Researching this mornings blog I noticed something.
After 13 games in 2022/23, Tottenham were on 26 points and 3rd in the league. 12 months later and, after 13 games, they are on 26 points and 5th in the league.
He was celebrated by fans and pundits alike for the pointless achievement of 3-in-a-row and taking Tottenham to their best ever Premier League start.
I said at the time that winning 3 MOTM in a row means nothing if the team wins nothing. Tottenham fans argued back, but I guess they are used to celebrating individual success whilst their team wins nowt.
Despite all their crowing about how much better they are this year than last, they are now behind where they were in 2022/23.
They are on the same points, but they are two places lower than last season. They have also scored just one more goal – which makes you wonder why they are saying things like “Ange’s attacking football is welcome relief after Conte’s defensive game.” They also have a worse goal difference.
After Ange’s good start, Tottenham fans began to pipe up with their “we got our Tottenham back”. Well, your Tottenham never really went anywhere. You have historically always been a upper-mid-table team that
There average finish since the Premier League begun is between 7th and 8th. Under Daniel Levy’s leadership, that average has improved to between 6th and 7th.
They had a golden period under Poch where they finished 3rd, 2nd & 3rd, but ultimately won nothing. These finishes led their fans to get a little too big for their boots. And since finishing 3rd in 2018, there average has been 6th.
5th in the league and 3 defeats in a row – 2 at home. This is your Tottenham. And up next it is Manchester City…
Meanwhile, Arsenal have been horrendous this season. Gone backwards massively. Mikel Arteta has been found out. Ange has done more in 4 months than the Spanaird in 4 years. £200million down the drain over the summer. We are top the league…
It really does show how the media can influence things.
They promote Ange as some sort of managerial great, when in reality he is just an Australian Harry Redknapp (average manager who provides a good soundbite). Meanwhile, they look to try and make it appear that Arteta is clueless and out of his depth.
We probably will not win the title this year, but we will be in the race. Tottenham, meanwhile, will be battling once against for 5th or 6th.
Postecoglou equalled a record when he won his 3rd MOTM in a row. As it stands, he is also on course to equal Martin Jol’s 40-game season!
The noughties called and want their football style back.
At half-time, I commented that Brentford reminded me of a mid-to-late 00’s Blackburn Rovers under Sam Allardyce.
Playing on a narrow pitch, they set up with a back 5 that rarely left the edge of their own box, and spent much of the game deep within it.
Infront of the defence was another back of 5 who rarely ventured that far away from those men behind him. And when they did it was just in 2 or 3 men breaks.
Brentford showed little ambition in trying to score from open play, instead trying to break the game down to set pieces. corners, free kicks and throw-ins, that is their threat, it is their style!
Like Blackburn under Fat Sam, even free kicks within their area saw the centre backs go up and the goalkeeper try and launch the ball forward into the box.
In games like Saturday, you need the luck of the run of the ball, and it just did not roll Arsenal’s way. Leandro Trossard a toe nail offside (he was offside, the line is taken from the ball due to the absence of a second defensive player), the keeper taking the ball off Kai Havertz head at the last second, a couple of passes not quite accurate enough, not quite quick enough.
There is a reason why Brentford only lost twice last season – a 3-0 thrashing to Arsenal and a tight 1-0 defeat to Liverpool. They play not to concede and are happy with a 0-0 draw at home.
This season their only home defeat before Saturday was an odd 3-1 defeat to Everton.
When we bought Kai Havertz, I blogged about his ability to find space in a crowded box, that he could become the key to unlock defences that sit with 5 players who sit deep.
Mikel Arteta has also spoken recently about Havertz maybe being an Eddie Jones-style finisher, and that is the role he played when he came on.
Re-watching those last 10 minutes of normal play, Havertz was always always on the move in the box, trying to drift into space, keeping his eye on the player on the ball. And in the 89th minute he did what he does – finding the space at the far post to knock it in. It was the sort of goal that he made his name on whilst with Leverkusen.
A little mention about the goalkeeper.
Aaron Ramsdale was jittery. Some will say this is due to nervousness due to the way Arteta has treated him. But he has always been that sort of goalkeeper who seems a bit frantic.
Saturday was certainly not the first game he had passed the ball straight to his opponent, and it will not be his last.
I defended David Raya for doing similar, and I will also defend Ramsdale.
Managers like Arteta, Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola ask their goalkeepers to take risks at the back, to wait until the last minute to make the pass in the hope it breaks the press. The tactic will lead to the odd paniky, miss-placed pass.
In the early game, Liverpool’s Alisson – who we all agree is one of the calmest goalkeepers and best passers of the ball in world football – had plenty of misshaps with the ball at his feet. It happens. It is the risk and reward.
1-nil took us to top of the league after 13 games. Not bad for a team that is worse than last year…
Brentford (0) 0 Arsenal (0) 1 Premier League Gtech Community Stadium, Lionel Road South, Brentford TW8 0RU Saturday, 25th November 2023. Kick-off time: 5.30pm
(4-3-3) Aaron Ramsdale; Takehiro Tomiyasu, William Saliba, Gabriel Magalhães, Oleksandr Zinchenko; Martin Ødegaard (c), Declan Rice, Leandro Trossard; Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Jesus, Gabriel Martinelli. Substitutes: Ben White, Eddie Nketiah, Jakob Kiwior, Cédric Soares, (Jorge Luiz Frello Filho) Jorginho, Reiss Nelson,Mohamed Elneny, Kai Havertz, Karl Hein.
Scorers: Kail Havertz (89 mins) Yellow Cards: Gabriel Martinelli Arsenal Possession Percentage: 64%
Referee: Tim Robinson Assistant Referees: Eddie Smart, Nick Greenhalgh Fourth Official: Josh Smith VAR Team at Stockley Park: VAR Michael Salisbury; AVAR Wade Smith
Attendance: 17,201
Aaron Ramsdale will be our goalkeeper for tonight’s match, replacing David Raya who is on loan from Brentford and therefore ineligible to play, whilst Fábio Vieira is suspended having received a red card in the game against Burnley on 11th November.
Gabriel Jesus is returning for this match and club captain Martin Ødegaard, who has now recovered from concussion which was suffered by him on the training pitch a couple of weeks ago, is also resuming his place in tonight’s line-up.
Ben White is on the substitute’s bench, but Emile Smith-Rowe, Jurrien Timber and Thomas Partey are still unavailable for selection due to injury.
There is an absolutely electric atmosphere tonight at the Gtech for this London derby, and as such, the early exchanges are both frenetic and physical.
After an early free-kick which saw Gabriel Martinelli heading wide, the match started to settle down into a close contest between N5 and TW8. The home side are truly holding their own at this stage of the game, and they could be a tough nut to crack for our boys tonight. From a Bukayo Saka corner, Leandro Trossard blasted the ball way over the Brentford bar, and after a horrendous mistake by Aaron Ramsdale, which saw Declan Rice saving the day by clearing the ball off the goalline, we woke up a bit and started to knock the ball around in the Brentford half.
Referee Tim Robinson had a word with our captain over possible time wasting when we were due to take a corner, and it was becoming obvious to everyone that we have to get a grip on this game extremely quickly indeed.
After some midfield pressure, we had a chance to score when Gabriel Jesus hit a shot high and wide after the home team failed to deal with our attack properly with a cross sent over to him by Oleksandr Zinchenko. Unbelievably, Aaron Ramsdale almost gave them another chance to score, when he threw the ball into the ground when he meant to get it well clear of his area. He certainly was not happy with himself and slammed his hands together in frustration.
Four minutes before the break, a Gabriel Jesus shot took a huge deflection off Ethan Pinnock and looped into the air with goalkeeper Mark Flekken saving it acrobatically before it dropped neatly into the top corner of the net.
A minute later, Bukayo Saka lifted the ball onto the head of Gabriel Jesus, whose neat header was parried by Mark Flekken straight into the air, and into the path of Leandro Trossard, who nodded the ball in from close range; but unfortunately the goal was disallowed after a VAR check due to our goalscorer being offside (allegedly), and so both sides went into the half-time break honours even.
A minute or so after the restart, extremely poor defending from Brentford saw the ball getting to Bukayo Saka, who crossed it and found Martin Ødegaard, who somehow diverted the ball wide at the near post. A bit of a messy start to the second half for both teams, but it can only get better. Can’t it?
There was a chance for the home side to score when Bryan Mbeumo shot wide from an extremely tight angle, and then Gabriel Martinelli got booked for a late tackle a couple of minutes later, which was a bit silly to be fair.
The match started to go somewhat flat, and after some good attempts to score that went nowhere, Eddie Nketiah replaced Gabriel Jesus after sixty-five minutes; let’s hope that these substitutions fire the boys up now. Ben Mee stopped a cross reaching Eddie Nketiah, who would have surely scored, and as the game trundled on, it really needed a goal from us to liven things up a bit.
A snap long-range shot from Yehor Yarmoliuk went straight to the arms of Aaron Ramsdale, who easily gathered the ball up, and then we nearly went a goal down when a header from Neal Maupay was cleared off the line by Oleksandr Zinchenko who completely saved our blushes. With about ten minutes of the match remaining, Kai Havertz replaced Gabriel Martinelli, and almost immediately we started to play better and quicker with some great movement and ideas.
William Saliba, who has had a superb game tonight, hit a ball from about twenty yards which went just wide of the goal, and with a minute of normal time left on the clock, a lovely ball from Bukayo Saka out on the right was met at the far post by Kai Havertz, whose header hit the back of the net for us to take the lead! In the four minutes injury time awarded, Mikel Arteta brought on Jorginho and Ben White for Martin Ødegaard and Bukayo Saka in order to get some fresh legs on the pitch as the home side started to put us under pressure; it made no difference whatsoever as we held out to take maximum points and a well-deserved return to the top of the Premiership table tonight.
What a game at the Gtech this evening.
The result totally showed our determined character and desire to win, as we kept going, chipping sway, finding a hole in their defence. And it came; it really does not matter if it was a minute from time or thirty minutes from the end of the game, resilience and character won out in the end, as we know so many times from our illustrious history. William Saliba and Gabriel were rock solid at the back, Declan Rice was superb and although Aaron Ramsdale was nervous at first, he grew in confidence as the match continued.
Eventually we broke down the well-drilled Brentford defence, and showed our Premiership credentials by never giving up, patiently waiting for that one single chance to win the game. And it came. Well done, chaps.
Remember everyone, keep the faith, get behind the team and the manager, as this season is going to be crucial for our future success in all competitions. Stick with the winners. Our next match: RC Lens at the Emirates on Wednesday, 29th November at 8.00pm (Champions League). Be there, if you can. Victoria Concordia Crescit.
Steve
Too Dearly Loved To Be Forgotten: Arsenal v Racing Club de Paris 1930-1962 by Steve Ingless (Rangemore Publications, ISBN 978-1-5272-0135-4) is now available on Amazon
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon 