I do agree that Arsenal were a bit unlucky against Watford, although you cannot deny that we were also pretty poor, especially in the first half. The free kick for the opening goal was highly debatable and then it took a big deflection when Petr Cech would have saved it.
The visitors also had the luck of the bounce in the build up to their second, as the ball ricocheted perfectly to Deeney instead of the many Arsenal players in the area to defend. That is not the only bad luck we have had by any means, with offside decisions, penalties for and against and more.
It is even more frustrating when you see our main title rivals Chelsea having things go their way, but I do not want to use this as an excuse for what looks to be another season of Premier League failure. In my opinion Arsenal should be able to deal with at least some bad luck, but we just seem too vulnerable to any setback.
Is that because the years of not managing to win or even get close to the EPL trophy have given Arsene Wenger and the players an inferiority complex or too much acceptance of a negative outcome? Maybe, but what is clear is that we need to be able to cope a little better with any adversity that comes our way.
Until we do, can you see the Gunners ever finishing as champions of England?
Bob.
yes we can finish as champions of England, but never ever under a certain stubborn old man
Last season we bottled many chances to get get clear ahead in the PL. This season we recently had the burnley game, all of our close opponents except chelsea had played and dropped points, we were at home and only managed the win due to an offside penalty decision, basically we bottled it, but got away with it through a lot of luck. Then there was the Bournemouth game where we were 3-0 down before managing to to get the draw, bottled it again but eventually got our act together.
Now we have the watford game, many players rested, played very badly in the first half and were 2-0 down, basically you do not win the PL by going two and three goals down to opponents, whoever they are.
It is a recurrent theme, the PL is a marathon and arsenal consistently do not have the stamina, often there are injuries which seem to plague us but there is more to it than that, there has been an underlying weakness in previous seasons and it is still there.
By “stamina” above I meant “mental stamina”