Roy Keane has claimed that he expects Arsenal to miss out on the top-four once again this season.
The Gunners narrowly missed out on fourth in the final fixture of last term, with Spurs sealing the final place in the elite European competition, but that seemed an unlikely scenario going into the final weeks of the campaign.
Our implosion was painful, seeing us drop a points advantage when retaining a game in hand also, and we will now have to pick ourselves up to go again in the new term.
The feeling in north London is extremely confident at present however, with a number of impressive signings having bolstered our playing squad, and on the back of an impressive pre-season including some excessive wins over both Chelsea and Sevilla.
Keane isn’t feeling the same kind of confidence about our side however, and seems to claim after blowing our lead last term is a huge negative as we look to try and improve on our fifth place finish.
“I couldn’t agree more I think this [previous season] was their opportunity [to return to the Champions League],” Roy said via Football.London. “They blew it, they got into a great position, four, five games to go in the season you think they’re in pole position and they blew it.
“They couldn’t get over the line. They were poor, the Newcastle game was a real blow to them where they never turned up and the manager was quite critical of them after the game, some of the players were – senior ones – so you wouldn’t be putting any bets on Arsenal to finish top four next season because the other teams, Man United will better – you’d of thought. Tottenham will be stronger, you can’t see it, big setback.”
Assuming that Man United will be better is a regular hope for their fans, but we have seen many disappointments in previous seasons from them under a number of different managers. While it is easy to claim we blew it, you could also argue that we outshone expectations in even getting that close to the top four, and with a much-improved squad to play with this term, there is plenty of reason to feel more confident in ourselves.
This team should get better year on year as our youngsters continue to improve, and I feel like we will be in there challenging again come the end of the campaign, but how much others will improve is where the question marks come from.
Patrick