I did, it didn't go down to well They have to blame their own performance for a loss and not the considerable efforts of the other side taking them on.
Let's face it Thai,Arsenal being beaten by a bunch of Dumplings wouldn't go down too well with the mighty Gunners would it? It was only 1-0 so I wouldn't write them off just yet. Congrats on your win though. I just CANNOT bring myself to congrat Chelsea.....not yet or perhaps not ever.
I never fancied Arsenal for the title, I think their chances have been well over-rated by many, as indeed Chelsea, City and United's chances have been under-rated by many. To me those three are well clear of Arsenal., and have been saying so all season. IF we can finish above Arsenal though, that SHOULD give us CL football. Everton might finish top 4 instead, but they have a way to go before they convince me they're that good. We'll learn a lot tomorrow, I don't expect them to win at QPR, if they do, I think then they start to look like genuine top 4 material. It's good we're still in CL contention ATM, but AVB lost a lot of my respect today, and it'll take wins at Maribor and Soton to start getting it back.
Soton isn't an easy place to go. I don't see why you've lost respect as it's our first defeat since the start of the season.
We shouldn't just be aiming to finish above Arsenal as an ambition,we should be aiming to finish above the lot of them.
Because of his ridiculous decision to drop Lloris. I agree Soton won't be easy, but he needs to do something special to make up for today's farce.
Aim where you want TMT, Chelsea a team you have consistently underrated this season are a couple of steps above us, as are City, and Utd are still at least one step up from us. Realistically, if we finish above Arsenal we'll have done brilliantly, but AVB will have to up his game considerably for us to achieve that.
It is indeed TMT, but at the end of the season I've no doubt that I'll be proved right on this one re Chelsea. I've no idea what DL is saying as I have him on ignore, but doubtless he agrees with me you're way under-rating what is a terrific looking Chelsea side.
Why would AVB have to up his game? Surely Arsenal have to up their game to finish ahead of us? Anyway, you would expect us to improve as the season progresses but there will be some wobbles as we try to impose our pressing game more and more.
He would have to up his game, because he's made some bad mistakes, and sooner or later Arsenal will overtake us if he continues to make wrong calls. We have had an easier fixture list than Arsenal so far, having played 5 home games to their 3, let's see where we stand after the next four games by which time both clubs will have played 6 home games each. That fourth game is Arsenal away BTW. In our last ten Prem games against Utd Arsenal City and Chelsea, we have conceded 27 goals, that's a poor record of 2.7 goals a game let in. In our next 4 games we have to play City and Arsenal away, let's see where we stand after those games. Looking at just this season so far against these clubs we've conceded 6 in 2 games, an even worse average of three goals a game.
There needs to be some perspective as how much did chelsea spend on hazard, mata, oscar and torres?.....how much did we spend on bale, lennon, defoe and dempsey?, add in dembele and two of these players were missing today. Is it any wonder we're behind man city, chelsea & man utd? look at what they spend to take themselves to the next level? This isn't to say the players we have arenât great, like bale, dembele verts and modric before that, yet we simply can't compete, unless we have our 1st team all fit and in form. Clubs like city, man utd & chelsea can have world class players sitting on the bench, we can't (unless its Lloris). Redknapp showed last season what this club can achieve over a period of five months, yet it was a false position in terms of what we can achieve overall, with the way this club is run. All we can keep doing is buy players like bale, dembele, verts & lloris and hope we keep them and slowly build a team and aim for a top four finish and if we find a special manager, that can make a team overachieve then who knows what is possible.
I haven't bothered to check but I'm sure that in those 10 games we have scored less on average and averaged less points than we have this season. You can twist stats all you want the fact is that we've started the season better than Arsenal.
You can twist stats all you like too, the fact is that we haven't started better than Arsenal. When we have played an equal number of home and away games, which will be after 12 games then we'll see who's started the best.
Good post Boss, I don't expect us to finish above the 'new big three'. For various reasons they blow us out of the water. We're battling for that fourth spot, and given Arsenal's huge income advantage that's a tough one too. As you say, to overachieve we need a special manager, Harry had us punching above our weight in the league, but won nothing, so he wasn't that 'special manager' in the end. Our current manager chooses to put arguably our only world class player on the bench, which is not a good sign for the future.
