Manchester City’s loss to Brentford yesterday means Arsenal will go into the Christmas break at the top of the Premier League table for the first time in 15 years.
The Gunners have been in stunning form this season as they seek to end their wait for another trophy.
Mikel Arteta’s team has dominated the Premier League and the Europa League and they will likely finish this campaign with Champions League football in the bag.
Since the 2003/2004 season, Arsenal has not won the Premier League and they have often struggled to even get near the top of the league table.
However, they have spent most of this term in the lead and a report on The Sun reveals they are topping the league standings by Christmas for the first time since the 2007/2008 season, 15 years ago.
Just Arsenal Opinion
That time, we didn’t win the league title, but everything is set up for us to achieve that now, we just need to stay focused.
Beating Manchester City to win the title will be hard, but the five points gap between us now has set us up nicely to achieve success.
Hopefully, none of our key players will suffer a serious injury during the World Cup and we will continue to perform as well as we are doing now after the break.
The last 5 times we have been top at Christmas, we have not won the league. I’m just saying, to calm our expectations somewhat 😊
We have not the necessary depth to win the league just like 07/08 season.So enjoy the progress we’r seeing under MA and Edu and Let’s not delude ourselves
The biggest difference we are showing this time at the top is a level of hungerness, have not seen this in years.
We have always know we were locking players in our team before, yet we allow our good players to leave without replacing them,
It is acknowledging where the short fall is and doing something about it that will make the difference this time.
In the pass we would return an injury player and keep saying he is like a new signing.
This time shall be different as already you can hear the rumored war chest to tackle our most pressing issues
Apparently we’ve not won the league when top at Xmas since 1947 or thereabouts. I thought that couldn’t be right because I remembered we were top when we won in 88/89, but I checked the records and it seems we went top on boxing Day. Small margin of error!
Hopefully all our players return injury free from the World Cup+ ESR and if we make 2-3 signings in Jan then we can achieve anything this season.
My personal take on it is that the project/process is ahead of schedule and over-achieving.
That leads to the entitled brigade of fans wailing that we “bottled it” last season for the top 4 when it looked like top 6 was the aim (and there were 2 very tough away games in the last 3 games, which any team could lose).
This season the aim seems to be top 4, but if we don’t win the PL there will still be moaners gnashing their teeth and complaining that we should’ve done this or that, it’s all the manager’s fault or the Board’s etc.
If we even come close to winning it this season I’ll be pleased with that improvement. And next season I’ll also take a view on the big picture before setting expectations, with Newcastle being funded heavily and new financial stability rules it will be even harder to win.
So yes, we may be top at Christmas, but let’s get the expectations right and look at top 4 as being the target, although we can now *hope* to maintain a decent title challenge while realising that would be beyond any reasonable person’s pre-season expectations.
Why can’t we dream ..we are 5points clear with possible reinforcements coming in the January market… playing probably our best football since the invincible season mbe even better all-round the pitch so why not… only having have fight off City ..for it for now so why not …this team can do great things believe in this team …