Arsenal are building a team worthy of challenging for the title in the coming years, but with the focus on the future, that means we would need some major luck to return to the Champions League in the near future.
The likes of Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United and Manchester City all appear nailed on to challenge for this season’s Premier League title, and all have impressive young players coming through the ranks also.
While nobody can know what the future holds for those four sides, at present they all appear to be strengthening well, and will be difficult to displace inside those four CL spots in the coming years, which may mean we will have to focus on that backdoor entry.
This means that we will have to focus on a two-year plan which will include winning the Europa League instead, something we are yet to achieve since it was renamed as such.
While we cannot be found listed within Europa League Odds list for the current season, you have to believe that we will be giving ourselves every chance to win that competition next time around.
It’s a shame there doesn’t appear to be an early market for next year’s entry, although you would imagine that our team would already rank as one of the favourites at this stage, with the majority of the bigger sides expected to be playing in the elite European competition.
Our last attempt at winning the trophy saw us miss out at the semi-final stage, when we failed to overturn a 2-1 deficit from our trip to Villarreal, while we came closest to clinching that title in 2019 when we reached the final of the competition, only to be beaten by London rivals Chelsea after Eden Hazard put in unstoppable display to say goodbye to his team-mates before departing for Real Madrid.
It may be a little early in the season to be considering ourselves as guaranteed to play in Europe next term, or even the EL specifically would be even harder to be sure of, but I believe that our team is now easily one of the top five best teams in England at present.
People will take negatives from our trip to Brighton, but the reality is that they have become one of the most organised teams in the division under the tutelage of Graham Potter, a manager who will surely go onto one of the big teams in the near future.
Am I alone in believing we are shoo-ins for the Europa next season?
Patrick
We need to win 4 of our next 5 games to have any chance. That’s a third of the season gone already by that stage (31.57% for those that are particular)
Even if we manage to do that, we’ll only have 22 points out of a possible 36 which is bang average.
We have played 1 match worthy of being a Top 4 team. Whether we can perform like that in many more matches, is nothing but guesswork about the future.
If you judge by our average performance this season, Top 4 is too much to ask. We need better performances.
Honestly i don’t see it this season. Hope im wrong
☝️ exactly what Stéphanie said/wrote.
5th would be incredible.
6th would be amazing.
7th would be back in Europe.
Winning the Carabao/ FA Cup qualifies for Europe.
8th thrice would be good bye Mikel.
Yup. That about sums it up.
6th would be amazing ?
It is far too early to write off Arsenal. We have only played 7 games out of 38 which is truly not a good basis for prediction. A lot of things could happen including injuries, sickness, suspensions, dip in form etc. Let us discuss this after at least 12 games.
We have seen Arteta’s team for 1.5 seasons now, not just the last 7 games.. Should we only judge his team only after he can handpick the starting 11 from his own buy? Too much privilege for the man I would say.
Anyway, it is clear to me statistically that the team is struggling offensively ever since Arteta came. Even in Wenger’s worst season we have never had such number of goals like the past 2 seasons.
A top 4-6 side definitely with the players available but ….
A mid table manager ,and there’s no agenda just what I’ve seen over 20 odd months and that is truly what I believe .
I’ll be the first to say I was wrong if by some miracle he gets us top 6which should be the minimum we are achieving for .
Top 6 would be a good improvement. But most importantly for me, we need to be the better team on the pitch more often than not, win lose or draw.
This past weekend we were second best. It is much easier to start to convert draws into wins during the season when you are the better team on the pitch than when you are second best.
If I were in charge anything less than 6th would be a failure. probably good I am not in charge, or only in charge of my keyboard 😉
I’ve said in previous posts, a solid 5th position is my prediction
With a chance of 4th going into the last few games, Manu should get 4th with their squad, but they are not jelling atm so who knows.
I think home advantage will be massive this season, and winning against the teams historically that we should beat(at home) might do the trick…. Or not…. 🤔
Only a real possibility if several teams were to respectively underperform for significant periods throughout the remainder of the season…now, if different tactics were being deployed, which relied less on possession and more on countering with pace, I think our prospects would be significantly different…unfortunately it doesn’t appear like our manager has the either the tactical nous or the cojones to pursue that course of action, except on the rarest of occasions
Top 6 this season is definitely on. Top 4 is a stretch, but not impossible if injuries/etc don’t cause too many problems, and maybe a cheeky new signing in the mid-season transfer window gets done.
We have the players who are able to achieve top six, but I was under the impression that wasn’t good enough for a section of our fan base.
Neither was winning cups…. no the only two things that mattered was the PL and CL…. all else was seen as failure.
Of course, the realists amongst us knew that was complete hogwash and enjoyed our top four, CL and cup wins for two decades.
We realists also now realise that those heady days are out of reach, especially the two that we judged our most successful manager ever on.
But there has been one game this season, that gives us realists cause for optimism and, if we can bottle that performance and uncork it at the start of every game, then we can start looking to get back into the elite of the PL – it’s whether MA and the players can actually achieve that – they have set the standard and anything less is unacceptable….17 new players and over £150,000,000 worth of unacceptable.
yeah why have we hounded our mr wenger just to 4 seasons later to say 6th would be amazing ?
With Arteta at the helm, there is NOoooo chance of 4. Dream on. This is real coaching, poor coaching, not imaginary coaching. We are in the real world.
We have a mountain to climb as Newcastle United take over by saud Arabians has been completed that means they’ll start spending big like city and Chelsea
Mind u all Arsenal’s owner is in the top 10 of richest owner in Europe. But it always feels like Arsenal is poor and cant compete in the transfer market. Liverpool fans should have been more worried than us tbh.