I’ll be the first to say that we shouldn’t be expecting to win the league this year.
But we can get better with more playing time.
Arsenal despite their bench strength seem to have a self imposed (arteta driven) limit.
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It is such a bizarre situation. I still think LFC had no business winning the title last year, but between City imploding and Arsenal playing it safe at every opportunity, we simply did. That in turn creates somewhat unfair expectations for this side, which looks to me like it should be better.
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Yup. I think it’s the transistion, but I do think the skys the limit. In fact I think the CL might be where we nail it this season, maybe not win but a final if we do well early doors.
However saying all this if we can stay in it I do think we can be champions. It’s this early period. And we both have wins in games where teams will struggle to pick up points. After all we are +2 on last season already.
A win feels like it’s needed at the weekend but we will see, a draw might be fine, at least Spurs look good this season so their derbies won’t be a formality.
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Our league season does seem quite frontloaded, by our 10th match we will have played all 5 of last year’s Top 6. That is not ideal for a team still very obviously coming together, but it should mean the second quarter of the season is a softer run. It also means that Arteta should be going for the jugular on Sunday.
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Yeah, totally agree. I see us having a patchy start, but getting stronger and stronger as the season goes on and really coming into our own after Xmas.
Of course, a lot depends on what happens in the next couple of days.
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That is always my hope but we almost always have a sticky patch just after Christmas and sort to unsteadily stagger through to May…
It could also just be that my view changes as the season’s competitions start to conclude - due to the games in the second half of the season usually meaning a bit more.
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We don’t though, we did on a couple of seasons but one of those patches went on towards late March.
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If we beat these on Sunday then by the time we start our tricky run of fixtures (Palace away) we could already have 15pts from 5 games and there would be daylight between us and our rivals. We’d be on a roll by then and suddenly those difficult fixtures don’t look quite so tricky.
I really don’t get how Arsenal are suddenly favourites after signing a dummy up front.
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Arsenal’s biggest problem is Arteta.
He ain’t a League winning manager until he is, and until then I reckon the self-doubt will be one of our biggest advantages.
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I don’t think he’s that great a manager, this is also the issue here. Yeah he could win the title but is he elite not sure and that’s probably what will ultimately lead to him not winning major honour after major honour.
Lose on Sunday they will probably call for his head as is the fickle fan base.
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Because they only missed out last year because of the injuries (not true). Now the injuries are sorted (not true) they should be considered favourites again (wouldnt be true even if the previous one was true).
Havertz and Jesus are still out with undetermined return. Saka is out for a couple of months at least. White unexpectedly missed last week and so with Timber have a couple of important players with the physical reliability of Naby.
But their pub league striker who runs fast scored against Leeds last week. So they’re favourites.
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Take a bow Josh King.
Lol, if VAR rule this out I’m never watching another football game again.
Yep, trod on his foot. We would have wanted a foul there.
Entirely accidental and it didn’t affect anything anyway. Ridiculous decision.
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Ridiculous overturn.
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Goldbridge going spare.
‘Football in this country is in the mud!!!’
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bloody joke of a review. a genuine goal chalked off for a non-existent foul
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it’s one of the ones where if we score and it gets overturned we are incensed but if we concede we are relieved the ref overturns it
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And if that goal is allowed to stand against us despite replays showing our player’s foot trod on, the decision would have been moaned about all the following week.
I am not in favour of football becoming a non contact sport but that does appear to be the way the game is going with fans calling foul for every coming together.
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The irony will be they will review that, admit it was the wrong call, and when it happens to us they will justify it as accidental collision…