Considering Monday’s fixture at Old Trafford we’ve looked at the statistics for Arsenal vs. Manchester United fixtures in the Premier League era, and added in some video highlights too.
Both sides have a rich history of Premier League rivalry since Arsène Wenger’s arrival at the club in 1996, with some classic matches and infamous incidents. The Van Nistelrooy penalty miss and Keown’s celebrations, the Wiltord title winner at Old Trafford, or Man Utd’s 6-1 victory against a central defence of Stepanovs and Luzhny were all defining moments. Add into that various tunnel fracas, the Keane Vieira rivalry, pizza throwing, and last season’s debacle which saw Wenger sent to the stands, and you have an all action fixture.
Arguably the rivalry has diminished in recent years as Arsenal have slipped away from consistent top two finishes, but the fixture is still one of the most infamous in world football.
Arsène Wenger has had a tough time in front of the media over the last few years. Arsenal are still playing the high class, crisp passing game everyone loves (or loves to hate), but silverware has not been forthcoming. Recently the economic figures have been released, revealing that Arsenal’s turnover is exceeding Premier League records, and this in itself can be seen as a step forward.
However, the harshest critics are those who completely lack perspective. The easiest way to visualise the project that Arsène Wenger and the back-room staff at Arsenal have been working on is to split it into three stages. The first stage was the moulding of the club in Arsene’s image, and the transformation of Arsenal from a good team into a successful, world class team. This was completed, with many years of silverware, and high achievements.
As the final few games of the season approached in May I attempted to analyse the possible results and predict an outcome to the title race. Now in June, with the season well and truly behind us, it seems a good point to dissect the results and have a look at what actually happened in those last few games.
The original prediction was based on the last eight games Arsenal had to play, and compared the individual records against each team and the final eight games of each season. These methods both provided a result of 15.8 points from eight games, which would have put us on 80 points at the end.
In reality Arsenal achieved 75 points, and so actually fell short of the prediction by 5 points. A massive amount in real terms. Meaning we took 11/18 points or 61%.
The last 5 games of the League are going to decide the season, here we attempt to make sense of the stats from the past 4 years to understand the run-ins for Chelsea, Man Utd and Arsenal.
The dust is settling on what was a bad week for Arsenal Football Club. Firstly Eduardo was singled out for very harsh treatment by UEFA after a dive against Celtic. Then we go to Old Trafford, take the lead and outplay United, only to concede a silly penalty and score an own goal.
Eduardo has now been labelled as a diver and the way Man Utd fans treated him at OT was testimony to Wenger’s description of events as a ‘witch hunt’. Eduardo was booed as he warmed up and the fans made diving gestures to the player. God forbid he ever goes down in the box again, because the reaction will not be friendly and the pressure will be on the referee.
The United game was unlucky, we played well, Arshavin scored a cracker, but the team looked nervous. That nervousness led to Almunia conceding a needless penalty, where Rooney was already nearly grounded before Almunia touched him, and then led to Diaby’s crazy own goal. I thought Diaby was good for the most part of the game, so hopefully he can get over it.
I have to admit I was going crazy when we scored in the 95th minute, just like Wenger, and I felt the same frustration when I finally saw the offside flag below. The sending off of Wenger was farcical and he handled it impeccably. He deserves his apology. See the highlights of the game at Arsenalist.com
The game itself gives me hope, as we are still missing so many attacking players, and the team still played better than Utd. I think we can continue our good form in the coming games.
In terms of Eduardo Arsenal have submitted a 19 page document to UEFA in defence of the player. It seems though that UEFA already see him as guilty and he is going to get a two match ban no matter what. This is a dangerous precendent to set, and if they are to be fair then UEFA must take retrospective action on events in every game – something which they cannot physically do. Sam Wallace puts it nicely in this article in the Independent.
Finally today is transfer deadline day, and suprisingly there is nothing to report on the Arsenal front. I don’t think we’ll see any signings for the top four, but I wouldn’t mind Arsenal snapping up one or two last minute bargains.
What are your thoughts on the way Arsenal have been treated by officials in the last week?
Last night was not a great experience for any Arsenal fan. Two early goals and the tie was most definitely over. It was disappointing to see so many fans leaving so early, but I have to say that for the first ten minutes the atmosphere was fantastic.
Nevertheless you have to look at things in perspective. We have been blighted by injuries this season and in November you wouldn’t have thought that we would have made two semi finals and managed to qualify for the Champions League next year. The way we were playing then was awful and the team has improved a lot.
There is still a lot of work to do on this team, but considering this is the hardest season Wenger has had at Arsenal I think we have come out of it well.
Tonight I’m supporting Barca, I would hate to see another Chelsea – Man U final, either winning it would be a disaster. I don’t want Chelsea to win it before Arsenal, and I don’t want Fergie to have back to back CL titles.
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Comfortable is what you could call this result, and the 3 points have now secured 4th place in the league, and Champions League qualifiers next year. We are now unbeaten in 21 league games, and have equalled a club record scoring at least 3 goals in the last 5 away games.
Arsenal’s youngsters dominated for most of the game, although Portsmouth did have their chances to even the scores. Wenger rested most of the first team, including Almunia, opting for Djourou and Song in central defence – Vela and Ramsey also got starts, whilst Arshavin captained the side.
Wenger:
“We were sharp, composed and mobile with a great attitude.”
The changes were obviously made in order to give as many players as possible a rest before the crucial Champions League game on Tuesday. Walcott and Bendtner were both taken off in the second half – Sagna and Song were the only players from Wednesday’s team to play 90 minutes.
Randall, Bischoff and Merida got their chances in the second half as subs and the team looked impressive, by the end of the game we were in complete control.
Bendtner’s first goal was a header from Arshavin’s cross which David James dropped and let itno the back of the net. That will add more weight to the fans calling for Almunia to get his chance in the England squad.
Then Arshavin was brought down just before half time in the box, and a penalty was given although Arsh himself thought it was a clean tackle. Bendtner slotted home, and then in the second half Vela added another.
The only other event of note was Portsmouth’s red card – Arshavin was through on goal and Pamarot the last defender took him down. The resulting free kick came to nothing, but Pompey were down to 10 men with little chance of getting anything from this game.
The visiting Arsenal support was in high spirits, there is a little hope that we can beat Man Utd on Tuesday, and now that the league position is secured, the Champions League is what will make or break this season. It’s going to take a more composed performance than the first leg to go through, but we still have an outside chance of making it.
The Arsenal squad has been living under a plague of injuries this season and this week has been no exception.
Eduardo is out for the next three weeks with a groin problem, which means his season is basically over.
Silvestre, who I thought performed ok against Man Utd also has a groin injury as does Van Persie. Gael Clichy is still ruled out with a back problem too.
Central defence is now down to the bare bones – Toure and Djourou will have to start in central defence against Portsmouth, with Alex Song the next choice.
In midifled we are ok, but Wenger will rest some players ahead of the Man Utd game on Wednesday.
Fourth place is almost ours, and the Champions League is the biggest competition for us by far this season.
It is a huge challenge to go into this second leg 1-0 down. The strikeforce is also looking thin, although Arshavin can obviously play in the league.
Diaby can play against Portsmouth, but he shouldn’t play on Wednesday – he doesn’t contribute a great deal to the team, and until his attitude changes he will always be a liability in my eyes.
Expect changes this weekend, but I hope we have the quality to see off the Portsmouth team this weekend.
Ahead of the game against Man Utd at OT on Tuesday the press have been setting the stage for what everyone expects to be a Champions League classic.
United are going to be up for the game and they have experience in these matters. Meanwhile Arsenal only have 3 players remaining from the squad that took us to the 2006 Final just 3 years ago.
That in itself shows you just what transistion the team is going through. I think the experience of the last two years has been invaluble, but our opponents have the advantage in their steady squad.
Vidic knows how to stop us – He says that the key will be stopping us scoring. This is no mean feat as we have been scoring freely recently and Man Utd have started to concede reguarly.
I can’t see the game being goalless, and Wenger will know our best chance is to attack. But their defence is still decent and we will have to be at our best because as Scholes says:
“We don’t really care how good it is to watch or how much pretty football is played, as long as we get to Rome.
“We are looking forward to the challenge [but] I don’t know how much of a spectacle it will be.”
I think the game will be exciting, but it may be a little tense in the first half. All we need is an away goal and we have a massive advantage.
Fabregas’ leadership will be a key factor in the game:
“It doesn’t get much bigger than a semi-final against Manchester United”
“When English teams face each other in the Champions League it can look like a domestic of a League Cup match that Arsenal’s in a European game, but we need to realise it is not like that and we just want to be in the final again.”
“They deserve success because they have worked so hard and have great quality – I feel they are capable of big things.
If we can keep the defence reasonbly tight against Man Utd’s fluidity up front, and keep possession then the game will be very even. We have had good results against United in recent years, and it can be maintained, but we are the underdogs tomorrow.
We face Liverpool at Anfield tonight, 20 seasons on from the momentous 2-0 win in 1989 and the situation is rather different. Wenger spoke about the game tonight:
“I feel it is always better to win your big games because it makes you stronger for the next one.
“So we will have nothing to do with ‘favourising’ Liverpool or Manchester United because we want to win.
“It’s a big game and we just want to win it.”
After the Chelsea semi I didn’t feel like posting, the result was awful and it felt pretty bad. Luckily we have this game today to get that defeat out of the players minds. Unfortunately it won’t be easy. We still have a rather large injury list – RVP and Ade are both out, and defensively we are missing Almunia, Gallas and Clichy.
Liverpool are just one point behind leaders Man Utd and need to win every game to have a chance of winning the title. We really can decide who finishes where as we play all three contenders in the next few weeks.
As long as we secure 4th place and try our best for any higher then I will be pleased with the league performance. We really must try to win tonight.
“We have not secured fourth place and we can still be third…Wednesday night is Chelsea v Everton and you never know, if Chelsea drop points and we play Chelsea at home we can come back on third.
“We just have to accept what happened on Saturday, to deal with it and not repeat it…We have many big games coming up and we feel we can win them.
“Winning is what we live for. We cannot be happy with only trying to remain fourth.
“We want to get closer to the top and have a good opportunity to come back to six points on Liverpool this evening.
“Third place is important, second place is important and why not first? You never know.
“You do not want to have regrets. We want to win every single game, no matter what competition we play in.
“Of course we are disappointed having lost in the Semi-Finals of the FA Cup, but we want to bounce back quickly.”
That is exactly what we need, a result that will put the team back on the right track. I’m really hoping for a good result, the games at Anfield are always classic so tonight shouldn’t disappoint.
ArseSpeak 