The old and very boring ex-Spuds manager Harry Redknapp has given his opinion on whether Arsenal will be challenging for next season’s Premier League or not, but he has made some assumptions which are totally wrong and need to be addressed. He says: “They should be title challengers,”
“Arsenal have got very good players and finished the season very well. The Europa League is obviously a distraction when the league is so wide open. In the last two seasons the title winners haven’t had any European football and that makes a big difference.
“I’m filming A League of Their Own at the moment and Cesc Fabregas was a guest. He said you cannot underestimate how much easier it is when you are not playing European football.
“The Europa League will make it difficult for Arsenal but they will still be strong this season. They’ve added Sead Kolasinac and Alexandre Lacazette, but can they now keep their best players?”
Okay Leicester and Chelsea were not in Europe, but in reality there are very good reasons why Arsenal should be favourites for the title considering that Chelsea, Man City, Man United, Liverpool and Tottenham will ALL have to play Champions League football against the top teams in Europe.
Whereas Arsenal, having to play only second or third tier European clubs, will be quite happy to send over there reserves and youth players for 90% of the Thursday games, perhaps even until we get to the quarter-final stage at least when we may face an occasional quality team. We can rest our first team stars every single week until March probably, and then we will see where our priorities lie shall we?
I think that this is definitely to our advantage, unless Harry thinks that Everton or maybe Leicester (again) will win it simply because they are not playing in Europe?
Give it a break ´’Arry!!!
Sam P
well its not accurate to claim united and city have wasted money on their target or we have done the bargain of all the striker squabbles …the idea is to see who tops the chat in the season.. at the moment we re no better than city or man u or Chelsea in our dealings…we re just hopping fr the best…
Let’s just resort to hope, let’s no get ahead of ourselves when it comes to Arsenal clinching any major title,unless we want to put on blindfolds we all know how far “extreme optimism'” gets us for been Arsenal fans,I have learnt from my past a very sensible lesson,that as far as Wenger is in the helms deep of affairs I will not beat my chest for Arsenal at any point
I don’t think we’ll play our reserves, I’d like to see us do it til the latter stages but I think Wenger will pick a fair few first team players. Defenders will play, Lacazette or Giroud will play. Maybe Ozil and Alexis won’t play, and Coquelin play instead of Xhaka. Monreal might play over Kolasinac. Oxlade if here might play over Bellerin. And I don’t like how Walcott is still arguably our first team right wing.
Sam P, club like Barca, Madrid, or Bayern were used to win both competition simultaneously, domestic league and European competition (ECL). I’m not making comparison between Arsenal and them, we are not in the same level yet, I recognize the problem of EPL as too many competitions in one year. Only in EPL, top clubs have to compete in 4 different events : PL, European Cups, FA Cup, and the useless League Cup. Now, maybe some English lads here proud of it like boxing days mathes and argue that the last cup is for second strings team. But in reality it’s influencing the top clubs. Manure was the last time I knew as the EPL member who broke this situation by won the triple winners. If FA erase that Jose’s favorite trophy (the League Cup), I think England clubs could speak more in European level.
I think you will find it was JAMIE Redknapp who made the comments above… poor!
Anyway your point about the other top teams playing CL is valid in that it should affect their league form so long as Arsene plays the squad players / B team in Europa League .. until we get nearer to knockout stages..
However some of the other top teams might drop down to Europa League also !
Keep first teamers away from europa league till very latter stages
Then we can treat those like champions league games
We must go for the league
End of
Lacazette seems to be developing a standard trade mark goal, fast assist on the ground from winger and timing his run to perfection. Having said that he was nowhere to be seen against West Sydney Wanderers.