Rival Watch

City beat Swansea with a flukey deflected goal. Their performance wasn't convincing

United lost to Bournemouth 2-1.

Leicester don't play until Monday.

Chance for us to go top with a win tomorrow.

Hard to imagine we'd be talking about Leicester here and ignoring Chelsea as relegation fodder but the former drew today while City won, putting pressure on us to capitalize on Leicester's points dropped and to stay ahead of City.

I hope AW is looking behind his shoulder and seeing that the ManC is starting to look threatening again.As discussed before it safe to assume Leicester are out of the title race.

Just as feared they seem to be hitting form just at the right time.Kun is back in form,Yaya played well and so did Silva and De Bruyne.Heck,even Iheanacho seems to be playing well.

With the likes of Navas managing to score goal and their porous defence managing to keep 3 clean sheets without Kompany it's high time we start bucking up.

As mentioned in some other thread,let's not depend on the inconsistencies of the other clubs to win the league.Let's not pray for some other club to win so that we can have a stronghold on the league.We should decide our own fate and that can be done only if we start winning on a consistent basis even if the win is a ugly one.

This is the right time to break all the vodoo stuff.Stoke away,ManU away.I'm not sure about our woeful away records at ManC/Spurs/Everton.If there is one,it's high time we break the duck.

Was looking at the fixture list of both ManC and Arsenal.Both the clubs have 5 common fixtures:

Sunderland Away
Leicester Home
Villa Home
Bournemouth Away
WBA Home

Making an illogical assumption that both the clubs get similar results in the common fixtures,let's look at the league-defining fixtures that each club is yet to play.

For ManC                 For Arsenal

Spurs Home             Stoke Away
Liverpool Away         Chelsea Home
ManU Home             ManU Home
Chelsea Home          Spurs Away
Arsenal Home           Everton Away
                             ManC Away

As such we've got more league-defining fixtures.

We seem to have more banana skins as well.Clubs who play extremely well against us/we play badly against them.

We've Soton Home,Swansea Home and WHU Away.

I know we've won against Soton at home last season,Swansea is shit right now and WHU is inconsistent but still there's that fear that Arsenal might slip.

ManC have played a game more in the league,and have to play one more game(potentially two if they win the COC SFs) than us.

They've got relatively easier fixtures in FA Cup(vs. Wycombe/Villa Away) and UCL(vs. Dynamo Kiev),while we face the UCL winners,Barce.If that wasn't bad enough,this fixture is sandwiched between difficult and/or away games.Knowing our luck if we somehow end up defeating Barce,we'll face another superpower and our injury crisis might strike us any time as well.I know we've to face the best to be the best but not this season imo;especially when we are having a wafer-thin squad and are so close to winning something that us eluded us for so long.

And to add to all this we need to defend FA Cup as we search for a record-breaking triumph.

At this point,I honestly wouldn't mind us throwing away our tie vs. Barcelona.IIRC in 2011 season we were all going gung-ho about challenging on all the four fronts.We were top of the table,won the home leg vs. Barce,facing relegation battling Birmingham in the CC finals with a chance to end our trophyless vodoo and facing an injury stricken ManU in FA Cup.

Like a domino effect,the defeat vs Birmingham led to us going on self-destruction.Lost our tie vs. Barce,Lost to ManU in FA Cup,Lost players to injury and Lost our hold on the League table ultimately scampering to 4th.After the Eduardo injury,I'd say that the Birmingham defeat was one the reasons why we had a bigger drought without any trophy.The scars are still fresh.

P.S. I know the tone of the post is highly pessimistic,but I hope Gooners understand how desperate I'm to see us win the PL especially coz I've never seen us win one{Became a Gooners fan only in 2K6}.

We're only halfway through the season. With 17 games to play, a lot can change. While we sit here and think City will power on to another title now that Aguero's back, a month later he could be injured again. They put a poor Palace side to the sword today, but just three days before they failed to score against an Everton side with one of the worse defences in the league.

Similarly, we could do as expected and drop off as injuries take their toll. But on the other hand, we could easily defy our own expectations and pick up results we don't expect. Did many of us expect to beat United 3-0 at home, or City 2-1? Even the 3-3 against Liverpool recently showed there's a mental toughness about this time despite the last minute equaliser.

Basically, don't make long term judgements. It's a cliche but we can only take each game as they come. Tomorrow we only need a point to go back top and suddenly things will look rosy again. And even if we do drop more points, if you're in touch going into those final 10 games, you've got every chance.

T-Mach, buddy, I totally empathize with you. But the most effective way to deal with this is to go game by game.


Btw, lads, end February, I'll start making the rivals run-in preview+form+points for each game week, depending on who is in the mix around then.

Totally agree with Jay.

But 1 point today to back top - that'll only be 2 dropped points in the long run.

We already dropped 2 against Liverpool. We now should make sure we pick up 9 points in these next 3 games.

Next 2 games


Arsenal

Chelsea(H)
Southampton(H)
========
Leicester

Stoke(H)
Liverpool(H)
==========
Man City

West Ham(A)
Sunderland(A)

some big games afterwards but dont look too far ahead

We need to get 6 points in the next 2 games. No ifs and buts

plenty of big games between current top 4 sides in February/early march
everyone will drop pts here and there

get some players back to full fitness
time to start a strong run

It's becoming very apparent to me that the only way you guys are winning the title is if Spurs finished second forcing to have to finish first.

I swear if City win the league I will never have a positive thing to say about your club again in my life.

It's becoming very apparent to me that the only way you guys are winning the title is if Spurs finished second forcing to have to finish first.

Seems to me as well

amazing that still Leicester City is holding onto the top.. Arsenals week was 2 weeks back, then Citys, this week Leicesters... and hope that next week will be ours...
and the twist.. it is Spurs who are clinging on the back silently and will eventually leapfrog all the 3 to win the title..

Bournemouth Away looks like a very difficult fixture ffs
no confidence whatsoever
not looking forward to it
dont care what other rivals doing
irrelevant as long as we aint winning

yep. disappointing - past four league fixtures are not results champions should be getting. All winnable games. Some tough games coming up especially with Barca wedged in the middle of them.

Team just needs to focus on winning. The latter half of this season is going to be a dog fight for everyone.

We dont have the team compete, we have been here before and chocked. I have no expectation as long as Blind man leads us. Wenger cant handle the pressure of fighting for the tittle and now we are back to where we belong and start plating football again.

In a month or so we'll be fighting for 4th place with Chelsea and United.

possibly, or we will win the next 3 games and be top of the league and AW will be your hero again.

Peccadillo wrote:possibly, or we will win the next 3 games and be top of the league and AW will be your hero again.

He will never be my Hero. Cant stand him tbh, I lost so much love for the game due to him.

Bournemouth will beat this average squad with a donkey leading the line.

I take it you are younger than 25

Peccadillo wrote:I take it you are younger than 25

I am few years older than you. When you see United and Chelsea below us and still we are 4th place its really embarrassing. As long as Wenger is in charge of Arsenal I have no exception, win or lose dont bother me like it used to.

I agree if we finish 4th or lower it will be embarrassing. We have the squad, our rivals are weak, our injury woes are no worse than others - there would be no excuse.

In fact I will officially join the WOB should we finish ≤4th.

A few words from Gab Marcotti that I thought were good to keep in mind ...

In fact, there's no reason to believe Arsenal will fall apart or even that the four-game stretch without a win is a case of "falling apart" or signs of a deeper malaise. They drew away to Liverpool and Stoke -- ordinarily, you'd call those "good points" -- and the former was only down to a wild injury-time equaliser by Joe Allen. They did lose at home to Chelsea, sure, playing three-quarters of the game down a goal and a man. On Tuesday night, they were held at home by Southampton in a game in which they created an absurd number of chances and encountered a Fraser Forster playing out of his skin.

Truth be told, you really worry when you're not creating chances or when you're conceding far too many. Some of the stuff that went against Arsenal in the past few games -- superhuman keeper efforts, stupid red cards from World Cup-winning veterans, last-ditch equalisers -- is down to those things that we don't like to talk about: happenstance and luck.

http://www.espnfc.us/blog/marcotti-musings/62/post/2800154/arsene-wenger-not-a-loser-at-arsenal

Three points from a possible twelve is a poor and disappointing run. But no big club has gone without stumbling multiple times this season so far. We're not out of this yet by a long shot.

http://www.skysports.com/football/news/11096/10154266/the-title-race-analysed

compare remaining fixtures here
i think we need at least 10-11 wins

title is man city's to lose
they play all of current top 5 at home
if they have strong home record they will do it

here is hoping they bottle it and we dont fare badly in our difficult away trips

Chumlum wrote:A few words from Gab Marcotti that I thought were good to keep in mind ...

In fact, there's no reason to believe Arsenal will fall apart or even that the four-game stretch without a win is a case of "falling apart" or signs of a deeper malaise. They drew away to Liverpool and Stoke -- ordinarily, you'd call those "good points" -- and the former was only down to a wild injury-time equaliser by Joe Allen. They did lose at home to Chelsea, sure, playing three-quarters of the game down a goal and a man. On Tuesday night, they were held at home by Southampton in a game in which they created an absurd number of chances and encountered a Fraser Forster playing out of his skin.

Truth be told, you really worry when you're not creating chances or when you're conceding far too many. Some of the stuff that went against Arsenal in the past few games -- superhuman keeper efforts, stupid red cards from World Cup-winning veterans, last-ditch equalisers -- is down to those things that we don't like to talk about: happenstance and luck.

http://www.espnfc.us/blog/marcotti-musings/62/post/2800154/arsene-wenger-not-a-loser-at-arsenal

Three points from a possible twelve is a poor and disappointing run. But no big club has gone without stumbling multiple times this season so far. We're not out of this yet by a long shot.

LOL raptor.

Sina wrote:http://www.skysports.com/football/news/11096/10154266/the-title-race-analysed

compare remaining fixtures here
i think we need at least 10-11 wins

title is man city's to lose
they play all of current top 5 at home
if they have strong home record they will do it

here is hoping they bottle it and we dont fare badly in our difficult away trips

Yep.. the bookies had us as favourites in December and now at ~3/1. City strong favourites now and with good reason. No getting around January was a bad month.