By Tony Attwood
In 2019, when Arsenal last sacked their manager, and before Arteta was appointed, the league table read …
1
Liverpool
13
12
1
0
30
11
19
37
8
Arsenal
13
4
6
3
18
19
\-1
18
18
Norwich City
13
3
1
9
13
28
\-15
10
Arsenal were indeed 19 points behind the leaders Liverpool and just eight points above the relegation place of 18th.
This season we haven’t had the 13 games yet because these internationals keep getting in the way, of course, so we can’t do a direct comparison that way, but what we can do is compare Arsenal today with Arsenal in the season when Emery was moved on. And for good measure, we can compare the situation with Aston Villa as well. That’s the club that Emery moved onto after he wasted most of the transfer budget on a player. Arsenal soon found it hard to give away for nothing.
Today, Arsenal are four points clear at the top of the league and 16 points clear of relegation…
1
Liverpool
13
12
1
0
30
11
19
37
8
Arsenal
13
4
6
3
18
19
\-1
18
That looks like a fair improvement for Arsenal since 2019, going from eighth then to top now. But here’s the oddity. In 2019, Liverpool had 37 points from 13 games. This season Arsenal are top of the league yes, but still only on 26 points – 11 fewer than Liverpool in 2019. That is one hell of a drop in points total!
So what is going on?
Actually, nothing particular, for this change in numbers simply reminds us all that how many points a team that is doing well gets depends on which other sides the club has played and of course, how well the opposition is doing.
But we can get a bit more of an insight into Arsenal’s progress under Arteta from this sort of comparison table…..
1
Arsenal 2025
11
8
2
1
20
**5**
**15**
26
4
Arsenal 2024
11
5
4
2
18
12
6
19
4
Arsenal 2023
11
7
3
1
23
9
14
24
1
Arsenal 2022
11
**9**
1
1
**25**
11
14
**28**
5
Arsenal 201
11
6
2
3
13
13
0
20
15
Arsenal 2020
11
4
1
**6**
10
14
\-4
13
5
Arsenal 2019
11
4
5
2
16
15
1
17
Now what I have done here is highlight the highest or lowest number in most columns in red – lowest for the number of goals conceded and highest for other numbers. And I do think this starts to give us some insights.
The first and most obvious is that Arsenal’s progress in the first 11 games is not linear. Things can still go wrong even though there is a general sense of improvement in the club year by year.
What’s more, the number of points doesn’t directly relate to the position in the league. For example, Arsenal are, as you will know, currently top of the league on 26 points. But back in 2023, Arsenal had only two points fewer and yet were as low as fourth.
And indeed 2022’s figures can remind us that being top of the league after 11 games, does not guarantee winning the league – that season you will recall was the first of the three successive second place finishes.
But jumping to another conclusion can be equally misleading. For example, in 2022 by this time we not only had two more points but had scored five more goals. However, contrary to that, we could argue that we might note that in 2022 by this stage of the season, we had conceded more than twice as many goals as this season.
But we surely have to agree that the progress since 2020 has been extraordinary. This season has doubled the number of wins, doubled the number of goals, cut the number of defeats to a sixth of what we had in that season and are just on a third of the number of goals conceded.
So there are two points. One is that progress is essential, and progress is exactly what Arsenal has achieved in recent years. But also winning the league is not only about what Arsenal do, it is about what other top teams do.
And indeed there is even more to it than this, because progress is also affected by such factors as the waywardness of referees, the number of injuries picked up, and of course, the speed at which new players can be integrated, not only into the Arsenal team, but also into the ways of the referees and the commentators invented by the media.
Indeed, many is the player who, after a month or two at the club, has been found turning to his new colleagues to say, “Why are the media printing these stories about me?” (or about us), and “why are the referees behaving like this?” And the answer from those who have been here a bit longer is, “Well, this is Arsenal, and that is what they do.”
Now, when it comes to the media, we all know 97% of the stories they run are fiction – we’ve proven that year after year. But what about referees? Well, in the near future, we are going to be analysing what the referees do in a way that you won’t have seen before.
We’ve been working on this issue for more than a season, and we’re soon going to be ready with our new sets of facts and figures, and I rather think you might be surprised. But I do also hope it will help the Arsenal management explain to newly recruited players exactly what they are up against.