EL football would be the best outcome for us next season, not CL. But equally I want to end this season on a high regardless whether that means Arsenal getting the PL. And to be honest they deserve it.
Appreciate your kind words, but banter aside, the league table after 38 games doesn’t lie. And if we don’t win the title, then it’s because we haven’t deserved it over the entire season. I’ve no doubt that we’ve been the best team in the league since January onwards. But our results and performances from August - December were not as good as they should have been. I think we were 4th in the league on New Years’ Eve. So it shows you how inconsistent we were pre-2024. This is the most amount of wins we’ve had in a Premier League season in our history, so I can’t grumble too much regardless of the outcome. But I will have regrets over certain games - drawing at home and losing away to Fulham, losing at home to West Ham, not getting any points off Aston Villa, the draw in the NLD at home when the expectation was on Arsenal to win… The margin for error to win the league now is extraordinarily slim and we’ve probably had a few too many errors to justify being champions of England.
" the league table after 38 games doesn’t lie " this is the biggest fallacy in football, plenty of points are gained when undeserved, plenty more are gained courtesy of the officials bottling decisions / leaning a certain way, and this does not `even itself out` over the course of a season as they like to tell us.
I work in an office with a load of Gooners. It would be unbearable if they won the league. so I’m happy for an honourable loss this time!
The problem is there’s no way of objectively proving this one way or another because every team and fan will argue they’ve been hard done by, that refs have been poor, VAR against them, unlucky with specific circumstances etc. Ultimately, in this context, if City win the league, I can’t begrudge them the title victory considering they’d have been unbeaten in the league since 7th December 2023. It’d be their longest unbeaten league run ever. How can I be annoyed at my club for not bettering a team like this to the title?
It has to be said, when all is said and done Villa deserve CL football far more than we do. They've had a really impressive season. Good ebening to you all.
And some of them will be right and some of them will be wrong. We've conceded 6 penalties and only been awarded 2. That ridiculous touches in the box per penalty stat said it all. Chelsea's was something like 80 and ours was 1,200. My initial issue with VAR before it was introduced was the continued on-pitch bias. It's exaggerated the problem that was already there. The ref's decision is now doubly important, as it's unlikely to be overturned. There's no consistency and that's often within the same match.
Ideal scenario is we beat City and Sheff Utd to finish the season on a high, Villa beat Palace and get the qualification they deserve, and Arsenal bottle the title by losing to Everton in front of a stunned Emirates. This sequence of events would make me very, very happy.
Scratch that, even better: We beat City and Sheff, Villa beat Palace. City beat West Ham 5-0. Arsenal conceded a last minute equaliser from a dodgy penalty against Everton. City win the league on goal difference.
