Bob the Blogger is “not worth two bob” and he is “nicking a living.” Neil Ashton may never live down this damning epitaph to his ignorance and bias (no matter how well paid and protected by his employers in the mainstream media) but I have no doubt about the accuracy of my findings after reviewing many of the hucksters parading as Arsenal bloggers.
Take for example those doing the Arsenal beat at espnfc.com. We can comfortably assume they are well remunerated, unlike yours truly and my colleagues at PA. We do this for free because of our love for the club and our hatred for the lies and mendacity of the rest of the media. They at ESPN are supposed to be professionals and thus do it for money and for that reason high standards are expected.
Not so for Tom Adams with a recent headline:
“Arsene Wenger’s worst season ever as Arsenal embarrass themselves”
Mark Ogden, their senior football writer, after Wenger’s complete triumph over those trying to get him fired, blogged this complete cockamamie:
His (Arsene Wenger) glory days as manager are now more than a decade ago, and the man who was once a visionary has been overtaken by a new breed of coaches such as Antonio Conte, Pep Guardiola, Jose Mourinho, Jurgen Klopp and Mauricio Pochettino.
It was less than a week ago I did D-Day At The Arsenal where I concluded there was no doubt Kroenke would rehire Arsene based on the following data:
| Yr | W | D | L | Pts | Lge Pos |
| 16/17 | 23 | 6 | 9 | 75 | 5 |
| 15/16 | 20 | 11 | 7 | 71 | 2 |
| 14/15 | 22 | 9 | 7 | 75 | 3 |
| 13/14 | 24 | 7 | 7 | 79 | 4 |
| 12/13 | 21 | 10 | 7 | 73 | 4 |
| 11/12 | 21 | 8 | 9 | 71 | 3 |
| 10/11 | 19 | 11 | 8 | 68 | 4 |
| 09/10 | 23 | 6 | 9 | 75 | 3 |
| 08/09 | 20 | 12 | 6 | 72 | 4 |
| 07/08 | 24 | 11 | 3 | 83 | 3 |
| 06/07 | 19 | 11 | 8 | 68 | 4 |
| 05/06 | 20 | 7 | 11 | 67 | 4 |
| 04/05 | 25 | 8 | 5 | 83 | 2 |
| 03/04 | 26 | 12 | 0 | 90 | 1 |
| 02/03 | 23 | 9 | 6 | 78 | 2 |
| 01/02 | 26 | 9 | 3 | 87 | 1 |
| 00/01 | 20 | 10 | 8 | 70 | 2 |
| 99/00 | 22 | 7 | 9 | 73 | 2 |
| 98/09 | 22 | 12 | 4 | 78 | 2 |
| 97/98 | 23 | 9 | 6 | 78 | 1 |
| 96/97 | 19 | 11 | 8 | 68 | 3 |
| 462 | 196 | 140 | 1582 | 3 |
I had hoped the table spoke for itself. Apparently I need to highlight the takeaways.
Despite all the sensationalist headlines about coming 5th and falling out of the top-four, it was in many respects a better season than 2015-16 when the club came 2nd:
- 4 more Points.
- 3 more Wins.
- 12 more goals Scored.
- A higher Goal Difference, 33 vs 29.
On the negative side:
- 2 more Losses.
- 8 more goals Against, 44 vs 36.
How did this 2016-17 compare to the previous years. I ran some basic statistics.
| Statistic | W | D | L | Pts | Lge_Pos |
| 2016-17 | 23 | 6 | 9 | 75 | 5 |
| Minimum | 19 | 8 | 11 | 68 | 4 |
| Maximum | 26 | 12 | 0 | 90 | 1 |
| Mean | 22 | 9 | 7 | 75 | 3 |
| Median | 22 | 9 | 7 | 75 | 3 |
| Std Dev (Pop) | 2 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 1 |
Readers do not have to be Math wizzes to understand that 2016-17, compared very well with the previous 20 years:
- Better than the mean and median for Wins and Draws.
- Equal to the mean and median in Points.
- Worse than the mean and median for Losses.
In any sphere of life, 4 out of 5 at 80%, is not an A but definitely a B+.
Another data point to consider, for 10 of the 21 years Arsenal amassed less than 75 points, coming at least 2nd on three occasions and no less than 4th. That was until this year when 75 points was for the first time only good enough for 5th. Yes, you read right. Arsene and Arsenal had 10 worst years point-wise. Did the mainstream media or Bob-the-Blogger highlight this? Hell no. They were too busy trying to con Arsenal fans into believing 16-17 was the worst season ever.
Ever since our form went tits up from January to March, as the full impact of losing Santi was felt, with Wenger switching and matching various midfield combinations, Bob-the-Blogger suddenly lost all the faith he or she never had. After the 3-goal defeat to West Brom in late March, almost all but Positively Arsenal were in total despair.
I went back to the data and our history of fighting back from behind in seasons past and did a blog titled Arsenal Will Revert To The Mean. Voila. 75 points. Right on the money. If I was a gambling man I could have made a killing. Further proof of the value of relying on the historical data based on Wenger’s consistency. The alternative is emotionalism and hysteria which, by the way, is a time honored guarantee of generating clicks.
Coming 5th was not because the Arsenal performed worse historically but due to the other 5 clubs being more consistent at the expense of the so-called smaller clubs in the League. Here is an amazing statistic about the growing disparity in results:
- 13 clubs amassed less than 50 points in 16-17 vs 10 clubs in 15-16.
Now journalism students during my time in college were excellent writers but re-known for math-phobia. However there is no excuse for paid pundits to write such absolute nonsense as Tom Adams and company. They at ESPN have terabytes of data at their disposal and interns who can do some analytics with their computer in a jiffy. But, as we are now increasingly aware, the media has a narrative to sell and when the data doesn’t fit it is simply ignored or distorted.
Unable to rebut Wenger’s absolute consistency over the past 21 years, senior writer Ogden has no other recourse but to trot out the old saw that more modern managers have surpassed the old professor. But none of this crop managing the other Big-7 clubs, with the exception of Klopp and Pochetinno, has been in their current position for more than a year. Ogden should be well aware that one swallow doesn’t make a summer. It is the consistency of performance over time that counts.
Or maybe Ogden suffers from memory loss. It is not so far back when Rafa Benitez, Andres Villas Boas, Martin O’Neil, Paul Lambert, Roberto Mancini, Manuel Pellegrini, Roberto Martinez, David Moyes and Louis Van Gaal were all brought into their clubs and hailed as the scourge of Wenger. Almost all have been sacked or demoted from big PL clubs since then. At the time they were supposedly more modern.
As I demonstrated last time I blogged, the so-called more “modern managers” are working at clubs who over the past 11 years have massively outspent Arsenal in the transfer market. It is only in the last three years have the financial restrictions on Arsene been lifted compared to the prior eight years. Clearly the modern managers are now enjoying this strategic advantage.
| W | D | L | Pts | Pos | Net Spend | Spend per Pt | |
| Man City | 224 | 89 | 105 | 761 | 5 | £869.03 | £1.14 |
| Man Utd | 265 | 83 | 70 | 878 | 3 | £481.09 | £0.55 |
| Chelsea | 259 | 88 | 71 | 865 | 2 | £329.31 | £0.38 |
| Liverpool | 224 | 104 | 90 | 776 | 5 | £252.23 | £0.33 |
| Arsenal | 236 | 102 | 80 | 810 | 4 | £170.15 | £0.21 |
| Tottenham | 205 | 104 | 109 | 719 | 5 | £132.78 | £0.18 |
All spending above in £millions
I won’t bore you my readers with the points I made earlier this week. But upon reviewing the table above, something struck me forcefully. It is evident that the three most dominant clubs in the PL over the past 10 years (Chelsea, United and City) are willing to pay at least £380,000 in net transfers for each point earned in the PL. City is at a ridiculous £1,140,000 net spend per point, essentially 6-times that of Arsenal’s. How much more on transfers is Arsenal and Stan Kroenke willing and able to spend to win the League?
Contrary to the nonsense spewed by Ogden and other bloggers, the data demonstrates Arsene can get more from each transfer pound; he is the most effective in the League. I would give anything to see the agreed transfer budget for this summer. If I was Conte, Guardiola or Klopp, I would be very concerned if Wenger is able to spend as much if not more than last year. Sooner or later he will eat up the gap in points.
In conclusion, I note a few well meaning readers on twitter have expressed the view that this blog is somewhat harsh on other Arsenal bloggers. I make no apologies. We are in a battleground of ideas. There is cut and thrust. In my opinion, for too long, we the good guys have, in the interest of getting along, allowed stupid, fact-free ideas to attach itself to the fanbase. Like a malignant cancer, such stupidity has grown and masticized into flagrant disrespect for Arsenal’s greatest ever manager. In my view we can only rid the fanbase of this tumor by exposing the agents to ridicule and scorn. Those who disagree have their own forum to respond to the unbiased data.
Thank you for reading and your feedback.
Positively Arsenal 
Eddy: This is the season for ITKs and transfer rumors. I will try avoiding it as much as I can although I can’t get Mbappe out of my mind. This my friends is true confessions of an Arsenal junkie.
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reports in Turkey suggest that both Galatasaray and Besiktas are looking to sign Joel Campbell for a fee in the region of £3M, he has one year left on his contract, he is coming off a poor loan spell at Sporting Lisbon, where he did not start a game since January, and near the end of the season was limited to only very short sub time, and he had let his fitness drop to such an extent that when he met up with Costa Rica for International duty recently that they had to assign him a fitness coach to try and improve his fitness levels.
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well Shotta, the photo of Wenger and Gazidis at Nice Airport, suggest that a transfer is in the pipeline, as they are not known for going on holiday together
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well notoverthehill isn’t it only 9 home grown that we need, and of our players not listed last season who are homegrown, Szczesny, Wilshere, Chambers and Holding all qualify, leaving us currently with 13 players of which we need 8 to remain.
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sorry that should be 8 homegrown, not 9, unless rules have changed
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Krystian Bielik has been called up by Poland for the Euro U21 championships, his first call up at this level.
That means Arsenal have 3 CB’s at the Championships, Bielik, Chambers and Holding.
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ox set to sign new AFC deal
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2017/06/05/arsenal-close-new-deal-alex-oxlade-chamberlain-keeping-kylian/
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Nacho Monreal says he wants to stay at Arsenal for the next three years.
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Am happy the Ox is staying. so much has been invested in him, he is clearly growing into his expected roles… I see some Santi in him actually.
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the core of this team should be kept apart from those retiring or else going out on loan. rumours of Per joining management team would be great.. he is a leader
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Shotta well done! enjoyed this… very enlightening too
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Another magnificent piece Shotta. Cannot thank you enough!
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Tony Adams is an idiot, his latest bullshit is that “buying Ozil was an insult to Wilshere, who is every bit as good”
https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/arsenal-news-jack-wilshere-just-as-good-as-mesut-ozil-says-tony-adams-a3557481.html
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looking at the bullshit Adams has spouted in the last week or so, I can only assume he no longer wants a job at a football club, and that he is looking to become a pundit. As no club with an ounce of sense would hire him, but the sort of stupid he is pedaling is exactly the sort of stupid that has made merson and sutton etc loads of money.
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Great points. Overwhelming evidence. You simply can’t argue with data like that.I love it when the stadium rocks to those songs about the glorious ‘mean and median of The Arsenal.’
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I am sure a sophisticated club like Arsenal have a contingency plan in the file for removing the statue of one of the “legends” outside the Ems. Perhaps two.
Never again, until he is dead.
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I’ve never heard that one Ray – what tune ?
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Adams on form on my social media quotes
Not only is it clear why Arsenal football club had no interest in offering him employment
I can understand why no one else in football fancies him in charge
Surprising Tony is not busy masterminding Granada’s swift return to the top flight (banned smiley)
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Eduardo, I’m not really comfortable suggesting who ‘should’ go or stay, but likely/potential departures I think would include; Sanogo, Debuchy, Jenkinson, Ospina, Perez, Gibbs? maybe because of his injuries, but he never lets the team down when he plays and he knows the Arsenal system. Kolasinac will need time to adapt and with our new system, maybe Arsene thinks we need the depth there? Any youth players who are turning/have turned 21 and would need to be included in the squad will probably go on loan or be sold other than Iwobi. Santi, Gabriel and Jack cannot be sold as they are currently injured. No one will buy an injured player. I can’t see any of our defenders going given that Gabriel is injured, Koscielny has to manage his achilles and Chambers and Holding are still learning.
In my mind when Arsene said keep this team together and add 1 or 2 quality players, I think he was talking about more than Ozil and Sanchez. Other than those who have talked about leaving for more game time, it is most likely to be fringe/youth players in the main that depart. I think Mertesacker might have gone, had he not proved that he could be valuable to the squad with that FA cup performance and knowing our luck with injuries and having to cover the extra games in the Europa league I’m sure Arsene will try to keep the depth that he has in that department.
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I had forgotten Campbell!
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well as long as we have monreal, and kolasinac then there is little point in keeping gibbs, who has made 11 epl starts in two seasons. Koslasinac might need time to adjust, but he will only adjust with game time, even if that is shared with monreal, but there is no way he will be sharing it with 3 players. we have Bramall to make a decision on too, a full season with u23’s or a loan stint.
as I stated we have 33 or 34 players over the age of 21, that means at the very least we have to offload 8 or 9 players without even making room for any more new players.
gabriel is due back in 4 to 6 weeks, jack is due back for pre-season too. Only santi is considered long term injury, so we can de-list him till january if we want.
it does seem that the most likely players to leave will be
Ospina and maybe szczesny, Jenkinson, Debuchy, Campbell, Lucas, Wilshere, Gibbs
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the more I see of Tony Adams quotes the more it reminds me of Liam Brady’s quote about Paul Scholes
when he did not give interviews as a player people thought of him as intelligent, now he gives interviews we see he is not intelligent
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I’ll wait to see what happens next, but having watched Bramall a few times for the under 23’s, he is no where near the first team, so most likely to go out on loan.
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I’d expect that too as he is 22 so if part of first team set up he would take up a squad place, of course the 25 man squad thing only applies to the epl, and the european squad has different rules,
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what if we let gibbs go because of kolasinac and it turns out kolasinac is not as good as gibbs? apart from gibbs injuries, many have forgotten that the reason he doesnt see a lot of playing time is because monreal is VERY good. except wenger move monreal to centre back, i dont see this kolasinac displacing him.
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report in Italy say deal agreed for Szczesny to Juventus for £14M, sad if true, for me the best goalie we have, and at that fee its a giveaway.
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Andy. Get rid of Ray please.
Permanently.
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well layksite if Kolasinac is not as good as Gibbs then our scouting and our managers decision making will have let us down. By the way Kolasinac was in the Bundesliga team of the year. And if we are going to keep the guys we are buying replacements for then that would be just plain stupid.
Gibbs is 28 in September, he made his debut for us 10 years ago and has only started 104 league games for us with another 33 as sub, only in two season has he managed over 20 league stars for us. Injuries have plagued him, we will never know how good he could have been if injury free.
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following on the reports that szczesny is set for Juve, there have been lots of reports that ospina is joining fernebache, will be odd if we are letting both go, Martinez has great potential, but he will be 25 in september and he has only started 5 BPL games, and has only 50 first team games in total, with AFC, Wolves, Rotherham, Sheffield Wed, Oxford. Big risk if we are going to have Cech, Martinez and Macey as our three keepers.
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Arsene won’t leave us short handed with goalkeepers.
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George I’d expect that if we do sell both Szczesny and Ospina, then we will sign another keeper, not sure if it would be as second choice or third, but for me it would be odd to sell both players, and for what fees is reported then awfully low prices. Would not be surprised to see us bring in a veteran keeper if we do sell both guys. When you see the sort of fees being mentioned for Butland and Pickford, then its just crazy.
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Get French Football @GFFN
Tomorrow’s L’Équipe: there are murmurs that Arsenal are ready to put €140m on the table to get Kylian Mbappé.
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if that £122M bid is for real, I would say that Wenger certainly won the behind the scenes battle, and he is getting his reward for the years of having to sell our best players
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€140m for Mbappe! That is extraordinary. Only way that happens is if he is on a 8-10 year contract, amortizing at €18-€10m p.a.
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Wenger said the other day that Mbappe will be worth what ever fee is paid for him, cos he is a future Ballon d’Or winner. He thinks the lad is going to be one of the greats. He has also likened him to Thierry Henry in playing style.
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if we do sign Mbappe, I will feel sorry for the lad, he will be totally under the microscope, and will be written off before he kicks a ball for us, every game he is not man of the match the british media will slaughter him, he will be stealing a living, a flop, useless, waste of money etc etc etc.
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I will tell you what my first impressions were; Mbappe is the real deal. There is maybe 1 or 2 defenders in the PL who can stop him 1 v 1.
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Sure Shotta, but Monreal and Kos wouldn’t be against him
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well this is the third summer Wenger has tried for the lad, to me that says how highly he rates the guy, he even went to his home last summer to try and persuade him to join us, but Mbappe wanted to stay in France.
He really does look the real deal, but then many have, and few have fulfilled their potential. But someone has to, Ronaldo and Messi are the two current greats, this lad might be one day spoken about in the same way, hopefully he will be and that he spends the next 15 years or more at Arsenal.
As someone said earlier – if we only signed Mbappe and Kolasinac this window, it would still be our best ever window.
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signing Mbappe could be the key to persuading Alexis and Ozil to stay, and it would also dispel the myth that Arsene Wenger and Arsenal are afraid to battle other clubs for the very best players, or spend the large fees.
Imagine Arsenal breaking the World Transfer Record
last time we even broke the British transfer record was in 1995, £7.5M for Dennis Bergkamp,
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by the way, the last time Arsenal broke the world transfer record was in 1928 for David Jack, for the massive fee of £10,000
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“by the way, the last time Arsenal broke the world transfer record was in 1928 for David Jack, for the massive fee of £10,000”
And look how that turned out
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lets pray it happens and by all means considerably less than the amount being mentioned because it is going to be another point the idiots will use against wenger if he doesnt win the premier league.
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layksite
I have come to realise that theagenda isset,no matter what Mr Wenger does he will be criticised. He might as well do as he pleases
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“if that £122M bid is for real”
It’s not.
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– Re-sign the hobbling F Word? And pay the part timer more then Ozil and Sanchez?
– Spend more then the world’s richest club did on their star signing, upon a rookie ( Reyes was not green when signed )?
Ha. Ha. ha.
– different day. same old b*ll*cks.
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This should probably go in the last thread however, but hopefully for you Highbury boys and girls its still interesting (?).
THE GREAT NORTH BANK MYSTERY.
So in the last thread I asked when was the NB covered , two posts or so later, having looked about, I found out it was 1936 and answered my own question( thanks though for the complimentary info HenryB).
But as I searched around I came across more photos of the NB with no cover, one saying it was 1948. I thought perhaps Im getting it wrong, (even though instinct said the opposite) even though theres shots with nothing at the NB except open terracing and open stadium views etc. I wrote about this too, in the last thread. But it drew a blank in common knowledge.
So I asked gf60 if he could remember, as something didnt seem right. Anyway, he wrote this to me today( I hope you dot mind me quoting you Ian):
“By accident, I found a pic of the North Bank in 1952. Uncovered. The previous one from 1936 was bombed in WW2. The new one went up in 1954. I thought I’d got soaked on many occasions!”
Aha! I knew something was strange! a) that roof for the NB is of the architectural stylings even of the late 30s b) what were the photos showing an open NB as early as 1948.
However, the NB covering even in 1936 might have still been the same styling/building after all the money that was spent on the East and West stands(?), and the 1950s version just a straight copy? Certainly (imo) the NB cover wasnt as glamourous as the magnificent E+W stands.
So what did the original covering of the NB look like? The same? I often had read that Highbury was bombed in the war (I think we often played at the Chicken Coop, which meant a long bath afterwards and visits to spa towns etc)and yet I cant recall any pics of the stadium looking bashed about.
Plus as extra info, the famous clock of the clock end was at one time on the NB and was moved to the South end at one point, and hence the clock end was born.
Cheers to Ian and hope its of some interest? Hopefully I can try and find some pics of Highbury and the NB in the 30s.
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Heres the original NB in 1938!
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NB covering in place, check out the stand! I like the posh commentary! Better than AFTV!
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This is also fascinating, its only the first moments of the vid, but the NB is already in place and the old East stand is still up and the West stand place. The history books usually show the old East stand being pulled down first?
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