Just a thought: wouldn't something that looks like the FA Cup, but with gilded dragon handles, look a lot better? The dragons are fine, but the pot itself looks like they bought it from the local cobblers
How was this not given as a penalty? Not only is Chalobah pulling Murphy’s shirt, he makes a challenge and doesn’t get the ball. This is a straight forward decision. VAR say it’s not clear and obvious… How many more times are these decisions going to happen?
Farcical. Almost as farcical as the No Room for Racism graphic popping up while I watch a clip of Chelsea in action.
I caught a few mins on the radio and they also said there might have been a red card to Chelsea too, though I haven't seen it.
West Ham, Wolves and Arsenal all win. Awful weekend for us. I'd make Arsenal's run-in slightly easier than ours on paper and they are without doubt the team in form, with a game in hand. I guess 5th is the best we can hope for. Fair play to Arteta. He has faced down months of criticism, ditched big name players, brought through several excellent youngsters and is turning them into a really nasty group of players who fight for each other and for him.
Tbh the Goon owners deserve credit for sticking with him. He had an horrific start to the season and a bloody awful December/January. No one would have been surprised if they'd booted him out after the forest debacle but to their credit they kept their faith in him and barring an absolute Leicester style capitulation 4th spot it pretty much guaranteed.
At the moment, I can't argue that we're favourites for 4th and we have an excellent chance of getting it. We are also scoring goals, which I was very sceptical about beforehand. Thankfully, more players across the pitch are chipping in with goals, so we don't need to rely solely on Lacazette and Nketiah. What I will say is we still have some very hard fixtures left, including against the 'big six', and most of our remaining fixtures are away. When the pressure cranks up, I want to see if we have the mental fortitude to get through games. We are inevitably going to drop points between now and end of the season. But it's about whether we let that derail us or whether we move on quickly. As we saw yesterday, United's star qualities in attack can win them matches even when they don't deserve it. With us, it feels like we need to perform well all the time to win. That's one team I still worry about. I wouldn't totally write you lot out the race either, but I admit it's going to be tricky from this point on, especially as you are ridiculously inconsistent right now. Nothing is sealed yet, and there's a lot of football to be played. Let's see...
As was pointed out a couple of weeks ago, Benitez was getting 1.0 PPG before he was sacked - Fat Frank has so far got 0/75 PPG, and I think that number might be dropping still
1 pt ahead of United with 3 games in hand 3 pts ahead of West Ham with 3 games in hand 5 pts ahead of Wolves with 3 games left 6 pts ahead of us with 1 game in hand. Not only do you have games in hand , you have the points on the board. Think it would be as bad as Leicester in 2021 and 2022 if you don't get top 4
Apart from your game at home to Liverpool midweek (which I can see you drawing tbh) and West Ham away at the end of April, none of your remaining fixtures jump out as particularly tricky. The NLD still needs to be rescheduled but those games tend to be anyone's guess and knowing us we'll pencil in an off week in honour of your visit. On our list, I don't like the look of Villa away. We have West Ham at home coming up. The one I'm looking at as the game that will probably kill off our top 4 hopes once and for all is when we go to Anfield in the third last game of the season. They'll no doubt need to win to boost their title hopes and we literally cannot win up there for love or money. Fortunately our final two games are relatively favourable which is why I'm hopeful we can finish with 6 points and clinch 5th. Another season without CL football and no trophies is a hugely disappointing prospect, but I was encouraged by Conte's comments last week when he as much as said he has no intention of walking no matter what our final position is and is relishing the challenge of rebuilding our decrepit squad.
