We have the ability, it’s about the mentality now. by Konstantin Mitov
Well lovely Arsenal people, we are back atop of the premier league table, thanks to Liverpool failing to beat an awful Man Utd side. The mentality I’m trying to force upon myself is ‘one game at a time’. There are loads of encouraging signs – best defence, best attack, best goal difference but we are still only above Liverpool thanks to the latter, which shows the levels of this league.
I’ve seen a great Liverpool team lose the title on the final day and lose the CL final in the same season, so I’m not counting my chickens. Our run-in is the most difficult. City, who people forget, lurk only a point behind, which is scary enough looking at their history in title run-ins. They also have a pretty easy run-in bar a trip to Tottenham. A lot can happen in a week of football, let alone in 7 games, but if any of the team wins all 7, you cannot deny that they ultimately deserve to win it. If that will be us is no longer a question of can we, rather it’s will we?
In this day and age where the media keeps looking for the most scandalous headlines and everything is over-analysed to the max, the narrative changes with each game. After we drew with City, everyone said, ‘it’s Liverpools title to lose’. Easy run in, United are poor, Klopp is leaving etc.
Now it’s suddenly Arsenal’s, we’re top, we haven’t done it in 20 years, we failed last season, did we learn the lesson, etc. One thing is certain though, the pressure to win games is bigger when you are spearheading the charge. You could see it in the Brentford game, before City drew with Liverpool, the chance to go top and hold destiny in our own hands and suddenly after 1 mistake, it became a hard second half. Liverpool on Sunday as well, obviously the better team, missed a bunch of chances and in the end they needed a dodgy penalty to earn a draw.
I can’t make a prediction of what will happen, I just assume Liverpool and City will win every time, and I try to focus only on us winning our own games. I hope that this is a lesson we’ve learned from the past 2 years, where we had a clear objective, even had a cushion, yet fell short. This time I think the fact that we’re still in the CL is a massive boost. Even though it’s Bayern Munich and there are ghosts of the past that need to be banished.
We’re the favourites now. How the tables have turned hey? We’re top of our league, Bayern are not winning their standard league title, and it’s CL or bust for them. It will not be an easy game, even though a lot of people expect us to just smoke them. They won’t have away fans too, but you cannot discount their experience. Like I mentioned Liverpool and United earlier, the better team doesn’t always win.
I want to warn you about the possible narratives that can come out. If we beat Bayern it will be “Bayern are not great at the moment”, but if they beat us, the labels will come “chokers”, “bottlers”, etc. You can’t win with the haters, but the fact we’re in everybodys mouth means we are doing something right. I just hope the players can keep their heads clean of this and keep focused only on the next game and see where we end up.
If we could win one of the two trophies, I would take it any way we could do it. At this stage of the season ugly 1-0 wins, thrashings, lucky penalties, as long as we lift something at the end I’ll take it. But I firmly believe that performances dictate results long term. That’s why when United went 2-1 up I didn’t think they’d win. Chaos is their game, they concede 15-20 shots per game. That’s not sustainable. Liverpool have won too many games right at the end, MacAlister has hit a few screamers, like against Fulham and Sheffield, this can’t happen every game.
That’s why I was really impressed with our Brighton performance. We went to a team that hans’t lost at home since September and won 3-0. Raya really had one good save to make all game. I was more worried with that second half against Luton, but in the end we rotated a lot and got the 3 points. It’s about the nerves now.
City can go on a 7/7 run, they’ve done it before. When Palace scored an early goal against them, they upped their level. Can we do it? We haven’t been behind on the scoresheet in 2024, apart from the Porto away game, and that goal was with the last kick of the game. When we face adversity, what will our reaction be?
We’ll see, but the next 6 weeks will be absolutely mad!
Konstantin
Life is good for us Arsenal fans right now
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