Well, 2 days on and I’m still pretty overjoyed at what happened on Monday night. Who wouldn’t be? There’s more work to be done though. In my eyes, there are three teams going for 2 places and this is how their fixtures look.
Chelsea
- City (A)
- Spurs (H)
- Villa (A)
- Wigan (H)
- Fulham (A)
- Newcastle (H)
- Arsenal (A)
- QPR (H)
- Liverpool (A)
- Blackburn (H)
For me, Chelsea have the toughest run in out of the lot. They’ve got to play Arsenal, City, Fulham and Livepool away. Not to mention the additional local derby day game against Fulham. They’ll also face a stern test from Newcastle and Villa. Not a nice run in. Plenty of potential point droppage there.
Arsenal
- Everton (A)
- Villa (H)
- QPR (A)
- City (H)
- Wolves (A)
- Wigan (H)
- Chelsea (H)
- Stoke (A)
- Norwich (H)
- WBA (A)
Arsenal don’t have the easiest run in. What we do have is the blessing of form and players returning from injury. City and Chelsea are going to be massive games, but they’re at home, so a massive advantage there. Stoke away always has potential disaster written across it, but if we have a first team out, hopefully getting bullied won’t be a big deal.
Spurs
- Stoke (H)
- Chelsea (A)
- Swansea (H)
- Sunderland (A)
- Norwich (H)
- Bolton (A)
- QPR (A)
- Blackburn (H)
- Villa (A)
- Fulham (H)
Spurs seem to have the easiest run in on paper. Chelsea are pretty much their only tough game left. They are playing a lot of problem teams though. Sunderland away is never an easy day out as we’ve experienced in the cup. Norwich and Swansea are tough teams to play against and London derby matches can always throw a surprise.
All in all, 3rd place is still Spurs to lose. A top four finish for Chelsea would be massive, but let’s be fair here, they’ve certainly got the player to do it. Have they got the manager? No. Have they got the team spirit? Hopefully another no. The run in should be exciting regardless.
Amongst all the excitement, many people have asked if I still have the same opinion on the manager. Of course I do. People quickly forget why we’re in the position we’re in. It’s like Arsene has gate crashed a party with all his mates, trashed the place and now he’s getting all the credit for a marvelous clean up operation. This season was preventable and if the demise of our rivals has proven anything, it’s that with a little bit of TLC this summer, we could have been pushing for the title.
We can all be defeatist and complain that City have far more to spend on us and it’d be a valid point. However, they also have far more to spend than United… and when you look at things closely, City’s wage bill is only £40mill a season more than us and ours is now only about £10mill short of Uniteds… and we barely have a player on over £1o0k a week! Imagine how efficient we’d be if players were paid what they deserved? Imagine how much better we could be if Wenger made signings like he did in the dying days of the transfer market in June (Minus Park)?
If Wenger gets us to third, I’ll be over the moon. That shouldn’t be vindication. That should be the warning sign that we can’t continue to be complacent as a club. We will get left behind at some point and with our continued poor performances in Europe, there will come a point when top four isn’t enough to reap the rewards of European easy street. I understand the need to be in the Champions League, but we shouldn’t be using it as a way to make kids rich. We should be using it to establish ourselves as a European powerhouse. Otherwise, the whole exercise is pointless from a sporting perspective.
Still, things are looking up on the transfer front. It looks like we’re tying up a deal behind the scenes for Podolski. We’re at least making the right noises around Gotze and as I’ve said before, there are strong rumblings around the club that we’ll be looking to France for a big name. If we wrapped up 3 big signings before the Euro’s, signed up the biggest name of the summer for another year and added some much needed quality to the squad… I honestly wouldn’t care who was manager. All I ask as a fan is that the club learn from their mistakes. If Wenger is the man to lead the charge for a new era for Arsenal… marvelous. All I know is we can’t possibly have another disaster summer like the previous one… hopefully the club know that and they’re not pulling the wool over our eyes to ensure season tickets are snapped up (which they will be regardless).
Finally, before I go… Jack could be back next month. Superb. Keep your hands off Stuart Pearce, your side parting is fooling no one! Oh, and we’re going to Hong Kong on a preseason tour… superb!
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