Following a string of impressive victories in the Premier League, Arsenal will surely be most peoples’ favourites to finish in the top four among all the teams vying for Champions League football. Having won six domestic games on the bounce, the Gunners go into the last eight games with all the momentum in the world. But can Arsenal go one better and trump Manchester City for second?
Looking at the fixture list for both clubs and the recent form as well, there can be no denying that the North London side have every chance to finish second. With City just one point ahead of Arsenal and struggling to find consistency, it has to be said that Manuel Pellegrini’s men will not be very confident of holding on to second, and I believe Arsene Wenger will definitely capitalise.
Manchester City still have difficult away trips to a revitalised Crystal Palace, bitter rivals Manchester United, Spurs and Swansea, while home fixtures against West Ham and Southampton will also be tricky. Looking at Arsenal’s fixture list, an away trip to to Manchester United stands out as the most difficult, although we will play host to Chelsea and Liverpool as well. Comparatively though, I feel Arsenal have a much easier run of fixtures compared to the Champions .
With that being said, not only do I think Arsenal have a chance to finish second, I believe they will! Unless the team find themselves in another injury crisis or suffer from a massive dip in form, I predict that Arsenal will finish above City and claim second spot, giving the team the perfect foundation to sign some quality in the summer and go for the title next season.
Anurag
Dear Footballing Gods, please help Sanchez find his shooting boots again. Dude hasn’t been scoring in how many games now? I’m definitely not taking anything away from Girouds fine form.
Sanchez scored when we need him to do that most. Back then he was carrying the team and this is what class players always do. Now it’s within his rights to have a dip in the form due to fatigue. Wenger knows, Sanchez knows so it’s best to leave it between the two to sort it out. You can’t tell players like Sanchez to sit on the bench.
This IMO is one of the major problems we have and have had for too long.
Whether or not you believe our squad to have suffecient depth and quality, player rotation is vital to prevent player burn out and injury. Something Wenger does not do well.
Walcott despite his holding the club to ransom should have been given a run to give AS a time out. After all we armrest still paying him £90k a week to warm the bench aren’t we?
Give him games, and sanchez rest and if he does well you increase his market value before selling him (if you don’t choose to meet his ransom demands)..
* are & not ‘armrest’:)
Yes I agree with you, squad rotation is vital to a team challenging for the premier league. There are just too many matches for a preferred 11. I think Wenger tries to achieve this but its difficult. You dont want to bring imbalance to a team in form and you also dont want to create problems where there are none (Ask LVG about that one!). Sanchez wants to be out there playing soccer 24/7, its one of the reasons he left Barca, not enough playing time, not being the first name on the team sheet. So maybe this plays on Wenger mind. Would help if we had a PLAN B formation, like a 4-4-2 to accommodate Rosicky and Walcott.
Only problem is that Sanchez plays left and Walcott mostly right. Besides, Ox was really on fire before his break. Walcott didn’t had stellar performances when he came in (just yet) that would justify him playing before Ox or Welbeck. Not to mention the fact that his finishes shown that he’s not in the best form yet.
Still think he is more capable of hitting the ole onion bag and it wouldn’t be the first time Wenger played players out of their natural positions is it now?
No doubt about it but we are speaking of the current state of things. I am sure he will come strong (and I actually hope he will do just that) because we need every bit of attacking power in the next months. If not defending then at least attacking.
Amigo! Scoring is good, but it really isn’t everything. And when a player get’s obsessed with wanting to score, he’s likely to perform badly, and his style of play won’t suit the team (greed and profligacy).
Sanchez will score, but let’s put no pressure on him…
I think he is being paired with Wellbeck too much in training. It’s gotta rub off..
Lol! I don’t know… I really like Welbeck but I think he needs to see a priest.
Yeh..1-2-1 sessions with Father Henry.
Hey, I mentioned once how I had a gigantic crush on a certain church girl, right? Yeah, that girl. Gee, I gave up on the chick. Made me attend bible classes, sunday school, bla, bla, bla. I even almost joined the church choir.
Well, turns out chick aint ready for the real deal. Man, I even gave up swearing. She made sure I was saintly. Who knows??? I would hate to be asked to say a prayer every time before s*x.
If you want to go to heaven then there all always sacrifices to be made!;)
And we all know what heaven means. Of course, those who already have had se x, that is.
@illiterate
1. Who cares who scores , so long as we win
2. Even when game is tight and we need a goal you always have hope wen Sanchez is on the pitch.
3. He contributes a lot to our team performance , even wen he doesn’t score.
so City have Man U in the run in (Swansea, West Ham, spuds) and we Chelsea and Liverpool & Man U..and they have the harder run in.
OooooooooK????
haha its like he’s never heard of those teams before, or clearly hasn’t heard about last season where we managed to pick up one win in six against them.
We do have an Extremely tough run in! Chelsea and Man Utd will be insanely tough, in the past, if we walked into those matches with confidence and form we lacked fight and drive and started those games with side passes and not enough pressing. High Pressure and Direct football is whats needed to win those games. I just hope Wenger gets the message!
Liverpool will be unpredictable, lets hope the same team that turned up against UTD show up for us!
No team is easy to beat in the premier league, this isn’t La Liga FFS!!! Arsenal fans are fond of coming up with unrealistic expectations and often look down on oppositions. Remember how we all thanked Zeus, Apollo, Poseidon et al when we got Monaco in the Champions League draw? See what happened in our backyard.
I hear you but Man City have been having a lot of difficulty away from home against anyone – Palace, United, Spurs and Swansea all away. Anyone’s guess how many points they pick up from those although can’t see them dropping less than 4 points, probably 6. Their “difficult” games tend to be quite different from those we find hard. They do have 3 relatively straightforward home games against QPR, West Ham and Villa before Soton on last day to potentially trip them up in what will probably be a pressurised game. 5 of our 8 games are at home – a small but significant advantage. Yes we have got Pool and Chelsea but both at home. Even at our worst over the last 2 years we have been difficult to beat at home by any PL team.
United are the danger next season.
Herera Blind Rojo di Maria Mata
Rooney RVP will all get better.
United will sign 2 top defenders.
David de Gea is top class.
Falcao will probably get replaced.
Van Gaal is driven and will grind out the victories.
Of course, they will all get better while we and every other team will deteriorate.
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Note: S-A-R-C-A-S-M
Di Maria will be on/off, as he was in Real, rvp will be one more year past 30 and decline more than this year, Ddg off to Real, blind, rojo and herrera arent really any better than who we have in arsenal, so i dont worry. 2 top defenders were said to be signed last year as well, didnt happen. Who will they sign btw, hummels? Hahahah. Van gaal has lost “it” and was generally an overrated manager
hahaha.. The defending champions are to play ManU, Spurs, WestHam Swansea and CP. The team Arsenal fighting for the top 4 finish as usual have to play ManU away, Chelsea and Liverpool. And you say we have an easier run in ?
RIP Logic!!
Thumbs up to pay Walcott whatever he wants, thumbs down to sell him in summer.
I think come the end of the season, if we have more points than Manchester City we’ll finish higher than them in the Premiership table.
I know it’s a bold claim but who agrees with me?
🙂
Want a job on MOTD?
Some on here would still say even if City were to finish above us in the league that we were the ‘better’ team and that ‘luck’ had gone against us.
@rickrocket
Aint that obvious..(the team with the higher points finishes higher)..
Actually on paper Arsenal DO have an easier run in. Let’s add up positions of the teams we have to play and calculate who has the lowest tally for the hardest run in:
City: 11 + 4 + 9 + 16 + 7 + 19 + 8 + 6 = 80
Arsenal: 5 + 18 + 17 + 1 + 15 + 8 + 4 + 14 = 82
SO City have a VERY slight harder run in. That said, if you look at that City play mostly mid table teams while we have a few big hitters and then small teams with Swansea the only mid table team. In reality this means we might have more teams fighting for something while City have a few run of the mill games.
Southampton, Tottenham and United will ALL have a lot to say about City in their games though. City will probably not win all 3 of those games. I’d say they’ll take at least 4 points though. If we conclude they will drop 5 points from their remaining 8 games then we can drop at most 4 points…realistically we can drop 3 because of GD. That’s 1 loss in our remaining 8 games including Liverpool, United and Chelsea. I would conclude we’ll probably take 4 points from those 3 games. Thus we would not finish above City.
Optimism in me says we can cause an upset. I just don’t expect it. For every first half against Newcastle there is a second half against Newcastle. No result is set in stone, we can be brilliant and win 8 games or we could seriously flop. I’mma see how it turns out.
Incredibly retarded way to calculate the difficulty of a run in
It’s the only quantitive method for working it out, although I agree it’s not entirely accurate. As you can see though I said that it was purely an on paper way of calculating it and went on to say that we’re playing teams who are playing for something and that I actually don’t think we have an easier run in at all and will finish below City. I can just see where the author is coming from; we do have, on paper, to play teams lower in the league then City have to play.
How about the obvious? Like we can’t beat or have huge amounts of trouble with big teams?
City and United away are not big team wins?
The ManU Away game is the toughest. A draw most likely. The Chelsea & Pool games we will win.
@Gunner
Lovely, that was the point of my message, to see if anyone thought I was being serious……
Fish on!!
Who tells you we can finish 2nd? when the gaps between 2nd and 6th is tight, you can’t assume that arsenal will finish second position as football is biscuit,it can break anytime. if Man$ity do not improve their chance, they will be overtaken so also arsenal that have manure breathing down their neck.
We need exra strength, let’s just win all our matches(if possible) and see how things pan out. The fact is that arsenal can finish 2nd or worse 4th if care is not taken.