Ok, so we have 5 points from our first 3 games. Not fantastic but not terrible, a fairly average start to the league. Tomorrow is transfer deadline day and hopefully we add to the squad. We have a difficult few weeks comming up now and we will get a few of our most difficult games out the way early. It's really important we get a good haul of points from these games to keep us in the mix for the title. We don't want to end up playing catch up early on. Our fixture list looks like this: Man City (H) Dortmund (A) - CL Aston villa (A) Southampton (H) - LC Tottenham (H) Galatasaray (H) - CL Chelsea (A) City will be a difficult game, then after playing city and Dortmund in a row that villa game could become tricky. Then we have a cup fixture prior to playing Tottenham in the league. Luckily it's at home and provided we avoid extra time in the cup game we should be ok for the Tottenham game fitness wise. Then we have a CL game midweek before going to Chelsea at Stamford bridge. As a minimum we could do with beating villa and the spuds and getting at least draws against Chelsea and city. How do you think we will do in this stretch of games? How many points would be an acceptable haul from the four league games?
Bad timing to ask that question, I think we know what the responses will be On current form though I don't think 5 points is an unreasonable prediction from the league games
We need to take at least 10 points from those 4 games if we're to be taken seriously this season. The only dropping of points I'll allow is Chelsea away, even then, a loss is unacceptable. We have to beat City, we should be beating Villa and Spurs.
Villa after an away game in Europe has sluggish draw written all over it. We rarely win those games even when we're in good form
Lol, you think we're going to beat City and get draws from Dortmund and Chelsea with Sanogo up front?
Didn't we draw against Bayern with Sanogo upfront? Not to mention Theo would be back as well and I don't expect Sanogo to be our only striker either.
Is this a best case scenario or do you genuinely believe these are the results we're going to get? If it's the latter then God help you
God help me for believing in the team? OK. The only results of those I could see us losing are Chavski and Dortmund but I think we'll hang on for draws.
There's a difference between believing in the team and blind optimism. Have you seen Wenger's record against Mourinho? Mourinho has had Wenger's number for years, there's more chance of another 6-0 than us leaving with a point from Stamford Bridge.
I think it's more God help you for succumbing to insanity. We've now gone five games without looking like we know what we're doing, we have no striker, we're playing one of our most expensive and supposedly creative playmakers out of position where he's looking completely ineffectual, and our defense was terrorised by Leicester City. Unless something radically changes, it's not reasonable to expect some magical turnaround out of nothing. This is a dark time. No point in trying to pretend things are peachy.
Apart from our last game against Galatasaray every single game after a midweek CL fixture is away from home. Including our two games in the qualifiers, for this to happen by coincidence seven games in row is one in 2 power of 7 = 1 in 128. It should not happen again for 128 years. Talk about a fix.
I thought you were specifically talking about away champions league games Fine, why would the PL spend their time and effort picking on us every season?
The question you have to ask yourself is, "If it really was a 1 to 128 chance piece of bad luck, and it happened to one of the other teams, would someone at the PL notice it and change it?" It hasn't happened before, so they aren't picking on us every season. And it was slightly sarcastic, but you have to agree, it is one hell of a coincidence. Just like when Dean refereed 11 games in a row for us without a win, and so on and on. Coincidence after coincidence. At some point you just have to accept that the establishment in England hate Arsenal and take every opportunity to screw us if they think they can get away with it. At the weekend Leicester were allowed to foul us at the top of their box, almost without punishment. A few free-kicks were given, and no yellows. It was disgraceful. If we so much as touched their players, a free-kick was awarded immediately. It was one of the worst displays of blatantly partisan refereeing that we have seen, but nowadays we just don't even mention it, we are so used to it. The week before an offside goal with a perfectly positioned linesman, again no excuse. If he can't make that call looking straight at it, the man is incompetent or biased. But again we are considered whiners if we mention it. But just ask yourself, How the f** does he screw up that call? I referee with 13year old assistants that would never blow that call. It is a disgrace. The camera shows him looking right down the line. He can't have f**ed it up - but he did.
