Watching Arsenal play this season, and seeing the way they’ve performed, I can’t help but suspect that the famous “Ewing Theory” is at work in all of this.
A quick check on Soccernet reveals that Arsenal is a combined 20 goals scored to 2 conceded in their last seven matches. (And yup, all were wins.) That’s just unbelievable.
And bear in mind they sold off one of their biggest stars in recent memory, Thierry Henry, to Barcelona at the start of the season. Logically speaking, they should be struggling to cope with the loss of Henry, and not be leading the Premiership by 2 points over Manchester United, with one game in hand, right?
Now a little bit more about the “Ewing Theory”, named after Patrick Ewing of the Knicks.
The “Ewing Theory” was popularised by Bill Simmons, one of my favourite sports writers, and it describes the phenomenon whereby a team becomes so much better even though the star player is absent from the team.
You can find a whole list of examples (here), although almost all of them are based on American sports.
One example I can think of is when Liverpool won the Champions League in 2005 the season after Michael Owen left Liverpool for Madrid.
There are probably a few more examples but they escape me at the moment.
