We have reached the halfway point of the season. 19 games played in the league, group stages of Europe complete, the league cup well on its way and awaiting the start of the FA Cup. So how has it gone for Arsenal so far? The League Cup - we started well with a 2-1 victory away against Tottenham, but crashed out with a 3-0 loss to Sheffield Wednesday, with a team of youth and fringe players failing to step up. It's always nice to win a NLD and it's not a competition that is our main focus so overall not too dissapointed with our performance in the league cup though it would have been nice to see more from those on show on the day we went out. The highlight was Flamini turning into a super striker. The Champions League - we couldn't have asked for a worse start with two losses in a row to the teams we were expected to beat. Controversy was on the cards with a Zagreb player failing his drug test. With our chances of qualification looking slim we had a fantastic result beating Bayern Munich with a superb performance to keep our hopes alive. A 5-1 hammering in the second game to Bayern and late drama in the other fixture in the group meant there was no longer any room for error. Two wins from the remaining two games including a professional 3-0 taking apart of Olympiacos put us through to the last 16. Having been drawn in a group with Bayern most thought we would go through second in the group, job done. The League - 19 games played and we sit top of the table, 19 points clear of Chelsea, 9 clear of Utd, 3 ahead of City. The highlights being the destruction of Utd and tactical defeat of City. The low point coming recently with our 4-0 loss to Southampton. Despite suffering a lot of injuries throughout the team we have continued to pick up points and find ourselves top of the table. I'm happy with how things have gone so far having played half of our games. Overall I think we can consider our season on track to be a good one. We've performed well enough and kept ourselves in a position in the main competitions to have potential for success. I think we will need reinforcements in January (though it looks like we may already have one signing lined up which is good news) and we will need to make sure we keep up our performance level but I'm happy with the season so far and confident we are in a good position for the second half of the season. A special mention to two players who I think have had a huge impact on our season to date: Ozil for his incredibly consistent brilliance in creating goals and Cech for the calming influence he has brought to our back 4. While several players are having good seasons and are worth a mention, I feel these two have been the two most influential so far. What are your thoughts on our season at the halfway point? How do you think it's going? Are you confident in us heading forward?
I think you've summed it up quite well, overall it's been a really positive season in spite of the injuries and lack of reinforcements in the summer. We've had some worrying results like the shef wed result you mentioned, as wild as the two cl results and the West Ham one at the start of the season and Southampton recently. But overall we've been very consistent and look very steady. Hopefully we can kick on in Jan with reinforcements and Sanchez coming back
League Cup: (C) Beat Spurs in what might be the highlight of Mathieu Flamini's career. Got battered by Sheffield Wednesday but the most damning things were the injuries suffered to Walcott and Ox. We don't really take that competition seriously so not too bothered by being knocked out early. Champions League: (B-) Made life extremely difficult for ourselves with extremely avoidable losses to Zagreb and Olympiakos. Dug in deep for our 3 wins to snatch knock-out stages from the jaws of Europa. Finished 2nd in the group which is what was expected due to Bayern's presence and now have Barca. They're the favourites so we can play freely and try to defy expectations. Premier League (A-) Top of the League at the end of the year. Despite injuries we've done massively well to keep ourselves right up there at the top. Feel we messed up opportunities to pull away but we're still at the summit so just have to take the momentum into the 2nd half of the season and who knows.
We seem to be kings of worthless 'good' things. Being best in a calendar year. Being best for the first 19 games. Only if we're best after 38 games will I take notice. All in all promising, but then again it quite often is midway through our seasons. We won't win it unless we get reinforcements. Oh, and your spin doctoring of our carling cup loss was disrespectful go Sheff Wed. 7 of our starters that night started the game against Bournemouth yesterday. So leave out the 'fringe and youth' guff.
Debuchy, chambers and Gibbs have been fringe players this season, with bellerin and Monreal the clear favourites for the full back positions and chambers fourth choice in the middle. All 3 started against Sheffield Wednesday. Kamara and Iwobi started and are youth players, with Bielik and Bennacer coming on off the bench. Campbell started and oxocube started, at the time Campbell was a fringe player though now due to injuries is starting regularly and oxocube has failed to find any form this season and struggled to break into the team even when we've had lots of injuries. Flamini also started but considering he has Coquelin and arguably Arteta ahead of him for his position I'd say he is a fringe squad player, though injuries have meant he has had a lot of game time recently and therefor had to take a more important role. Cech, mertesacker and Giroud were all players you'd expect to start for us week in, week out, none of the others were though arguments could be made for Campbell or oxo I suppose. Just because some of those players played against Bournmouth doesn't suddenly make them not youth or fringe players. Not sure why you consider it spin doctoring for me to say these fringe and youth players didn't step up. Sheffield Wednesday played well, the players we brought in for that game didn't do well enough. What is it you disagree with? Or you just wanted to argue over my definition of fringe players?
League Cup: Perhaps not the biggest priority in the season, it is however still a trophy and one I'd still like to win, especially as it's one Wenger has never won before. We did extremely well against Spurs at their ground, with an absolute belter from Flamini to win the game. But to then go out with a whimper against Sheffield Wednesday really disappointed me because as with every competition, I wanted us to go far in it. I guess it wasn't to be and I wasn't losing sleep over the result, but it still irked me nonetheless because we got well beat against a Championship side. Verdict: somewhat disappointing, but the least of our priorities. Champions League: An absolutely diabolical start to this campaign with back-to-back losses. Losing against a side that had never won in the competition for like 12 years was utterly humiliating, and Giroud getting sent off for being an absolute moronic **** did us no favours at all. But the Olympiakos game, for me, was even worse because they had never won on English soil and if I'm honest, I did not think they were a particularly good side. With Zagreb, at least they were an unknown quantity and we were down to 10 men for most of the game. The first Olympiakos performance was on par with Monaco, for me. Poor individual mistakes, a poor defensive display and a lack of character was compounded by an all round poor team display and result. We then miraculously ended up beating Bayern Munich, which was an absolutely incredible result, given that they had won every game in the season up until that point, averaging 4 goals a game or something like that. To beat them whilst keeping a clean sheet was the stuff of dreams. We obviously got mullered (no pun intended) in the reverse fixture but we had a lot of key players missing and to be fair, when Bayern are on song, not a single team in the world can stop them, apart from possibly Barcelona. As expected, we had a comfortable win against Zagreb at home, and then the Olympiakos fixture in Greece suddenly became pivotal. We ended up winning by 3 clear goals and kept a clean sheet. Given that we had lost every time we had been to the stadium, it made the result + qualification all the more impressive, especially when we've had the "no bottle, no heart" cliches thrown at us a lot. Unfortunately, we look like we're about to go out at the same stage as the last 5 years, because I can't envisage us beating Barcelona over two legs with the firepower they have up front, but at least we qualified when the odds were against us and when many pundits felt we'd get knocked out. Verdict: bad start, ended superbly. But unfortunately, it looks like we're about to exit the competition at the same stage as the last 5 years. Premiership: To be top of the league after 19 games with just 12 wins seems a bit low but the league is more competitive than ever. I still don't think our squad is in its finest state and I still maintain we need to add a few more quality players, but none of the top sides have been reliable enough to take advantage of our shortcomings. Losing 4 games in 19 matches isn't particularly great either, especially with all the tough away matches we have coming up (City, Spurs, United, Liverpool, Stoke, Everton etc), but we are still ahead of the rest. The results against WBA, Norwich, Spurs at home and West Ham stand out as being games where we shouldn't have been dropping points so carelessly, but I suppose that's been offset with the wins against United, Leicester away and City - some of which we weren't expected to win. There are still improvements needed and there is still a long way to go, but overall, I am satisfied with our league form. My only hope is that we can win more games and that we don't sit around biting our nails, anxiously waiting for our rivals to slip up, so that we can get the job done ourselves. Verdict: Satisfied overall, but there's still work to be done.
Couldn't have put it better myself, especially the Premier league bit. Overall we've been good but bad at certain unexpected points. If we can manage to put a curb on those unexpected dips, then we have a great chance of winning the league. Better to put fate in our own hands than in others...
I think the season so far has been a bit strange. Not entirely convinced with the way we have played thus far, yet we find ourselves at the top of the table. Injuries to key players in the middle of the park (Coquelin, Sanchez and Carzola) has not helped. I was at the Bournmouth game, we looked totally out of sorts in the 1st 20mins. Even after we scored, we kept getting caught out, missed a hatful of chances. Reminded me of the games I have been to this season, the Olympiakos game, the NLD and the West Ham game to name a few. I do not think we are solid enough and still have this soft centre. We seem to have upped our game re:top 4 teams, however lost games to teams like WBA, Southampton and WestHam. I do not think this is the best team we have assembled, since the last time we won the league.... However do feel we have some talented players. Where do we go from here? We can only take it 1 game at a time, we have games v Liverpool, Stoke Away, Everton away these are all potential banana skin.
Yep strange season so far, but very happy to be top of the league and in the KO stages of the champions league. We've been good without being brilliant, but there are still times where we look vulnerable through the middle, so as we've been saying for a while, we still desperately need to sign a solid DM. I think we can win the league this season if we address that position and manage to get back and keep fit players like Sanchez, Coq, Cazorla.
I agree we could... If we get our injured players back. Our first 14 is very much capable. of winning this league. We really have to turn up and grind out results against less fancied sides (away from home). If we are still in the hunt in the home straight, I would expect us to hold our nerves and come up trumps. I feel City and Spuds are the team to beat... I would fancy our chance in the run in, even if we were off the top. I just hope we can find some consistency.
We are very much a confidence team. When we string a couple of wins together we seems to get back to our best and are capable of going on a long unbeaten run. That said, we do seem to be better these days at bouncing back after a defeat. I think the key to any title challenge this season is getting our players back and keeping them fit.
I think whoever wins the league will be the one who digs deeper and grinds out those results, which won't be pretty. The big question is, are we prepared to win it ugly? We will have to put some of our principles aside and just go for it, play every game as a cup final. Not one team is playing well enough to be favourites and the only way to do it is battle for every point. The big teams have become complacent and have been punished by the "lesser" teams, there are no give me 3 point games anymore.
Looking very good soo far. Considering there were many people on here and in the media (mentioning no names) claiming there was 'no chance' of us winning the league with our current squad. (after only adding Cech in the Summer) Ozil has been a revelation. Peter Cech has made a big difference to this side. We just need Sanchez fit and back on form.
Don't take the defeat to WHU too badly, we were damn good for the first couple of months before the predictable injuries and whatnot set in.
Oxford Dictionary (New Word Alert) Ozil (noun): An assist or a help. Usage: Can I Ozil you? How may I be of Ozil?
The problem is that we have been here before. Top in November and December, even in January and quite possibly early February but it goes pear shaped by April and definitely in May. Cini65 is right. It is at the end of 38 games that matters, not 19. Therefore it does us no good in the long run just being happy about being top at half distance. We need to go the distance and have not done that in over ten years. The worse thing about this is that we had the money through much of the past decade but either our owner decided against spending or our manager somehow lost the knack of knowing how to. Bad buys being over-rewarded by ludicrously high wages and while that has been addressed, we have made some poor purchases such as Welbeck. He won't be back again this season - what a waste of £16m!!! As for Giroud, well statistics are not everything. Certainly not in term of the goals he scores since the chances he misses makes him half the striker van Persie was. We should never have sold him but Wenger could not bear anyone opposing his point of view or should I say, lack of vision. If he had vision, we would be working towards success at the end of 38 games instead of merely being somewhat satisfied at 19. Don't get me wrong. I cheer at every game but time has made it quite clear that half measures are all we are about under this management. Until we begin to focus on all 38 games of the Premier League season, it's all half measures. It's really about time we meaning the club went out for a league victory. No number of FA Cups makes up for the absence of the league title. Why settle for second or third place when you can have first? Wenger, the board, our American owner all sell us short and it's about time fans recognised that.
I think the point is that people are happy we're top at the halfway point rather than being 4th or 5th for example. Of course we all want to be top at the end of the season.
