Arsenal are already FIVE points behind the leaders! Too much too soon?
Doesn’t time fly when you realise we have already had three Premier League fixtures, the first international break is upon us and ties in the EFL Cup and Champions League are due in the coming weeks. Arsenal’s start to the season finally got up and running third time lucky against Watford on Saturday, although it has been a relatively shakey start for the Gunners in the league.
Whilst there were many positives to take from this weekend’s fixture, many believed it was simply ‘papering over the cracks’ rather than truly fixing the problem. Thierry Henry said after Arsenal’s 3-1 win over Watford: “One thing I am thinking is, and I know it’s early, but [they] are five points behind the top three. I’m hoping that they are not going to run after those five points all season.”
Arsenal are currently standing on four points after three games of the new premier league season. A loss on the opening day to Liverpool, a draw with Premier League champions Leicester City and a win against Watford has seen Arsenal accumulate their points, whilst a top three of City, United and Chelsea have steamrolled ahead with three wins from their first three fixtures. Now I know that it’s not until after 10 games that a table truly starts to take shape (although let’s hope it doesn’t take until the 10th game for Arsenal to catchup), but seeing Arsenal having to play catchup to their rivals once again really does cause concern.
Why does Arsenal always seem to have a slow start to a new season that leaves us on the backfoot from the off, rather than striding ahead to lead the league?
A lot can change over these next few weeks and so for no reason should we be worried of Arsenal not being amongst the challengers for the top four, it would just be nice to see the Gunners lead the line in the Premier League. At least one of the Manchester clubs will drop points after the International week finishes, as they play each other in the Manchester derby. With Arsenal playing Southampton, who have not been as impressive as previous seasons so far, let’s hope the Gunners can close the gap before it gets too big too early.
By AH
Chelsea is the team I’m most afraid of,they have no european football so their players will be well rested for league games,Wenger should have brought in players early to integrate with the squad now we are 5 points behind the other 3 top teams while we’ll have to wait for Perez and Mustafi to adapt!
you made a really valid point and I don’t knw why u’ve been thumbed down by some people. But I think u shud stop forgetting about what Arsenal has not done and be happy for what they have finally done which is the striker and the defender they have finally signed. the fact that other teams have started well is not a guarantee that they still won’t drop points. all I am saying is be positive for ur team
but we should also be afraid to drop even more points, if others can do it so can we. we always hope others to slip up for us to gain on them, and it has not worked in our favor for so many occasions where we blew every such given chance. hope this season it’s gonna be different.. we HOPE
yeah, true, buh we shud kip on
being positive and hope for the best and forget abt the past.
How can Arsenal close the 5points gap,
1. Keep winning and winning.
2. Beat the teams above you.
3. Don’t underrate the so called small teams. Do we really have small teams anymore in the league?
4. Avoid complacency
5. Hoping the other top teams drop points. We have to capitalise when necessary
It’s a marathon and trust me, it’s gonna be a tough season.
the league is not a 100 metre race. it’s more like a marathon race, I tink Arsenal just needs to kip wining their games and hope for the rest to drop points. we still have 35 more games to go and obviously other teams will definately drop points and Arsenal needs to make sure they win their big games against the top teams.
Compared to a few days ago we are far more optimistic, win against watford, two new signings coming in, players coming back from rest after euros.
The reality however is that the two new players have to get used to the PL and Arsenal.
Its a long way to go in the PL. Usually the winner is determined by who does best against the other top teams. The draw away to leicester was an OK result providing other top teams struggle there. Loss at home to pool was a bad result.
As long as arsenal concentrate on one game at a time, show some grit and determination we should be OK for top four. As for winning the PL this season, I have my doubts.
@ jonm : Completely unrelated to this post but can you clarify Koscielny’s contract situation ?? I’ve seen you claim here multiple times that Koscielny’s contract expires in 2019, but if you check on transfermarket dot com it states that Koscielny’s contract expires on 30 Jun 2017.
As per transfermarket dot com
Laurent Koscielny : contract expires 30.6.2017
Santi Cazorla : contract expires 30.6.2017
Per Mertesacker : contract expires 30.6.2017
Serge Gnabry : contract expires 30.6.2017
pls admin I had love to knw if we are allowed to write articles here and how I cn publish an article on our arsenal team on dis site. tanx
Go to CONTACT on the top menu. I will accept any articles that are interesting, well-written with good grammar, and have a good point to make about Arsenal……
oh ok tank. it’s a gud idea letting us involved and I tink dis goes a long way in makin this site interestin for fans to visit as we don’t just have to just come and read articles buh are also allowed to share out view and write about wats going on in this our great and lovely football club. I must commend u for that. thumbs up from me once more.
it’s like being in a race against Bolt,Gay and Powell where u are far from guaranteed of winning .
added to that they are starting some yards in front of you..
thatz the situation Arsenal is in now,cos we ddnt sign in needed positions early.
if United,City or Chelsea drop 2 or 3points now they ll still be topping us but if we drop any more points we are unofficially outta the title race cos then it’s gonna be 7 or 8points away from at least 2 of those three contenders.
keep winning plus a 100% support from the fans worldwide.
and we pray for a injury free at the middle of the season..
the league will be ours
Football is not like darts game, where everything is absolutely in your hands results wise. In football the fixture list has a lot to say about a team’s position at a particular point in time. Arsenal have played Liverpool and Leicester, Man United Hull City, Southampton, and Bournemouth. Chelsea Watford, West Ham, and Burnley. Man City Sunderland, Stoke City, and West Ham.
While West Ham were expected to give Chelsea a run for their money, we have seen how they have struggled this season, not only in the league but even in Europe. Despite West Ham’s troubles, Chelsea struggled to beat them. Chelsea also struggled to beat Watford, needing some poor golkeeping to come away winners.
I watched Man United’s Southhampton and Hull City games. My impression was yes they won but nothing really special apart from showboating by Pogba. Their second goal against Southampton was a gift. Against Hull they had a lot of attempts at goal yet the real threat was coming from deflections that could easily have been owngoals. They needed a stopage time goal to win.
Man City struggled against Sunderland and West Ham to some extent. Despite going 2-0 up at halftime, they were hanging by a thread in the last 10 minutes before Sterling scored in stopage time. I did not watch the Stokey City game so would not know how they performed.
From what I have seen of those three teams, they can very much drop points particularly to teams like Everton, Tottenham, Liverpool, and Leicester. We can also beat those teams, therefore there is nothing to read into their current league positions.
Our fixture list looks good till end of November because we will only play Chelsea and Tottenham at home, and Man United away, of the so called big teams, during that period. If we can collect maximum points at home against Chelsea and Tottenham, and avoid defeat to Man United away, which is very possible, then we will be okay going into christmas provided we beat the relatively weaker teams.
I have decided I am not going to repeat the past. The past 10 years whenever we came close to being in 1st place or were in 1st place I secretly believed we had a chance, I pretended this was the Arsenal of old, full of character and up for a fight. Every time I was disappointed by the predictable collapse that would follow and shatter my dream.
We know the ever repeating Arsenal pattern says differently. We will play some good games, some promising games and then against expectation drop points against teams we should beat on paper, add an injury or two and one or two too many starts for Ramsey and Giroud, come February the season is effectively over.
So this year I expect nothing, the past will be my model for my expectations which dictates that we are out of the running for the PL and I really don’t care about 4th because we don’t attract the best players anyway. A player like Perez (lets hope he scores 25 and starts in the center) could also have signed for Everton and would have signed for us even if we had finished 5th.
So I think Henry is right, one of the big 3 is not going to drop the ball too much and we will drop the ball sooner rather than later, unless you consider dropping 5 points in the first 3 games the same as dropping the season, which it very well might be.
We simply were not prepared for the start of the season. Or if you prefer, we were so unlucky with our injuries.