That's not being realistic... Arsenal Man City Man Utd Liverpool Chelsea Everton Tottenham There's 7 teams before them. The next group of teams and who could arguably be put in any order are.... Leicester Palace Southampton Stoke
Fair enough, that has shown how strong the league is at the moment though. No shame in getting beat by Southampton and no reason to expect to beat the either.
A good debate actually. I would say this league is the weakest it's been in years for the teams at the top.
The gap has certainly closed one way or the other. Given the performances in Europe, you could be right. I just see a lot of so called "lower teams" playing some really good football at the moment (maybe they are allowed to by the so called top teams), and find myself more often than in past years thinking "this will be a hard game".
You support Man Utd? I think your way of thinking could be down to mentality, you absolutely bossed football for the best part of 25 years and these last couple of seasons have brought you back down to earth with a bump. You are starting to realise that no games are guaranteed any more, like they used to be. You would have always put away teams like Norwich in the past, now you can't be sure. That authority you had is over. With the inconsistent Man City and all the talk of Guardiola maybe going to them, that has definitely knocked them. Chelsea with Mourinho well and truly ****ing things up, have already been put out of the title race and their team is all over the shop. Man Utd, well LVG is running on borrowed time now surely. The most boring Man Utd team I have ever witnessed in my life, football is boring and they lack the quality to open teams up on a regular basis. Arsenal as usual, look like they could take the title until they flop at every opportunity to go top or to pull away. It's the widest the league has ever been open and it won't take to much to win it, in all honesty. One team needs to grab the bull by the horns and get some consistency, putting together a winning run of 7 or 8 games may be all it takes to pull away and give enough distance to win the title this season due to the inconsistency of everybody else. That's why I wouldn't discount a team like Liverpool or Tottenham winning the title this year, and if they do, then the big boys will be kicking themselves. It is definitely the most exciting it has been in years, but in terms of quality, it's sadly lacking.
Sadly, if you look back at our record over these past years, we seem to have more injuries than other clubs. The injury issue is something that has not been adequately addressed presumably because our clueless manager has no idea about how to resolve it. As for the need of players, back in the summer we knew we needed at least another striker, DM and CB but Wenger only chose to go for a GK. Arteta and Flamini are at the end of their careers, Ramsey has clearly demonstrated that sadly, he is not the player he or we would like him to be, Wilshire is forever injured and is questionable when he is fit, Welbeck was a very poor panic buy at 16m and Giroud for all that stats may offer misses as many chances as he scores. He was never an adequate replacement for van Persie but at Arsenal, you don't disagree with the manager, clueless as the fool may be. When everyone is fit and on form, we are nearly unbeatable but how often is that? We have been gifted with chances of seizing this title race but keep throwing it away as we did yesterday. How many chances does one get in sport or life? The answer is simple - #WengerOUT
It's the widest the league has ever been open and it won't take to much to win it, in all honesty. One team needs to grab the bull by the horns and get some consistency, putting together a winning run of 7 or 8 games may be all it takes to pull away and give enough distance to win the title this season due to the inconsistency of everybody else. That's why I wouldn't discount a team like Liverpool or Tottenham winning the title this year, and if they do, then the big boys will be kicking themselves. Victimpool or the Spuds can win the title, think you must be on drugs pal, they are poor excuses for a football team that has spent huge amounts of money.
Spot on. I think Wenger's reaction summed it up yesterday, as he was at his most annoyed all season. But I hate all this excuse giving, from the manager and some fans on here. Sometimes you have to man up, and as you've said, grab the bull by the horns. The league is there for the taking and NO team seems to want it enough. Getting embarrassed 4-0 away from home isn't a team that wants it enough in my opinion, so we will continue on this roller-coaster of a Premier league until someone who's been the least crappiest, wins the league. What will really annoy me no end is if our management doesn't get any reinforcements this Jan window. We desperately need a couple more players to balance out our injuries and give our regulars a rest. This will be our best chance to win the league for quite some time and probably in the future, before Pep, Maureen and Klopp settle into their new teams.
I read an article a couple of years ago about how the standard of the Premier league has improved the 'lower' teams. 10-15 years ago the best players only came to England to play for Arsenal, Liverpool, Utd, then later for Chelsea and City, but that over the last decade, more and more foreign players have come and joined the other teams in the league, thereby improving the whole of the league rather than the top clubs. Also this has meant that many of the 'lower' clubs have been able to hang onto their better players, rather than lose them to the big clubs. I think the whole league has improved rather than got worse due to more and more foreign players wanting to play in the premier league. The down side to this though is that the England team has suffered as a result as many of the young English players find it harder to get their chance in the first teams of their respective clubs.
There's an element of truth to that. But that doesnt take away from the fact that the quality of strikers, midfielders/wingers and defenders has seriously dropped among the big/top clubs. Although there may be greater depth in the league, the fact is the top clubs set the benchmark for the Premier League, and the benchmark at the moment is pretty poor and therefore so is the standard of the league. You look at the quality on abundance there was all over the pitch a decade ago at the top clubs and compare them to today. I could name the players that set that benchmark. With the exception of a few, today's players couldnt compete with them.
At first glance that might appear to be the case, but the game has moved on. I wonder how the Utd team of the 90's would fair against the Chelsea side of 2014/15
Agree on both. I think the level of the lesser teams have improved, they are better organised and have a better pool of players to pick from. But there is no doubting that the level of the top teams have dropped off significantly, as demonstrated by the Champions League. I can only imagine that Arsenal of the late 90s and early 2000s would never have lost 4-0 against Southampton. They were too savvy to have been bullied in the middle of the park and would have adapted during the game to get a result. But then again, they were proper men like Vieira, Bergy, Adams, Henry etc, they had skill but grit to back it up. Our current team lacks that and yoyo from great to utter pants. There simply isn't any excuse for it.
I still believe that the late 90s/early 2000's Arsenal team would romp to the title. They had everything - skill, flair, grit and mental toughness. Our current team would be able to compete on the skill and flair level, but the team of yesteryear would just bully and out-muscle them to a win. Vieira would clown Flamini and Ramsey in the middle of the park.
I would say Chelsea and City are exceptionally talented too, but sometimes the manager can get them to play as an elite team, which Wenger was able to do then. The problem is we don't have some of those same players, ones that were tough and mentally strong. I would say just sticking in a Vieira would make our current team significantly stronger and would lesser those freak 4-0 results. Sometimes you need a captain to tell it the way it is and instruct the players to put their heads down and grind out a result.
Agree with that. Players like Adams, Keown, Vieira, Parlour didn't get bullied out of games. I like Flamini and Ramsey and I think Kos and Mert have proved to be a great CB pairing, but last night all of those players got hurried and harrassed out of the game.
Exactly, which shouldn't be happening to us, especially when we are on a good run of form. This is where the manager has to have a serious talk with the players and stop these kind of things happening. Losses do happen, but we shouldn't get physically out-manned in a game.
I think a player like Wanyama in our team would make a significant improvement against teams that are more physical. To be fair though, it's an area that we have improved in. A few seasons ago we got totally bossed out of a lot of games against physical sides.
