Looking at all those 'in's and out's', I can't understand why some people are building Liverpool up as a potential rival. Their buys have been utter ****, imo.
A lot of the speculation about who is going to win each season is complete rubbish. Man City were supposed to walk away with the title last season. Every year Arsenal are supposed to drop out of the top 4.
Every year Liverpool are going to make a come-back. The problem is there is absolutely no chance that you can predict which players are going to have a career season and which ones are going to get injured or fail spectacularly. Some players are consistent, others are up and down.
If Bale hadn't come through last year Spurs would have had trouble making the top half, but next year he is now predicted (no, absolutely certain) to do the same again. It just doesn't work like that.
On top of that, pundits and fans have a long memory. Arsenal's defence (apparently) is still bad and vulnerable to set pieces, even though the defence was the second best in the premier league and didn't give up very many goals to set pieces last year. Man United's defense is still supposedly excellent, but they gave up a ton of goals (particularly, funny enough, to set pieces).
Arsenal need to sign a top striker and haven't "replaced" RVP, yet we scored only 2 less goals last season without RVP than we did the previous season with him (only one less than the Invincibles scored in their unbeaten season).
My own view is that we need to get our goal difference up above +45. We were the last team to lose with a GD above +45 (+51 in 2004/05), and not many teams have won with a GD below +45 (United were the first for ages on +43 last season). We were +35, which means we are pretty close.
Of course individual results matter, but over the season, if you can score enough goals and keep enough out, you will generally come through. The teams at the top are not as far apart, as people will have you believe. Certainly well within the margin of existing players playing well, or not playing well, or reasonable improvement.