It has to be said there was little between the teams on Sunday afternoon. A narrow 1-0 defeat at the hands of Manchester city, courtesy of a David Silva goal, proved to be enough to earn the home side all three points at the Etihad Stadium in an open end-to-end match. Unfortunately, Sunday’s defeat saw Arsenal fall 12 points adrift of the league leaders and ‘almost’ completely burying their title ambitions before the second half of fixtures even begin.
With that in mind, Gunners goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny is setting his sights on ending the league campaign above London rivals Tottenham, after Arsene Wenger cast doubt on Arsenal’s title chances. Though the Polish international still believes Arsenal have a shot at being crowned league champions come the end of May:
‘Getting above Tottenham is the main target. We don’t want to finish below them no matter what.
‘That’s just my personal ambition because I am one of the fans and so it means a lot to me to finish above them. I am confident we will do so.
‘They will slip up eventually. They have been in good form – you have to give it to them – but I am confident we are a better side and will finish above them. Time will tell if they can handle the pressure but they look good at the moment. Hopefully they will drop points in the second half of the season.’
He went on to say about the Man City game:
‘I don’t think there is a big gap between the teams in terms of quality.
‘They just got the winning goal and that was the difference. But we showed that we are just as good as the richest team and possibly, at the moment, the best team in the league so that gives us confidence we can beat everyone else.
‘They will drop points. They lost against Chelsea, who are a good side, and they seemed to have got their confidence back.’
He finished off by saying:
‘We are confident, playing well while they are on top of the league but United are catching up. Everyone can win it still. It is too big a gap but we hope we can make it smaller and then we can talk about challenging for the title. We are confident going into the Christmas period that we can get the results.’
The position we find ourselves in isn’t exactly what you would expect from Arsenal, especially if history tells us anything, but being ruled out of the title race so early on with more than half the season to go is an absolute joke.
They (the media) once said we would not be able to keep up with the likes of ‘ambitious’ Liverpool and big spenders Chelsea, and yet here we are, level on points with Liverpool and just three behind Chelsea. Am I the only one, apart from Szczesny of course, who still believes we have a shot at the Premier league title? We’ve already proven one set of pundits wrong; why not go for the entire footballing world?
Finishing above Spurs is almost inevitable, as I don’t see them as a team able to cope with the demands of the Premier League when the going gets tough, or when injuries arise. Yes they’ve had a brilliant start to the campaign and I have to give credit where credit is due. However, truth be told, Arsenal are the better team.
Could you imagine ending the season below Spurs! Something unthinkable and has never happened, and we hope it stays that way
If Arsene Wenger manages to makes a few key signings and add some quality to the squad during the January transfer window, then I don’t see why we can’t finish above our London rivals and possibly top the table at the end of the season.
Just as a side note, would it be too much to ask for a ‘come back when you have won 13 titles’ banner whenever we play Spurs!?
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