Sunday, November 6th, 2011 « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade
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By Walter Broeckx
This weekend we have been playing our 11th game in the EPL of the current season. We now have another international break and so again we face some 14 days in fear of losing some players.
After our terrible start and all the media throwing oil in the crisis-fire the Arsenal ship has steadied itself. Some desperate media outlets try to find some more oil but is there any reason to still speak about a crisis?
First of all we can look at the results we had this season and compare them with the results of last year against the same teams.
| Fixture | Points this season | Points last season |
| Newcastle – Arsenal | 1 | 1 |
| Arsenal – Liverpool | 0 | 1 |
| MU – Arsenal | 0 | 0 |
| Arsenal – Swansea (Blackpool) | 3 | 3 |
| Blackburn – Arsenal | 0 | 3 |
| Arsenal – Bolton | 3 | 3 |
| Tottenham – Arsenal | 0 | 1 |
| Arsenal – Sunderland | 3 | 1 |
| Arsenal – Stoke | 3 | 3 |
| Chelsea – Arsenal | 3 | 0 |
| Arsenal – WBA | 3 | 0 |
| Total after WBA | 19 | 16 |
So in the corresponding fixtures we have 3 points more than we had last season in the same fixtures. In fact this looks great for a team that lost 3 of their key players from last season (Cesc, Nasri AND Wilshere) and had to rebuild and had to adapt to new players coming in.
And if you take in account the fact that both the losses against Blackburn and Tottenham can be blamed on 3 major errors of the refs and assistants in those games which should have resulted in at least a minimum of 2 points in those games. In fact for the Tottenham game I would settle for one point (cancelling out the handball goal from Hand De Vaart) but for the Blackburn game the ref and assistant have cost us the 3 points. The offside goal that Blackburn was allowed to score being one of them and the blatant penalty foul on Walcott in injury time the other one. And then I even will not mention the blatant error from the ref at Newcastle when he didn’t give us a penalty after Barton did what he is best at: starting a fight. As I just did I will take them in my numbers.
That should have been 6 extra points already this season and would have put us on 22 points if there would be some video assistance for the refs. But those games have finished and the points have been taken away. Nothing we can do about it any more. But if you take these points the league table should look a bit like this
| League table | Corrected table | ||||
| Nr | Team | Points | Nr. | Team | Points |
| 1 | Man City | 31 | 1 | Man City | 31 |
| 2 | Man Utd | 26 | 2 | Man Utd | 26 |
| 3 | Newcastle | 25 | 3 | Arsenal | 25 |
| 4 | Chelsea | 22 | 4 | Chelsea | 24 |
| 5 | Tottenham | 19 | 5 | Newcastle | 22 |
| 6 | Liverpool | 19 | 6 | Liverpool | 19 |
| 7 | Arsenal | 19 | 7 | Tottenham | 17 |
This is where we could and should have found ourselves if the refs would have done their job in a proper way. A totally different table than the one we see now. Will it even out? Will we get 6 extra points somewhere this season from refs who make mistakes in our favour? I will let you know if it happens but don’t hold your breath.
And then I even didn’t mention the first Liverpool goal that should have been disallowed for offside and that forced us to open us up with only 10 men on the pitch. So the big difference between 7th place and a possible 3rd place is…the refs.
So if the media want to speak about a crisis, the main and only crisis I see is the crisis at the PGMOL who seem unable to get the refs on the field who can make the correct important decisions.
But even with all the errors in the table we find ourselves 3 points behind 4th place. And have it all to play for. The relegation battle we were facing according to some pundits and a part of the fans that believed those pundits looks to be a bit out of the way.
About the current official league table we see two major things. The first noticeable thing is the fact that Manchester City finally seems to have paid enough money to get a chance to play for the league title. And maybe this isn’t a bad thing in the long run. Because the short time success that they have now could lead to more teams wanting to do something for a real financial fair play ruling.
Manchester United has bossed the league both in terms of prices and in money. They could buy any player they wanted and just bought as they liked it. But with their little brother becoming bigger and humiliating them at Old Trafford this could mean that Manchester United in the future might also be interested in financial fair play rulings. Because as long as you are on top of the pyramid you don’t care about FFP. But if you look at your neighbours buying success and if even United cannot compete with that success you might feel tempted to stop such ways of buying success.
So maybe if City would win the league this could be the final wake up call to most people involved in football that we don’t have to play the league any more. We just look at who is the richest owner of them all and give the title to his team.
For the moment however City is on fire. But we remembered from last seasons that teams that are on fire at the start of the season sometimes collapse. Remember Chelsea last season? So still a long way to go but one have to admit that City really is looking very strong for the moment.
But the most surprising team in the top 7 is Newcastle. Who would have thought after the first draw at Newcastle that this was actually a good point? Well I have to admit I didn’t think it to be. But Newcastle are where they are for the moment. But before you think that they will stay there for the rest of the season I would like to warn you for the fact that Newcastle has only played one team in the top 7 so far and that was Arsenal.
So the major test for Newcastle will start in the coming weeks when they start playing the other top teams. So it could well be that Newcastle benefited from their more easier fixtures at the start of the season and gained some momentum from those games. But whether they are strong enough to beat the rest of the top teams is something that is very unknown for the moment. But in their next 3 fixtures they will have to play Man City, Man United and Chelsea. So time will tell us in the next month how Newcastle will go on from this.
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