Jurgen Klopp admitted that he is expecting a ‘tough season for all of us’ after learning of Arsenal’s 6-0 victory today.
The Gunners earned a resounding win over Sevilla today in the Emirates Cup, capping off a fine pre-season including other big wins over Chelsea also, and appear in great shape heading into the new campaign after a successful transfer window.
Rivals Tottenham are likely to be in a confident mood also as they look to build on Antonio Conte’s fine start at the helm, while both Chelsea and Manchester City can never be written off either.
Klopp spoke to reporters on ITV ahead of today’s Community Shield clash with Manchester City to admit that he is expecting the upcoming campaign to be ‘tough’ on us all.
“Arsenal, I only saw the result, pretty impassive today,” he told reporters ahead of today’s kick-off. “6-0 against Sevilla. I don’t think that has ever happened to Sevilla, to be honest.
“Chelsea will come, Tottenham have improved a lot, so it is going to be a tough, tough season for all of us.”
We have every reason to feel positive about what is to come this season, while Chelsea appear most at risk of losing their top-four spot. Liverpool are unlikely to be dropping out if their performance today is anything to go by.
Could this be the toughest top four race for some time?
Patrick
I guess the upcoming season is one of toughest top four fight in epl history; arsenal used 6:0 at sevilla to clean off being 6th or 5th, starting with one of ars prestigeous trophy; i joked though!
Great to see Haaland and Nunez in the Charity Shield. Both really exciting prospects. I feel Man City have lost two extremely good players in Sterling and Jesus. Very brave to sell them when Grealish is so overrated and poor !! Good news for us. Jesus is looking good in preseason games. Very happy that Martin Odegaard is now our Captain. Happy Days !!
I’ve been meaning to see us beat the current pool and city in real life prem.hopefully it happens from now on.
Ruthless and relentless. Great result. I love that. My only fear is injury and suspensions. So we need strong cover as we are still short of a DM cover, incase of injury to partey. I hope elneny perform to expectation when called upon. The transfer window is still open! Let’s go to the new season with great hope. COYG
I watched the community shield this afternoon,someone commented on Pool and City levels.i have to agree,the gap between those 2 and the rest is still significant.
Let’s hope Klopp is right 😉
I agree that Chelsea seem most likely to fall away – if not next season then not long after. New ownership makes a difference to how much cash they’ll be given as opposed to loaned (FFP etc). And their players seem distracted and eyeing the exit doors.
Spurs… who knows. Conte’s history is flaky. He’s volatile and can walk away in a huff too easily. I don’t see them staying in the top 4 for long, but next season… dunno, they might, but I don’t think they’ll win anything except maybe a cup.
Newcastle should be a concern as well, their form at the end of last season was excellent with a squad that wasn’t much different to the one that was bottom for months. Eddie Howe is doing well there, although I suspect the powers at Newc will ditch him at some stage for someone with more of a reputation (and will probably regret it).
And then there’s MU and WHU. Who knows if MU will recover – I’m not seeing it this season tbh. Ronaldo seems to be a disruptive influence.
Prediction:
Liverpool
City
Arsenal
Spurs or Chelsea
Dark horses: the others mentioned above.
Agree with your prediction personally prefer City but it’s close either way. Come the international break Arsenal will be being spoken in terms of a title challenge downplayed of course but spoken of given our good start to the season. Then when it doesn’t happen I expect plenty of media attention to that fact rather than us finishing 3rd as is usual for the media and the negative Arteta fans will claim we should of won the league and 3rd was always ours because everyone else fell apart and was rubbish. Not unlike last year when the negative fans said we’d be lucky to finish 8th and 4th was impossible no matter what pre-season and then complained about 5th post-season and had already geared up a bunch of reason why 4th wasn’t special either. Don’t get me wrong 5th was disappointing in those circumstance but for those who claimed far worse right up until January they really shouldn’t be commenting on 5th ever.
Spurs vs Chelsea is the unknown. Spurs have a relatively tough start not hard to see Conte getting annoyed at results and Levy being Levy and him leaving by January. He also got backed this window and improved the squad so if they start well they’ll have a decent season and challenge us for 3rd, he’ll stay delaying the inevitable Conte Levy bust up that will happen the season after for sure. Chelsea finished last season badly, pre-season has been pretty awful and their transfer business is disjointed at best (really don’t know why sterling went there over us tbh, martinelli’s gain) could be a tough start for them. Tuchel was fuming at the 4-0 loss to us can only imagine that ramping up if they start poorly. United potentially without Ronaldo and Ten Hag actually giving them structure regardless should see improvement but that should also take some time they won’t have start of the season with a relatively tough start themselves. West Ham will be roughly same as they were likely top half not cl.
Newcastle are the real dark horse they finished 11th anyway but in 22 they have had actual top 4 form (we are 5th, Chelsea 6th, Spurs 3rd equalising for games I believe) which meant as bad as it felt to lose to them and our top 4 hopes with it, it actually wasn’t that bad in form terms (We threw away top 4 when we lost the 3 winnable ones in a row then Spurs handed us a 2nd chance that we threw away too.) Don’t think they’ve had a great window though and would assume it would take time for a full top 4 challenge all season long but no europe and spending heavy in Jan if in they are in the hunt for CL is a clear possible top 4 challenge. Regardless they’ll be in the hunt season after that almost certainly this is a scary thought for everyone outside City/Chelsea really. Chelsea will have short-term problem but their owner is going to push the boat out and find his feet eventually. Guess the question at that point is whether Kronke wants to push the boat out himself to stave off the threat, think he may well do that particularly if the Arteta project is working. Big season for that reason alone.
As usual there will be someone that surprises from somewhere random although it’s getting tougher with the way clubs are run better and the money that the mid table clubs collect year in year out vs newly promoted whilst the struggling usually have long term issues to address like Everton. Last year the surprise really was Palace (long-term issues) not fighting relegation and they finished 12th without ever threatening Europe so yeah that was our surprise last year. Pretty underwhelming. Leicester for their bad season finished 8th. Brighton for their dark horse tag finished 9th. Wolves went 10th maybe a surprise but they’ve finished higher recently so not in my book. Newcastle money in Jan took them 11th. Villa I guess was the surprise to some, never rated them personally but yeah many expected a Europe challenge not 14th. Only Palace/Brentford 12/13th were really a surprise though once Newcastle had their takeover. Villa was just massively overrated in the 1st place. Guess they could be the surprise this season. Rate gerrard. Plenty of youngsters and Coutinho. By surprise I mean challenge for Europa not CL. In terms of early season I expect Brighton/Brentford to be being hyped for their results but that is just the fixture schedule.
Agree with mostof that, but re Chelsea the big factor is that they previously had gifts injected by Abramovic, so unless the new owners are prepared do the same, they will be in decline.
It could take a while or it could happen fast – Tuchel was muttering about many of his players being distracted by their contract situation. If they’re seeing the writing on the wall with the new owners and eyeing the exit door, it could fall apart really fast for them.
It’s interesting everyone has downplayed the Sevilla result but the season for us starts Friday and for Sevilla 1 week later. Sevilla conceded 30 goals last year best defence in the entire La liga whilst finishing 4th for a CL spot. In pre-season previously they drew 1-1 with Conte’s Spurs and drew 1-1 with 3rd place Atletico. So yeah it may be pre-season but it was a massively impressive result.
To add nobody scored more than 1 against Sevilla in pre-season.
The ateltico 1-1 was from La Liga last year not sure why its showing up on this seasons results but yeah nothing else changes and that result still happened 2nd from end of the season.
You forgot to mention they have sold their centre back paring from last season .
Carlos to villa
Kounde to Barca
Surprised you left that out of your post .
And anyway I didn’t read anyone downplaying that result .
Arsenal is a team which most of the time flatter to deceive. They will show you hope and then out of nowhere they crumble. Even last yr we somehow manage to crumble when we were hot favourite for top 4. Most of the time history speaks for itself so I think 5th or 6th is the best we can achieve this season. Hope I am wrong as I have been hoping i would be wrong for many yrs. Hope Arsenal can prove me wrong.
So all the time arsenal won the league it wasn’t history…?
That’s talking like Nottingham forest winning the champions league. Our consistency should be compared with the yrs with similar squad or managers. If we talk about 20yr back then except for the name Arsenal everything was different, even the stadium. Many arsenal fan were not even born at that time and surely they might not even know what winning means. So let’s face the bitter truth but yes life is all about hope , so let’s keep hoping and believe someday we can achieve what we dream of.
We really have to start the campaign well. We have tough end of the campaign and if we don’t pick full points now we will struggle in league position in the 2nd half . When we have Europa league deep rounds .
So it is inevitable to pick maximum points early on.
My only concern from yesterday game was that both Martenelli and Odeguard failed to score when get a descent opportunity in front of goal. Hope they improve on it
Arsenal already have a lot of things place to have a great season. The biggest issue is avoiding injuries to key players.
Our first team will pose a serious challenge to most opposition. However, we still have limited options in a number of positions. Even now, we should be able to mount a serious challenge for a top 4 placing. With additional options we could have a really great side.
I’m worried that we are going to start the new season with Xhaka in the starting XI. I inwardly prayed that we would have gotten an upgrade by now.
Suggest an upgrade then..