to emulate Arsenal’s rebirth under Arteta?
ManU are currently ten points behind Brighton and Hove who are currently in eighth, so that seems like quite a long haul for Man U to achieve. In terms of attack, the three clubs promoted last season who look certain to return from whence they came, all obviously have lower scoring rates than ManU, but otherwise, only West Ham and Everton have scored fewer.
Interestingly, though, in terms of defence, and apart from the obvious suspects, Aston Villa, Brentford and Everton are the only teams letting in more goals than the mighty Tiny Totts. (And we might perhaps pause for a moment to notice that in terms of Aston Villa only five teams have a worse defence, and yet the media continue to talk them up as if they were a big team challenging for Big Things.)
Putting all this together the last ten games league table, which is a fairly decent form guide much of the time, shows us that Liverpool and Arsenal are running neck and neck. Tottenham however….
Premier League Form (Last 10)
Team
P
W
D
L
F
A
GD
Pts
1
Liverpool
10
6
4
0
21
9
+12
22
**2**
**Arsenal**
**10**
**6**
**3**
**1**
**17**
**7**
**+10**
**21**
14
Chelsea
10
3
2
5
15
17
\-2
11
**15**
**Man Utd**
**10**
**3**
**2**
**5**
**12**
**17**
**\-5**
**11**
16
Tottenham
10
3
1
6
14
14
0
10
17
Wolverhampton
10
3
1
6
10
16
\-6
10
18
Ipswich
10
1
2
7
10
25
\-15
5
19
Leicester
10
1
0
9
4
24
\-20
3
20
Southampton
10
1
0
9
8
29
\-21
3
The dire form of Ipswich Town, Leicester City and Southampton means that the three who came up will go down, and in a sign of the way that things are going it looks as if Luton could continue their slide and go back to League One, while Sheffield United and Burnley could come back up.
Going back a year, after 27 games last season, the Championship table had Leicester, Ipswich and Southampton in first second and third positions, so it looks like they really are playing yo yo. One season they come up, they take all the extra money the Premier League gives them, and then they go back down (and get some extra funding for that as well).
As Bob Dylan once wrote “Money doesn’t talk, it swears.” (And in case by some strange chance you share my interest in Bob Dylan as well as in football, [Untold Dylan](http://www.bob-dylan.org.uk) has been running alongside Untold Arsenal for the past 16+ years. There’s a new article every day.)