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Arsenal have 5 home, 7 away games left

Away to Villa, Palace, Soton, West Ham, Newcastle, Chelsea (tbc), Spurs (tbc) - which looks awkward.

Liverpool at home on Wednesday.

Utd at home in April.

Safe to say Utd will have to beat Arsenal to have chance of finishing above them, but if that happens then there are some potential banana skins here.

The problem is that Utd won’t be consistent enough to capitalise on any slip ups - nor will any of the other teams in the top 8.
 
Arsenal can afford to lose 3 games out of 12 and still come above United, West Ham and Wolves and can afford to lose 2 games and still come above us...that's even if they and us all win all our remaining games.
 
Citizen Kane. said:
You mean until the summer transfer window opens and Chelsea's restrictions magically disappear?
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No idea what will happen to Chelsea.

I'm sure Conte has every intention of staying and rebuilding tottenham. However if Levy does a levy, then those are just words from Conte, he will want some backing, not a 1 in 1 out system. Bentacur and Kulu have been really good signings but we shall wait a see this summer,
 
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PleaseNotPoll said:
Nah. **** that lego-headed ****.
Exploiting a global pandemic to rearrange fixtures is pure scumbaggery.
I hope he goes as bald as the bloke he put the cones out for.
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You've had more games postponed than le arse? I suppose having more players out even though you could field 11 counts as okay though <whistle>
 
BobbyD said:
You've had more games postponed than le arse? I suppose having more players out even though you could field 11 counts as okay though <whistle>
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We got kicked out of a competition due to an outbreak.
They chose to postpone a match because they had one player test positive.

As for the number of games, we've had four postponed, so far.
Our away game at Burnley was due to the weather and shouldn't have been called off.
The other three were Brighton, Leicester and Arsenal. Only Brighton was at our request.

Their move was so ****ty that they changed the rules. Both sides, though...
 
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Citizen Kane. said:
...and if they win all their remaining games, it will mean we didn't.
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The they are United West Ham and Wolves.

Ie goons lose to United, West Ham and spurs and win the rest but even if Wolves, United and West Ham win all their remaining games they still will not finish above Arsenal.
 
remembercolinlee said:
The they are United West Ham and Wolves.

Ie goons lose to United, West Ham and spurs and win the rest but even if Wolves, United and West Ham win all their remaining games they still will not finish above Arsenal.
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Yeah I think I got confused then Diego confused me further.

Bottom line is: we're fecked.

That much is clear.
 
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I probably haven't mentioned it for five minutes, but I really think the decision to postpone our match v Arsenal has had all sorts of implications for the destiny of the CL placings. Now I know it's idealistic and stupid to expect such things to be decided on merit by playing football matches, but I would expect the authorities to work toward such lofty aims. So when they intervene to ensure that a match isn't played for absolutely farcical reasons, you can add it to the ever lengthening list of non-merit related impact on things that should be decided on a football field.

It's ironic of course because we seems to have been kicked out of a competition because of having to postpone a match for legitimate reasons, while another team gets to manipulate the rules to avoid defeat*. I don't actually blame Arsenal for asking, I blame the authorities for letting them get away with it. And the consequences impact far more than the match itself. Maybe Arsenal don't go on their five match winning run as a result of losing, maybe we don't get to rewrite the dictionary definition of inconsistency. The point is that whatever happened after that decision might not have happened in the same way, and has tainted everything that followed.

* I trust nobody is going to argue that we might have lost that one. If Arsenal thought they had a chance they wouldn't have tried to postpone it would they?
 
BrunelGunner said:
As we saw yesterday, United's star qualities in attack can win them matches even when they don't deserve it. With us, it feels like we need to perform well all the time to win.
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@Dier Hard this is basically the point I was trying to make but in one sentence. It is absurd that a team containing Kane and Son still needs to play well almost every time it wins. There are far too few undeserved wins and this has been the case for years now. Arsenal don't have anyone near that level of ability, so why are they above us?
 
vimhawk said:
I probably haven't mentioned it for five minutes, but I really think the decision to postpone our match v Arsenal has had all sorts of implications for the destiny of the CL placings. Now I know it's idealistic and stupid to expect such things to be decided on merit by playing football matches, but I would expect the authorities to work toward such lofty aims. So when they intervene to ensure that a match isn't played for absolutely farcical reasons, you can add it to the ever lengthening list of non-merit related impact on things that should be decided on a football field.

It's ironic of course because we seems to have been kicked out of a competition because of having to postpone a match for legitimate reasons, while another team gets to manipulate the rules to avoid defeat*. I don't actually blame Arsenal for asking, I blame the authorities for letting them get away with it. And the consequences impact far more than the match itself. Maybe Arsenal don't go on their five match winning run as a result of losing, maybe we don't get to rewrite the dictionary definition of inconsistency. The point is that whatever happened after that decision might not have happened in the same way, and has tainted everything that followed.

* I trust nobody is going to argue that we might have lost that one. If Arsenal thought they had a chance they wouldn't have tried to postpone it would they?
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If come the end of the season we have missed out on CL football, it will have more to do with the following than the Arsenal game being postponed:

1) Hiring Nuno as manager after dithering most of the summer.
2) Losing to Palace
3) Losing to Soton
4) Losing to Wolves
5) Losing to Burnley

That's 12 points that any self-respecting team expecting CL football cannot afford to drop and still be taken seriously, unless they can pull multiple miracles out of the hat by beating teams above them and/or their rivals, which we don't do either unless the opposition wears sky blue.
 
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Citizen Kane. said:
@Dier Hard this is basically the point I was trying to make but in one sentence. It is absurd that a team containing Kane and Son still needs to play well almost every time it wins. There are far too few undeserved wins and this has been the case for years now. Arsenal don't have anyone near that level of ability, so why are they above us?
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Because I think averaging out the XIs, Arsenal probably have a more cohesive nature about them this season. Whilst I don’t think they have tons of top quality, I think they have a lot of players capable of putting in 6-6.5/10 performances most weeks and this was something I underestimated about them at the start of the season. I find this similar to West Ham too, I think West Ham are a very well drilled team that doesn’t have an abundance of amazing players but a bunch of good and consistent players that don’t drop below a 6 most weeks.

Whereas us, we have one guy generally capable of an 8.5 most weeks, one guy capable of an 8.5 for half a season but then a 4-5 for another half and then a lot of players who are at a 5 most weeks, some dropping as far down to 2s and 3s (Winks, Doherty, Sess). I’ll exclude new lads as it’s too early to get an average but Kulusevski for instance is looking capable of 7-7.5s with the scope for higher based on initial impressions.

So if then our 8.5 players don’t put in an 8.5, we’re more or less ****ed, as the majority operating at below a 6 are likely not good enough to get us where we need to be and unfortunately sometimes even when our 8.5s do put in an 8.5 or higher, we’re still capable of losing due to the lack of quality elsewhere.

Edit: So this is why the idea of saying Kane is a problem/ part of a problem or isn’t world class is false in my opinion, he just can’t solve all the problems and no one player essentially can, not even Messi or Ronaldo in their prime could when playing alongside some of these players. What we need to do is look at adding - at the very least - more 6s but ideally 7s, anything higher is a fantastic bonus.
 
Citizen Kane. said:
If come the end of the season we have missed out on CL football, it will have more to do with the following than the Arsenal game being postponed:

1) Hiring Nuno as manager after dithering most of the summer.
2) Losing to Palace
3) Losing to Soton
4) Losing to Wolves
5) Losing to Burnley

That's 12 points that any self-respecting team expecting CL football cannot afford to drop and still be taken seriously, unless they can pull multiple miracles out of the hat by beating teams above them and/or their rivals, which we don't do either unless the opposition wears sky blue.
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Which is missing my point. Nothing exists in a vacuum. Playing the Arsenal match would have affected every game following it. Three of the games you quoted followed the Arsenal match. Of course we can't say what would have happened for sure, nor can we be sure that beating Arsenal would have led to better overall results by now than not playing them. All I'm saying is that something out of our control has affected all subsequent results. My feeling is that it would have benefited subsequent matches.
 
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