Chelsea fan here in peace (honestly) - just wondered if any of you are as surprised as me that you are still top of the league, now that we are 2/3 of the way through it. I keep waiting (hoping) that at some point you will go through one of those patches...draw / draw / loss / draw, and fall away. It just doesn't seem to be happening. The purchase of Ozil was, in my opinion, a massive coup. It showed a level of intent by adding a real quality player to your squad. Even with that, and your solid team, I still didn't believe it was going to be nearly enough to challenge for the Premier League. When the season started, I (maybe slightly arrogantly) assumed it would be us & City out in front, with the others picking up the scraps. You've got a large stadium, good team, quality manager and seem to be managing on limited (compared to some others) resources. What is the level of belief amongst fans. Will you stay there this season? Are you worried that if you don't win it, Chelsea, City and United will all invest in the Summer and you will have missed your best chance in many a year? I still see it finishing 1. City 2. Chelsea 3. Arsenal. Thoughts?
I think we are in with a shout of winning the league but that City are the most likely to win. Not too worried about City Utd and Chelsea investing in the summer. City can only play with 11 players at a time and so them buying players is likely to have less of an impact. And to top it off i finally feel like we can financially compete and improve our squad in the way we want to.
Can we? I think so. Will we? That is another matter entirely. City have to be favourites because of the vast squad depth they possess with Chelsea not far behind. I said in earlier threads if we can't win it, I'd like to see us push them all the way. With our new financial potential we can invest in the players we want which we weren't always able to do in the past.
Good to see couple of goons entertaining a query like this. Nice to see level headed people. This makes our forum strive, not abuses or meaningless jabs. Having said that, OP you might get flared here for asking an honest question.
Thanks WUM You attract WUMs when you are a WUM to so you probably only ever get to see WUM comments. Thanks WUM Go away WUM
I honestly think Saturday is massive for us. If we can get an away win at Liverpool it will really make people think. Our following 3 games are all extremely tough but at least they're home fixtures. One thing standing in the way of our starting 11 is self-belief and I think it's getting there. All we need is to win 1 or 2 of those games that the media are convinced we'll crumble at (and in fairness have repeatedly in the last few years). Obviously it'll be extremely tough for us but neither City or Chelsea are infallible, despite what people would like to think. Personally I think Arsenal are in a transition period too, much like Liverpool and Chelsea. The only difference is our manager isn't shouting his head off and making excuses in case we lose before games. If, as has been hinted, we get to spend some of that lovely Puma money in the summer then we'll be able to make a real statement. Clearly I'd love us to push it as far as we can this year though, what with being top and the best team of 2013 and all...
When it comes to the Arsenal, the media certainly do like to have their Daggers nice and sharp and ready.. different story when it comes to the Maureen ****fest though.
I had us down to finish 3rd at the beginning of the season and I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case come May. But we can win it, I think the next 6 games are going to tell us a lot about whether we will or not though
Respect is reciprocated to those who demonstrate it, to those who don't the response is entirely appropriate and should be expected. Perhaps you should take that on board
I'm confident we will finish above Chelsea, I'm not sure about City. It will be close. If we come through this month in good condition I think we will just about do it.
What is it with some of the ****ing chavs on this forum. All we need to do is mention ****ty fanbase and racism and we will soon see a flare up from the chavs. Thats before i even bring up financial doping. As one of your ilk suggested im the one with an anti chelsea agenda. I guess thats my route to heaven sorted then
To answer the Ops question. We can win it but only the players really know if they will. It depends on how much they want it. After 8 trophyless years id guess its quite a lot!
It's not exactly a secret amongst people who know football, that Chelsea did, and still have supporters who are of the very right-wing militant racist kind. It was an issue with some of these fans that they signed a Jewish player in Yossi Benayoun.
I have to say, I think it's one of the most closely contested Premiership for quite some time. We've got our battles at the top, any 3 of the bottom 9-11 teams could go down, and there is still a massive scrap for 4th and the other European positions. With a significant push, Liverpool could even make 3rd at the expense of one of us. afcftw - interesting point about City strengthening, in that their first 11 would be hard to improve on. I think we (Chelsea) will make a couple of purchases in the Summer - Striker being the main one, and Utd will definitely need to buy. Right now, it's all pretty exciting and tight. Chelsea are still a little inconsistent for me. Played great football at City and well deserved the win. At home in the week against West Ham, we knew they weren't going to do anything other than defend + hoof, yet still couldn't break them down in 90 minutes. This weekend at home to the Toon will be important. Another game that "we should" win convincingly.....unfortunately, just doesn't seem to work like that. Considering that you are like to make purchases in the Summer (although not a limitless pot), what are you missing to ensure that you will consistently be challenging for the title?
Of course we can win it. Whoever can sustain the most consistency out of the 3 can do it. However, we have a round of difficult Premiership fixtures coming up in March. If we can keep touching distance at the top by the end of March and have our key players - Mertz and Kos fit, then we have an excellent chance of lifting the trophy. We have to avoid defeat against Chelsea and Man City at all costs, as they will be around the top with us at this stage of the season. Two hard away fixtures and a homey against Man City. Sun 16 Mar Tottenham v Arsenal Sat 22 Mar Chelsea v Arsenal Sat 29 Mar Arsenal v Man City
That's coz it is Combat 18 not Combat 88 Combat 88 are their more enlightened Marxist brothers who understand that racism is the vehicle used by the right wing capitalists to apportion blame for the economic struggles of the working class on their equally poor migrant brothers and sisters; by blaming them for lack of jobs, housing, crime, low wages and in the process deflecting responsibility for the aforementioned societal symptoms of their greed and unequal distribution of the nations wealth.
There is an argument to be made that we have been constantly challenging for the title, albeit not very strongly some years. However, my view is that we need just a bit of luck and self-belief. If we ever get a good win against our rivals, we always seem to go on a great run of results. If we can get just a bit of luck in one of these big games and we can start playing the top clubs with confidence then anything is possible. On different occasions we are getting MOM performances out of everyone, but never everyone together, except rarely like the first half against Napoli. I would like to see Ramsey and Walcott back, but that aside, I don't yearn for any players. All our players are capable of much better than they show week in week out. If we do click, then I don't think anyone is going to say that they don't fancy us for the title.
