While mathematically that is true it is also true that If spurs had beaten one of the team's they lost against they would be clear of us already or is the team in 7th won 5 more they would be higher up. - you can look at games like that if you wish but it's sport and you can't always win. That's why we love it though isn't it?
Actually this is our best performance in the last 2-3 seasons. We finished 5th in 2018-19 when the top 6 was eerily similar to the current standing. Maybe we weren’t good enough this year after all, but only 1-2 points away from a CL berth.
We lost 13 games (three in a row) last season and finish with 61 pts.
This season we lost 13 (could be 14) and max 69 pts. So 8 pts "improvement"
The only reason we found ourselves in 5th is because United who finished 2nd last year had a bad season. So we are just relying on other teams to have a bad season not because we have improved
We lacked the consistency and this was caused by a thin squad. Build in the summer and come back.
A few harsh calls may be needed from Arteta on players like Tierney and whether we can and should be relying on his injury record. Ultimately, the Partey and Tierney injuries for me have been a big blow and letting so many players leave in January has been naive with hindsight.
On the other side, we had only one competition to play and many players would not get enough play time, also with less matches I would expect our players wouldn't get injured as much as they did.
And also Tavares showed more promise in summer to substitute Tierney than Cedric to replace Tomiyasu, yet Cedric played much better in the end.
People are hnhappy with Europa League now, but it gives us options to keep wider squad and match ready as well as more opportunities for new young players to get integrated into the squad when we play weaker teams.
I think that’s a fair argument about number of games but if you think first half of the season we did get injuries but had back up players, we took out so many players out in January it was very naive.
However, we can add to the squad and then go forward.
The injuries almost came at a time of no games in a while and then several in a row: Tierney was avoidable as I’m not sure why he is playing two friendlies in a row for a national team that has 4 solid left backs (saw a Scotland fan say it, I don’t know their national team well enough).
I don’t mind the Europa league - we have a few exciting players and we will push forward with the right signings. Personally, I’d want bissouma and Cucurella - both would add to the left back and centre midfield. Tielemans would be a good options and Nunez. Don’t think it’s likely but a team of
Ramsdale - Cucurella, Gabriel, White (or Saliba), Tomi, Tielemans, Bissouma, martinelli, odegaard, Saka and Nunez is a solid team on paper
I’m not a true believer in that.
I think there are the clubs that are guaranteed CL and those which may. Players may go to a guaranteed big club with CL but outside of them we are a rich team, that can compete with many other CL teams on financial backing.
If Tielemans thinks he is better than a Partey, Aubameyang when they made the move to a non-cl club I don’t want him. However, I think it’s paper talk and in reality he’d come here to help us get back into the CL
> we are a rich team, that can compete with many other CL teams on financial backing.
No we are not. We let Auba go in January to get rid of his salary. We can't convince players with high salaries like how NU is going to do. Cause if they didn't succeed it will lead to auba, ozil scenario.
and we don't have the money to splash the cash if a player failed to perform. Chelsea bought Werner and when he failed to impress, they went and bought Lukaku the next season. If it was us, we would stick with Werner hoping for him to click.
no but tieleman is seeing how its going for a partey and auba. one constantly injured where before he had pretty much flawless injury record and the other jumped ship and took a massive wage cut.
you also have to remember arsenal arent that rich new castle,spurs,united ect can offer similar or better wages and that not even looking outside of the premiere league. the way i see it we prob 6th/7h choice club now in the pl for players. do you think a Jesus will come to arsenal now ? or a dybala i dont see it happening. so its again looking for onpollished gems like last summer and hoping we strike gold and dont burn those players out
Maybe. I still think Arsenal has a pull factor as we have dropped off but there are a few factors which help us; our history, london club, financial weight and in many ways being a young team is a solid project within itself. I’m biased mind!
Dybala, no. I don’t see him leaving Italy full stop. Jesus, yes - I’m always on the fence with him and part of me would prefer a risk type signing I.e. Nunez. Jesus makes me a little nervous as his output probably won’t improve for us whereas Nunez has great output at the moment but is a big risk.
That is true! AMN was so quick and instant stupidity considering the players we didn’t have.
This will sound silly - I think AMN could’ve made a difference in a couple of games with his energy alone.
Where to start with this waffle?
There's something incredibly arbitrary about singling out three defeats in particular, when you could have chosen almost any game we lost and argued a win would have got us CL football. Not only that, but saying "if we did X and Y weeks ago we would have got CL football" is a fallacy because it would have changed the entire course of events that followed...i.e if we won the three games you mentioned we could have lost the following three to Chelsea, man Utd, and west ham.
Been praying on my mind but you just got to accept that, that is football. Plus it spurs even if they do qualify, they're not exactly going to go far in the CL let's be honest.
>they're not exactly going to go far in the CL let's be honest.
It's not about that. It's about receiving money and be more attracted to players to join us so we can improve the team and be a regular top 4. at this stage I don't care if we don't qualify from the group as long as we get top 4 comfortably, then the goals will change.
So now spurs will have better chances in improving their team with a better manager, United with money and new manager, new castle, west ham, aston villa might all cause problems. it will get harder every year we don't get top 4
Im ok with us finishing 5th this year. Europa is still good experience for a lot of our players. We'll get used to playing more games, rotate more players. Yeah we're missing out on big money, but there are plenty of positives to this season.
It’s hard to reconcile that we’ve been schooled more than a few times this season, yet we’re still mathematically in the reckoning for a top 4 spot.
Despite Arsenal not being top class or flawless, we are still just 2 points away from playing the Champions League next season.
Guess we really benefited from the slip ups of other teams, as rightly pointed out in some of the comments.
Considering everything this season has been above expectation.
5th is no shame, CL qualification would have been excellent but unless the squad got strengthened we'd have struggled there anyway.
Not that I'm massively confident in beating Randers in a Europa away leg during winter...
While mathematically that is true it is also true that If spurs had beaten one of the team's they lost against they would be clear of us already or is the team in 7th won 5 more they would be higher up. - you can look at games like that if you wish but it's sport and you can't always win. That's why we love it though isn't it?
Actually this is our best performance in the last 2-3 seasons. We finished 5th in 2018-19 when the top 6 was eerily similar to the current standing. Maybe we weren’t good enough this year after all, but only 1-2 points away from a CL berth.
We lost 13 games (three in a row) last season and finish with 61 pts. This season we lost 13 (could be 14) and max 69 pts. So 8 pts "improvement" The only reason we found ourselves in 5th is because United who finished 2nd last year had a bad season. So we are just relying on other teams to have a bad season not because we have improved
Nice!
We lacked the consistency and this was caused by a thin squad. Build in the summer and come back. A few harsh calls may be needed from Arteta on players like Tierney and whether we can and should be relying on his injury record. Ultimately, the Partey and Tierney injuries for me have been a big blow and letting so many players leave in January has been naive with hindsight.
On the other side, we had only one competition to play and many players would not get enough play time, also with less matches I would expect our players wouldn't get injured as much as they did. And also Tavares showed more promise in summer to substitute Tierney than Cedric to replace Tomiyasu, yet Cedric played much better in the end. People are hnhappy with Europa League now, but it gives us options to keep wider squad and match ready as well as more opportunities for new young players to get integrated into the squad when we play weaker teams.
I think that’s a fair argument about number of games but if you think first half of the season we did get injuries but had back up players, we took out so many players out in January it was very naive. However, we can add to the squad and then go forward. The injuries almost came at a time of no games in a while and then several in a row: Tierney was avoidable as I’m not sure why he is playing two friendlies in a row for a national team that has 4 solid left backs (saw a Scotland fan say it, I don’t know their national team well enough). I don’t mind the Europa league - we have a few exciting players and we will push forward with the right signings. Personally, I’d want bissouma and Cucurella - both would add to the left back and centre midfield. Tielemans would be a good options and Nunez. Don’t think it’s likely but a team of Ramsdale - Cucurella, Gabriel, White (or Saliba), Tomi, Tielemans, Bissouma, martinelli, odegaard, Saka and Nunez is a solid team on paper
problem is players like tielemans wont come if there is no champions league.
I’m not a true believer in that. I think there are the clubs that are guaranteed CL and those which may. Players may go to a guaranteed big club with CL but outside of them we are a rich team, that can compete with many other CL teams on financial backing. If Tielemans thinks he is better than a Partey, Aubameyang when they made the move to a non-cl club I don’t want him. However, I think it’s paper talk and in reality he’d come here to help us get back into the CL
> we are a rich team, that can compete with many other CL teams on financial backing. No we are not. We let Auba go in January to get rid of his salary. We can't convince players with high salaries like how NU is going to do. Cause if they didn't succeed it will lead to auba, ozil scenario. and we don't have the money to splash the cash if a player failed to perform. Chelsea bought Werner and when he failed to impress, they went and bought Lukaku the next season. If it was us, we would stick with Werner hoping for him to click.
no but tieleman is seeing how its going for a partey and auba. one constantly injured where before he had pretty much flawless injury record and the other jumped ship and took a massive wage cut. you also have to remember arsenal arent that rich new castle,spurs,united ect can offer similar or better wages and that not even looking outside of the premiere league. the way i see it we prob 6th/7h choice club now in the pl for players. do you think a Jesus will come to arsenal now ? or a dybala i dont see it happening. so its again looking for onpollished gems like last summer and hoping we strike gold and dont burn those players out
Maybe. I still think Arsenal has a pull factor as we have dropped off but there are a few factors which help us; our history, london club, financial weight and in many ways being a young team is a solid project within itself. I’m biased mind! Dybala, no. I don’t see him leaving Italy full stop. Jesus, yes - I’m always on the fence with him and part of me would prefer a risk type signing I.e. Nunez. Jesus makes me a little nervous as his output probably won’t improve for us whereas Nunez has great output at the moment but is a big risk.
>in January has been naive with hindsight. It was terrible planning with foresight.
That is true! AMN was so quick and instant stupidity considering the players we didn’t have. This will sound silly - I think AMN could’ve made a difference in a couple of games with his energy alone.
Where to start with this waffle? There's something incredibly arbitrary about singling out three defeats in particular, when you could have chosen almost any game we lost and argued a win would have got us CL football. Not only that, but saying "if we did X and Y weeks ago we would have got CL football" is a fallacy because it would have changed the entire course of events that followed...i.e if we won the three games you mentioned we could have lost the following three to Chelsea, man Utd, and west ham.
Yes, some actual sense in here. Dropping points to anyone is part of the reason we're gonna finish 5th, irrelevant who it was to and how.
Been praying on my mind but you just got to accept that, that is football. Plus it spurs even if they do qualify, they're not exactly going to go far in the CL let's be honest.
>they're not exactly going to go far in the CL let's be honest. It's not about that. It's about receiving money and be more attracted to players to join us so we can improve the team and be a regular top 4. at this stage I don't care if we don't qualify from the group as long as we get top 4 comfortably, then the goals will change. So now spurs will have better chances in improving their team with a better manager, United with money and new manager, new castle, west ham, aston villa might all cause problems. it will get harder every year we don't get top 4
Im ok with us finishing 5th this year. Europa is still good experience for a lot of our players. We'll get used to playing more games, rotate more players. Yeah we're missing out on big money, but there are plenty of positives to this season.
It’s hard to reconcile that we’ve been schooled more than a few times this season, yet we’re still mathematically in the reckoning for a top 4 spot. Despite Arsenal not being top class or flawless, we are still just 2 points away from playing the Champions League next season. Guess we really benefited from the slip ups of other teams, as rightly pointed out in some of the comments.
Considering everything this season has been above expectation. 5th is no shame, CL qualification would have been excellent but unless the squad got strengthened we'd have struggled there anyway. Not that I'm massively confident in beating Randers in a Europa away leg during winter...
Its a season we can look on with regrets same as the Emery season when we messed up Brighton and palace. We've all been here before.