One of the more amusing things about watching Arsenal win, just when the national press are telling us that, as per usual, the club is rubbish, is that the journalists tasked with carrying the paper’s official line often fall over themselves in trying to square the circle.

For years they ran the headline about how many years it was since Arsenal last won a trophy. And then suddenly they found that Arsenal had won the FA Cup. Worse they Ladies team won the FA Cup at the same time. It made copywriting rather tough.

Worse again, from their point of view, the club beat Manchester City to win the Charity Shield as well this summer. And now it turns out Arsenal is the most successful team ever in the FA Cup. Where did that come from? Best not let anyone know.

The funny things is that through all these years of knocking Arsenal the same line of logic that led to “eight years since Arsenal won a trophy” has never been applied elsewhere.

So last night we had the “eight years since Arsenal last beat Man U at Old Trafford”, but not very much about how many years it has been since Man U won the FA Cup. Strange that.

In fact this will be the eighth year since Manchester United last appeared in an FA Cup final, and the 11th year since they won the trophy.

It’s two years since Man U won a trophy, and four years since Liverpool won a trophy. For Tottenham it is seven years. Yet these totals are never given.

And of course some of those trophies are the Community Shield and the League Cup, which are often considered lesser trophies. If Arsenal had beaten Birmingham in the League Cup final you can be sure the word would have been “it’s only the League Cup”. So how long is it since clubs have won one of the bigger trophies?

For Liverpool it is quite a while – they won the league last in 1990 and the FA Cup in 2006. For Tottenham the wait is even longer. 1991 for the FA Cup and, well, a very long time ago for the League. Before my time.

But as I say you don’t hear these statistics – the “how many years since” was always reserved exclusively for Arsenal. And as Liverpool fans would say, “what about the European trophies?” – and indeed there is something in that. But if it is the quality of the trophy that counts, why did we get all this “how many years” stuff over and over again. Surely the Doubles and Unbeaten Season ought to count for a bit extra, if the Champions League or European Cup does.

And that’s not all, for there’s something else that has gone missing in the media at the moment – historic success in the FA Cup, and maybe that is because the record is held by Arsenal.

Arsenal has won the FA Cup 11 times and been losing finalists seven times – which by chance is exactly the same as Manchester United. The next nearest team in terms of winners is Tottenham with eight wins.

So if Arsenal and Man U have identical numbers of wins and runners’ up medals, how do we divide them? Of course if Arsenal get to the final this season then there is a difference, as Man U are no longer in the competition (which is in a sense remarkable since they didn’t have the distraction of Europe this season).

But it turns out we can already separate the clubs if we look at their number of semi-final appearances. Arsenal have made the semis 28 times including this season, compared to Manchester United’s 27. (The next highest team is Everton with 25 semi-final appearances).

We can also do a little analysis of the number of times a manager has won the FA Cup. Here too, the statistics are dominated by men from Arsenal and Manchester Utd. I speak of course of Arsene Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson. Both have won the cup the same number of times – five. But if we look at the semi-finals we can also see that Mr Wenger has been there eleven times to Sir Alex’ nine appearances.

Of course these are just numbers – just games to while away the hours. A bit of fun, nothing more.

But below the surface of this little game there is something more curious – and this is the point I started with. Isn’t it curious exactly which statistics the media pick up on? In that they told us over and over how many years it was since Arsenal won anything, while not talking about the same sort of thing for Liverpool and Tottenham, two supposedly big clubs who haven’t won too much for a while.

And in that they have somehow missed out on the fact that Arsenal is now the most successful club ever in the history of the FA Cup. Somehow I think that is worth mentioning.