They think it’s all over




6th place. Played 21. 36 points. 2 points off fourth with a game in hand. If you had offered that to me at the start of the season, let alone after the first three games, I would have bitten your hand off and taken it with glee. Let’s not forget after all that this is a season that no one expected us to challenge for top four, so to be well in with a shout past the halfway point is a position that should not be sniffed at.

Yet following the disappointing 0-0 draw yesterday against Burnley, my Twitter feed was full of doom and gloom. Comments that the season was over, we’re never getting top four, there’s no progress and the manager needs to be sacked.


Now, I will absolutely agree that drawing 0-0 at home to bottom club Burnley is disappointing. Regardless of absentees (Partey and Xhaka missing from the middle in particular) you would expect the team that was out there to have had enough to dispose of a team that only has 1 win all season. It was a line up after all that included Martinelli, Smith-Rowe, Saka, and Odegaard, our four bright young attacking talents, and Lacazette who has knitted them together nicely in the last few months. 


Unfortunately, it was also a line up that hasn’t had much of a break or rotation. A lot of that of course is down to poor squad management. Letting Ainsley Maitland-Niles leave on loan so early in the window without a replacement for example may not have been the smartest move considering we knew we had AFCON to contend with. The lack of ability to rotate looks to have finally taken its toll, as fatigue looked evident throughout. Not just yesterday, but in the League cup Semi-Final defeat to Liverpool as well.


Going into January, we were all expecting a tough month and it has materialized. We had fixtures with Manchester City and the aforementioned semi which was scheduled to sandwich the North London Derby. On paper it was always going to be a tough month and so it has transpired. But it hasn’t been without positives. For the first hour or so against City, we played some of the best football we have seen under Arteta and were unlucky to come away without a point. We went to Anfield, played with 10 men for an hour and held them to a 0-0 draw, a result that was albeit undone by the 2-0 defeat last Thursday, but showed the fight in this team. In hindsight, looking at how the squad is now, we were probably fortunate to get the postponement of the derby and will hopefully be able to go at it with a strong lineup when it is rescheduled.


What this month has done is put in even clearer focus what is required, as if we didn’t already know. We need another central midfield option, and we need a quality goal scorer. This was known at the start of the window but has been really hammered home as the month has gone on. Should the transfer window close next Monday and we have filled neither of these positions it would be bordering on negligence from Edu and the board. 


We find ourselves with an opportunity to get back in the Champions League when no one expected us to. Filing those positions could quite literally be the difference between finishing 4th and finishing 7th. We still have to play our three main rivals for that fourth spot, Manchester United, West Ham and Tottenham, in the second half of the season. If, and it’s a big if, we win our games in hand then we control our own destiny. The £70-80m outlay for that quality striker would be paid back with Champions League qualification and all the riches that brings. Surely it’s a gamble worth taking if you back the manager.


The squad now head off to Dubai for some warm weather training and a bit of rest and relaxation. We don’t have a game until the 10th of February when we travel to Wolves for what will be a tough contest. Far from the doom mongers I mentioned earlier, I don’t believe our season is over and I don’t think top four is out of reach. I believe that we can get to where we want to go this season. I will believe it even more if we get the business done that we all know needs to be done. This is one of the most pivotal weeks of our season, and we aren’t even playing a game. Let’s hope that Edu can pull it out of the bag and get the reinforcements that we need going in to these 17 cup finals that will define our season.

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