How Arsenal might still make 6th, although we’ve left it a bit late.

As we’ve been investigating during the interlull, the chances of us getting into the top six to get a place in Europe next year don’t look too good.  However we have noted that because of the curious European rules lurking around it is possible that cup winners’ places might not be taken up if the club has already qualified through another route – and they can go to a team further down the charts.

But those rules are strangely written, and I wouldn’t like to rely on them, so let’s see if we can’t find another way in. Here we are at the moment.

In effect we need three out of West Ham, Tottenham Hots, Liverpool and Everton to go for a meander while Arsenal keep up the pressure.

Now if I told you at this moment that a supercomputer had been brought in to work out what will happen if current form continues exactly as now, that might make it sound what follows a lot more impressive.  Of course we know that football doesn’t use supercomputers – they are used for working out what is happening inside black holes, what happens to the economy if corporation tax is cut and whether time can run backwards as well as forwards.

No, in this case it is me working it out with a calculator.

But if it makes you feel better to be told a super computer did all this, please do believe that.

So, here we go.   In my previous piece on Untold I noted that in recent games we had been doing a lot better of late than in the earlier part of the season. I took the last 15 games and compared with the start of the season and saw this.

Although that looks like a journey that is moving in the right direction, it doesn’t help us too much if all the clubs around us have also improved.  So I thought it might be interesting to have a look at the last 12 games of the Premier League.  (I know I counted 15 games in my previous table, but working all this data out is quite hard going, and I found a “last 12” table on line (very much appreciated soccerstats) so here we are.  How are we performing in the last 12.

In fact we are sixth in the League over the last 12 games – not as high as I had hoped before finding the details, but still better than an earlier part of the season.  Except we are actually doing better than Tottenham Hots, Everton and Liverpool – exactly as we need.