Former Chelsea midfielder Joe Cole believes Arsenal’s 4-2 win against Aston Villa means we are now in a proper title race.
Manchester City had overtaken the Gunners earlier after beating Mikel Arteta’s side, but the Gunners are back at the top after the win, with City dropping points against Nottingham Forest.
The two clubs have continued to chase each other and much credit must be given to Arsenal, who have done very well to hold their own in the competition so far.
After the game, Cole said via the Daily Mail:
‘Fantastic. We wanted a title race and Arsenal have given it. Asked a lot of questions about this team over the past six months. About their character. Their personality.
‘They’ve shown it in abundance. Ramsdale made a crucial save. All playing their part. I think what Martin is saying is you win games you need to stop the rot, but you couldn’t have done it in more of a healing way.
‘You forget about the three games now. This is such a lifter. It lifts the whole squad. The fans are joyous. And they feel now we’re back in charge.’
Just Arsenal Opinion
We truly have given Premier League fans a proper title race in this campaign and it could be one of the best we have had recently.
We must stay focused because City has more experience than us and we probably cannot afford more slip-ups.
This is a very important time in the season and every result counts, so we have to aim for the maximum every time we step on the pitch.
Dont forget tbat refz and var have a part to play.A legitimate goal maybe ruled os.
As for var,j never know.
Well, we have no control of VAR and refs surely! But we’ve control over how we defend and attack. Moving forward, we have to concentrate on what we can do and avoid dropping points. We’ve gotten to the most crucial part in this competition. And there’s a very indication that with our commitment, this is our season!
VAR errors must be reversed before the match ends as they are not human errors. Matches are stopped to review a referee decision byVAR interventions so like wise matches should be stopped to reverse VAR. error..
The only reason the author is backtracking is because we won the game. Otherwise he would have reached for the “mentality” narrative again.
Against MC we lacked efficiency and made some critical errors which were our undoing. Yet the expected goals difference was only marginally in favour of MC. Over the course of that game we had far more passes and greater than 60% possession. How many teams over the last few years have managed these kind of statistics against MC? We have achieved these kind of figures against one of the most dominating and successful teams in Europe. We did not lack mentality against Man City but were less effective on the day against a dangerous team.
We took the game to Aston Villa and could have been undone. If we had lost this author would again have been suggesting that we had learned nothing or did not have enough leaders.
It is easy to jump on the winning bandwagon when results are positive. It is far more challenging to carry insightful analysis when results are suboptimal. This author and several others on the site often demonstrate a lack of perspective and generally provide little balance to their arguments.
It was fun exciting watching our Arsenal grown so much and enjoying the kind of soccer most of us wanted it. However last few games our defending lacked some consistency as compare to earlier games being 1 of the best defending teams in EPL. Opponents have been scoring against us despite having much possession.
There are still quite a number of games left. Anything can happen. Now it all boils down to how strong mentally and physically. How the rotating players can contribute and help to achieve what we all wanted for so many years.