Tag Archives: Premier League

Do you demand failure before success?

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Over the last week, I have seen the same sort of thinking floating about Arsenal fans, opposing fans, and the media:

Liverpool win the league
Manchester City in the FA Cup final
Newcastle United win the League Cup
Tottenham or Manchester United will win the Europa League
Chelsea in the Conference League final
Meanwhile Mikel Arteta in Phase 8 finishes trophyless again

This sort of thinking has frustrated me, as the Arsenal fans pedalling it are essentially saying they want failure before they get success. And the success they are promoting for other teams would need be deemed a success if it was Arsenal.

Liverpool win the league

No doubt that this has been a hugely successful season under Arne Slott for Liverpool. No one expected them to win the league this year. They have basically done what we did in 2022/23, but did not have Manchester City winning 14 our of 15 games to overhaul them.

But the mocking tone of “Slott has done in a year what Arteta could not in 5-years and £800m” is misguided.

The situation Slott and Arteta came into was vastly different.

Slott took over a Liverpool team that finished 3rd last season and 5th the season before. It was a squad of players that had struggled with form and fitness over those two seasons. But ultimately it was a core of players who won the league, finished 2nd twice, and breached 90 points 3 times in the 4 seasons prior to 2022/23.

Under Slott, Mo Salah refound his mojo and this is solely what has driven them to the league.

Phase one of Arteta was shipping out the ageing, over paid, underperforming players that had us sitting in 13th when he took over. Slott did not need to do this.

Phase two was building a team without Champions League football. A team that would see us get back into the top 4. Again, Slott did not need to do this.

Phase three was then building a team that could consistently challenge for the league title. This is the phase Arsenal are currently at, and the phase that Slott walked into.

Slott did not need 3 phases, 3 years of building and £800m to make a title challenging team. He walked into one. Just like Pep’s successor will also walk into a title challenging team.

Now we could argue that Phase four is building a title winning team, but I do not think this phase exists. Winning the title is the end game of Phase three, not a new phase in itself.

So well done to Liverpool. Nothing went wrong for them this season. No major injuries, not drop in form of its superstars, and no decisions really going against them. All things that went against Arsenal this season.

Manchester City in the FA Cup final

For me, winning the FA Cup and finishing top 4 is a success. But for many other Arsenal fans, it is failure.

Under Arsene Wenger, when we won 3 FA Cup’s in 4 years and were consistently finishing top 4, the narrative was “top 4 and winning the FA Cup is not enough. We want to be challenging for the league”.

So how is it those fans who were loudest critics of Wenger are now complaining that we are league challengers (although this season our challenge did not sustain into the final 3rd of the season), but not winning the FA Cup?

It shows that some fans change the narrative to suit the agenda. And that agenda is to just moan all the time.

If we were 3rd in the table, 18 points off top, but in the FA Cup final, would you be happy or moaning? Are you painting another team as having a successful season, when if the same parameters were for us you would be crying failure?

Newcastle United win the League Cup

For a team like Newcastle, winning the League Cup is a huge success. And if they finish top 4 (or now top 5 with the Champions League extra spot), it will feel like a double success.

Imagine after gameweek 16 we were 12th in the table, despite no European football. Would you be happy with Arteta? No.

Had we won the League Cup, but in gameweek 30 we were 6th, would you be celebrating a great season? No. Newcastle’s successful season would be deemed a failure for Arsenal and we would all (rightly) be calling for Arteta to be sacked, with a League Cup win not enough to save his job.

Tottenham or Manchester United will win the Europa League

The Europa League is not the competition it was.

These days, without failing Champions League dropping into it (correct decision), it is much easier to win. The quality of teams in the quarter finals onwards was poor. It would actually be a failure for teams of Tottenham or Manchester United’s calibre did not make the final.

Tottenham qualified for the Europa League by finishing 5th, in the same season Arsenal went to the final day of the season in with a chance to win the league title. Ironically, had Spurs won on the last day of the season, they would have finished top 4 and qualified for the Champions League. Instead they celebrated losing as it ensured Arsenal did not win the title (if the situation’s were switched, we also would have celebrated).

Tottenham in the Europa League final is a success for them. But would you rather finish 5th and qualify for the Europa League? Or take Man City to the final day of the season?

As for Manchester United, they qualified for the Europa League by winning the FA Cup. But they finished 8th. If they win the Europa League this season, there fans will be boasting about winning the League Cup, FA Cup and Europa League in back to back to backseasons. But if this was Arsenal, fans would be saying the trophies just paper over the cracks (in fairness, many Manchester United fans are also saying the same).

Over the last 4 seasons, would you have been happy finishing 6th, 3rd, 8th and 15th, whilst winning the League Cup, FA Cup and Europa League? Or would you see this period as failure?

Chelsea in the Conference League final

The most laughable of them all.

The Conference League is a tinpot competition developed from sides in fringe leagues across Europe, and lesser top European league teams such as West Ham. For Chelsea to be playing in the Conference League, it means they were failures the year before.

Now I would caveat that last season, 6th got you in the Conference League due to Manchester United winning the FA Cup. This year it could be 8th that qualifies for Europe’s 3rd tier competition.

Chelsea fans will claim their side has “completed football” if they win the Conference League. But to claim that they are then celebrating failure. The only reason the likes of Bayern Munich, Real Madrid or Barcelona have not “completed football” is because they never finish low enough to qualify for sub-par competitions.

Completing football actually means you have not been consistently good.

Chelsea winning the Europa League would be the equivalent of Everton the EFL Trophy. Yes, they would get a day out at a final and a trophy to life, but to win it they would need to have been relegated twice, down to League One. Should you really be celebrating “success” when you have needed so much failure to have a chance at that “success”?

Finally I come on to Aston Villa.

Throughout this season I have had Villa and some Arsenal fans saying how Unai Emery has proven Arsenal were wrong to get rid of him, and that he has had a hugely successful season.

Yes, they had an excellent league run in the Champions League, but ultimately they were knocked out at the quarter final stage and currently sit 7th in the table. They will also finish trophyless.

It just shows that others team success will (rightly) be considered a failure.

So finally, before you dig Arteta out for failing to win a trophy, ask yourself: Would you want other the teams league failure that led to them qualifying for lower competitions?

If your answer is no, then stop using the potential “success” of Manchester United, Chelsea and Tottenham as a stick to beat Arteta with.

I would rather lose a Champions League semi-final to PSG then win a Europa League final against Norway’s 4th best team.

Keenos

Liverpool having the season Arteta dreamed of

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It has not happened for The Arsenal this season.

Whether it is down to bad luck in decisions, a run of injuries to key players, not having a deep enough squad, or us running out of a bit of steam after the last two years, we have dipped below the level of expectation Mikel Arteta has got us to.

It is easy to overreact. And we have seen that online.

Despite us being second in the league, and through to the last 16 of the Champions League having finished 3rd in the elongated group, Arteta is coming under increasing criticism from fans – although I feel like it is a noisy minority who mainly live on line or use football as a way to infect others with the negativity they carry.

The same old faces have come out from the rock they have been hiding under since Covid. The ones who built online reputations, fan groups and YouTube channel off us “finishing top 4 and only winning the FA Cup” under Arsene Wenger.

Back then, many of them led with the rhetoric that “we do not expect to win the title, we only want to compete”. They have now moved the goal posts.

We competed for the last two years, and we looked like we were competing this year. But that is not enough. They now expect us to win the title. It shows that their agenda is not about Arsenal being successful, but about creating a narrative that allows them to moan, to gain attention for themselves.

Being 2nd in the league is not a “stackable offence”, like many are saying, nor is it “criminal”. We are not in the position Tottenham or Manchester United are. And you do not rip up everything Arteta and the club ave worked so diligently on for 5-years just because a couple of drunks are unhappy and using social media to vent.

Winning the Premier League is not easy. And if you are holding Arsenal to such a high bar that “anything under winning the title is failure”, then I would suggest looking at your own life and begin holding yourself to the same principal. Fans who want Arsenal to have Mamba Mentality, but do not strive for constant self-improvement and excellence in their own life.

To become champions ahead of Manchester City during the Pep Guardiola era), two things need to happen:

  • Manchester City need to have an off season
  • Nothing needs to go wrong for yourself.

Manchester City have been amazing under Pep.

Six league titles in 8 years. 4-in-a-row. The treble. Centurians. Bar an unbeaten season, they have done it all. They only seasons they failed to win the title, they went off the boil massively.

In Pep’s first season, Manchester City got 78 points as Chelsea won the league with 92. Then in 2019/20, they got 81 points as Liverpool won the league. In the 7 seasons they won the title, they averaged 93 points. And that would have been higher had they not taken their foot off the pedal once the title was secured to focus on the Champions League / FA Cup.

During the Premier League era, the average points needed to win the league is 87.8 points. Pep changed all of that and you now need 95+ to almost guarantee finishing above them. Unless they have a poor season.

To go into a season expecting to get 95+ points is unrealistic for a normal team, built on a self-sustainable model, is unrealistic. Liverpool are the only team to have achieved this, and even then they failed to win the league title on one of those occasions.

So what the likes of Arsena, Liverpool and others are setting themselves up for is not to be the dominant force of Manchester City, but to be best of the rest so that when City have that dip in form, they are best positioned to take advantage.

And to be best positioned to take advantage, you need the second factor – nothing to go against you.

Injuries and refereeing decisions are a huge factor in a Premier League campaign. Anyone that says they are “just excuses” clearly do not have an understanding as to how these can affect the game.

In the last two seasons, Arsenal have had a lot of luck with injuries.

We lost William Saliba and Thomas Partey at key times, which certainly contributed to our downfall, but on the whole we did not have a lot of injuries. Likewise not too many decisions went against us.

This year we have had an injury crisis and are currently without 4 of our 6 attacking players. It is also well documented how often we have been on the odd end of refereeing decision making:

The red card fo Declan Rice whilst 1-nil at home to Brighton
The red card to Leandro Trossard whilst 1-nil up at Manchester City
William Saliba’s red card away to Bournemouth
The Brighton penalty whilst 1-nil up on the South-Coast.

These are refereeing decisions that have not been repeated in the Premier League, despite there being a whole host of similar incidents. It does leave a bitter taste in your mouth.

If you are chasing the league, you can not afford to drop points due to referee decisions. That is up to 8 points that could be directly contributed to poor decision making (although the Bournemouth one may well have ended up in a draw reducing it to 6).

Meanwhile, Liverpool have not been on the end of any poor decisions this season. Players have not received 2nd bookings for kicking the ball away or clear yellow card fouls.

Now I am not saying there is a conspiracy. It just highlights how poor and inconsistent Premier League Match Officials are. and this year it has been Arsenal who have been “punished”, whilst Liverpool have not. Things could be so different in the league table if they had received some of our decisions, and we received their lack of controversial decisions.

We have also lost Martin Odegaard for 3 months. Bukayo Saka has been out since December. Ben White has been out so long people have forgotten about him. Takehiro Tomiyasu has hardly been seen. Gabriel Martinelli out for over a month. Kai Havertz will miss the rest of the season. And Gabriel Jesus has struggled to stay fit.

Liverpool meanwhile have managed to keep the likes of Mohamad Salah, Virgil van Dijk, Luiz Diaz, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Alexis McAllister fit for the majority of the season.

Now you could say this is down to better squad preparation, or that Arne Slott rotates his players better. But the truth is it is down to luck.

We have been very lucky in the last two seasons with injuries. This season we have been very unlucky. Meanwhile Liverpool have had some poor luck with injuries in the last two years. This year they have not had anyone meaningful out for any meaningful amount of time.

Even just the one injury of Saka. Imagine if it was Salah not seen since December and how that would have impacted Liverpool.

Saka and Salah are both teams special players. their individual match winners. To win the title, you need to keep them fit for the entire season. This season Salah has looked fitter than ever, whilst Saka picked up his first long-term injury of his career.

How different would the league table have looked if it was Salah and not Saka who picked up the injury?

Liverpool have been excellent this season. They have lost just once in the league, and topped the Champions League. But they are only on course for 90 points. Were it not for Manchester City’s fall off, they would unlikely be champions with that figure.

Arsenal were in a very similar position to Liverpool (points-wise), in the last 2 seasons and failed to win the title. the reason being is City found top gear and became nearly unbeatable in the 2nd half of both seasons. This year they are having their off-season.

So despite keeping everyone fit, and not having a decision go against them, Liverpool are not much better than Arsenal have been in the last 2-years. And are only injuries and decisions better than Arsenal this. The only difference in is that City area having their off-season in Pep’s fitness cycle.

And unfortunately for us, despite us being best positioned to take advantage of any City drop off in the last two years, it is Liverpool best positioned now.

Arteta’s dream plan was to make Arsenal “best of the rest”. And we have done that in the last two seasons. Unfortunately, this season, it is Liverpool best positioned to take advantage in the Manchester City drop off, and once again we will be the bridesmaid.

Keenos

Arsenal right to be “held to higher level compared to lesser rivals”

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Two BBC headlines followed Arsenal’s exit to Newcastle which highlighted how vast the expectation gap is between the two.

If Newcastle win the League Cup, their players will become legends. Meanwhile, had Arsenal progressed to the final, the headline “Arteta’s Asenal can assume legendary status forever” would not have been written.

Winning the League Cup and finishing 2nd would not be considered a hugely successful for The Arsenal. Meanwhile for Newcastle it will be open top bus rides, calls for knighthood, and players going doing in history as legends.

Howe has been at Newcastle for 4 years. In that time he has won nothing and spent £500m. He is on the verge of becoming a club legend. Meanwhile Arteta has been at Arsenal 5-years. Win the FA Cup. And spent just £30million more than Howe since the Englishman joined the Saudi regime. The media (and some fans) write about Arteta as if he is a man under pressure.

And it is the same with Tottenham.

If Spurs win tonight, and go on to lift the trophy, Ange “I always win something in my second season” will be an instant Spurs legend. the same would not be said for Arteta were we 14th in the table.

All thus highlights is that Arsenal are, rightly, held to a higher level of expectation than lesser rivals.

It has often been written that Tottenham’s ceiling is our floor. And the expectation level of both clubs proves this.

For clubs like Arsenal, winning just the League Cup is not something to overly celebrate. It is our 5th most important target of the season (Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup, Top 4, League Cup). With Newcastle and Tottenham, winning the League Cup will be their teams greatest achievement of the decade.

You can also throw Aston Villa into the mix. Another club whose fans act like they are big boys, but have not win in decades.

And this is why it is laughable when Newcastle, Tottenham or Aston Villa fans try and talk their club up as if they are on the same level as Arsenal. If they were on our level, then they would have the same level of expectation.

All 3 sides would roll out the red carpet in their slums to celebrate winning the League Cup. Meanwhile for Arsenal, winning the League Cup would be yesterday’s news the day after and we would be rolling up our socks for the next battle.

What really sums this up is our 5-year trophy drought is talked about as if it is the same as Newcastle’s (56 years), Aston Villa (29 years) and Tottenham (17 years).

And when in our doldrums in that 8-year trophy drought under Arsene Wenger, no one went into the 2011 League Cup final talking about how winning the trophy would make our players legends, or justify poor league positions under Wenger.

Newcastle deserve to be in the final. Good luck to them. And their fans might finally get to celebrate something in over half a century. But they need to stop pretending they are a big club. If they were, they would be held to the same level of expectation as Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United.

Keenos