After last season when Arsenal spent much longer at the top of the Premier League table than any of our big rivals, only faltering in the second half of the season as the injury list ground us down, expectations were naturally high going into this campaign.
Arsene Wenger still had quite a few of his players injured or otherwise out as usual and that list grew in the first few games, but having carried on from the record breaking transfer of Mesut Ozil with the signing of Debuchy, Chambers, Welbeck and Alexis Sanchez, we all felt that Arsenal were in a much better position to challenge.
But it just has not happened, with Arsenal failing to take our chances and capitalise on our dominance of possession at one end and making defensive mistakes and leaving ourselves exposed at the other end. We keep hearing about and thinking that the Gunners are just about to sort it out, click together and go on a run that will put us back where we would expect to be, but it still has not happened.
That is why I am really starting to worry about this being the season when we finally miss out on the Wenger trophy of a top four finish and drop out of the Champions League. We are now behind Man United having failed to make the most of their own problems, while Southampton are looking good and do not look like collapsing.
Not only are we in real danger of missing out on the Champions League after all these years, we could miss out on this season’s knockout phase. If we lose to Borussia Dortmund on Wednesday and Anderlecht beat Galatasaray, it will leave us on seven points with the Belgians on five. And while they travel to Dortmund on the last day, the Germans would have sealed top spot and would probably play the youth and fringe players, while we would travel to Turkey, under serious pressure to get a result against a Galatasaray team playing for pride and under no pressure.
Should we expect the worst? Or have faith that Wenger can turn things around?