Arsenal played Spurs at the Emirates on Sunday in the traditional North London Derby fixture. The game ended as a 2-2 draw. Yet if one looks at coverage in the media- I checked the Guardian, the I Paper and The Times all seemed to think Spurs had somehow ‘won’ the game.
Clearly they didn’t so how can we understand this beyond the usual football commentary hyperbole. To do so we need to move beyond the sports obsession with statistics and look at an historical concept or two.
We are looking at what historians might term the long Premiership Season of 2023.
Towards the end of September six matches have been played but the reference points tend to be those of the 2022 season. Arsenal came second in 22/23 so the reference here is whether they can maintain that form and perhaps challenge for the title. In that frame they might have been expected to beat Spurs who came eighth, after a poor season in which they changed manager (again). Harry Kane also departed and Ange Costecoglou arrived from Celtic with an impressive record but no Premiership experience. So perhaps Spurs were expected to lose based on the frame of the Long 2022/23 Season which is still with us.
The concept of historical hangovers is well known one. The Institute of Historical Research has a Long Eighteenth Century seminar while Eric Hobsbawm amongst others thought that the nineteenth century ended with the start of World War One in 1914. Based on that the Twentieth Century may be seen to have ended with the death of Queen Elizabeth 11 in 2022.
So does the Arsenal-Spurs draw (which is what was, not a victory for either side) mark the end of the Long Premiership Season of 2022-23? Historians might suggest that it is as yet too early to say
Leave a Reply