5 months ago Tottenham were top, Now what went wrong?

As of October 11, 2023, Tottenham Hotspur were in first place in the Premier League. Ben McAleer’s article from WhoScored was then published in The Guardian. It praised the club’s “six wins and two draws from their opening eight league games” and said it was “a brilliant return, especially considering they have already played Manchester United, Arsenal, and Liverpool, securing seven points from the nine available.”

The author of the article said that Tottenham had “passed the tests presented by the Premier League’s big hitters and have also won games when their backs were against the wall – as shown by their hard-fought 1-0 win at Luton on Saturday, when they held on for the victory despite being reduced to 10 men on the stroke of half-time.”

Five months later, no one who knows anything about football would say that a win over Luton was “hard fought” in the sense that the rules of the game say it is.

Luton Town had just lost at home to Burnley, which was before their 1-0 loss to Tottenham. Well, they did beat Everton before that, but that was their only win in eight games, which included a loss to Exeter City in the League Cup. During that stretch, they scored five goals and gave up fifteen. After a “hard-fought” game against Luton, saying that Tottenham were doing something good is so far-fetched that it makes everything else written look silly.

I have no idea what a writer from WhoScored was doing at this point, since that site has a lot of good and useful data. He may have been asked by the Guardian if there was a way to change the numbers to make it look like Tottenham had an easy schedule, even though they were perfect in the league and had scored two more goals than Arsenal.

Still, the WhoScored writer didn’t insult us by trying to prove his point; he just said it.

Naturally, some people will then say, “You can prove anything with statistics.” This is a load of nonsense that newspaper reporters use as an excuse to ignore numbers and write only their views.

Luton Town had only won one of the eight games they had played, and that was against Everton, who were already in a crisis even though they hadn’t lost any points yet.

So, we were told, “Six wins and two draws in their first eight league games is a great start, especially considering they’ve already played Manchester United, Arsenal, and Liverpool, picking up seven points out of the nine possible.”

Sounds like Tottenham had a rough start, but Arsenal’s first eight games of the season included games against Manchester City, Tottenham, and Manchester United. No real change in how tough they are.

After Ange Postecoglou was hired in June, the article’s first sentence said, “Spurs fans just wanted a manager they could all rally behind.”

The ever-shy reporters have since changed their attention to Tottenham. Today, the Mail reported that “Ange Postecoglou was left raging after Tottenham’s 3-0 thrashing against Fulham, which saw his side miss the chance to climb into the Champions League places.”

Of course, even that is a bit crazy. Assuming Tottenham had won yesterday, they would have been in fourth place, ahead of Villa by one point, and with a better goal difference. Even so, they would still be eight points behind third place.

Truth be told, what happens with Tottenham is not like what happens with Arsenal. If Arsenal loses, they would have been further down the league, we are told. When Tottenham loses, we hear that they would be higher in the league if they had won.

That’s how news works today. Every statement is true, but only because clubs win points and lose points!

Tottenham’s last six league games are the best way to get a sense of what they’ve been doing lately. That is where they rank ninth; they’ve won three, tied one, and lost two. Their goal difference is plus three, while Arsenal’s is plus 23.

But let’s look at one more part of that story that praises Tottenham. Spurs have scored the fourth most goals in the league (18), even though Harry Kane has left the team. He got the most goals for the club. In that way, they are still fourth, tied with Aston Villa. But in terms of defence (which is also important) they have only let in two less goals than Fulham. Are we now saying that Fulham’s defence is a good example for up-and-coming “big” teams?

I really think (but have no proof) that the piece was originally written for Who Scored, but when the editors of that site stopped laughing at it, they threw it out and told the author to “try it on the Guardian.” They put it out there after he did it.

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