Arsenal’s tally of just six wins all season so far is their lowest in 107 years.
Arsenal have played 25 Premier League games this season but with just six wins under their belt, they are in 10th place and still maintain a negative goal difference thanks to Unai Emery who doesn’t understand why fans turned on him.
The last time Arsenal had fewer wins than this season by this stage of the league was before the First World War in the 1912/13 season when we didn’t even play in Islington and ended up being relegated.
Thankfully, now that we’ve binned Emery, relegation shouldn’t be a worry although it was seriously starting to become one the longer the Basque fraudster was left in charge.
With 31 points on the board and history telling us that 40 is a decent mark to aim for to stay up, Arsenal should be able to scrape together another nine or so points from their final 13 games.
You’d hope so at least, especially as they still think they have any right to be playing in the Champions League next season via the fourth-place route.
37 points would have saved you in 16 of the last 23 seasons. The average points total to take a team down for finishing 18th, since the League was reduced to 20 teams in 1995/96, is 35.6.
In 2003/04, West Brom managed to stay up with just 34 points, the lowest tally to keep a team in the league.
It is worth noting, however, that sometimes even 40 points isn’t enough to save you.
West Ham found that out in 2002/03 when they went down with 42. But only two other sides have been relegated with 40 points or more (Sunderland with 40 in 1996/97 and Bolton with the same number the following season).
Arsenal’s remaining league fixtures are against:
- Newcastle (h)
- Everton (h)
- West Ham (h)
- Brighton (a)
- Southampton (a)
- Norwich (h)
- Wolves (a)
- Leicester (h)
- Spurs (a)
- Liverpool (h)
- Aston Villa (a)
- Watford (h)
- Man City (a – date TBC)
Realistically, Arsenal should pick up the nine points needed in the first three matches after the winter break, with three home games against sides we traditionally do well against.
Weirdly, however, Arsenal are 13th in the home table this season (P12 W4 D5 L3) and 8th in the away (P13 W2 D8 L3) so let’s not go counting any chickens just yet…