I definitely think we should be all in on the Europa League. It's a ticket to the Champions' League and a meaningful trophy in and of itself. But can we finish in a top four spot in the league? Last week I'd have said "No way". But this weekend's results saw us get three points closer to a troubled Chelsea and two points closer to Liverpool and Tottenham. Assuming the Manchester clubs are uncatchable, we'd need to finish above two of those three. Here's the table. We're five points and a bad goal differential from fourth place. Our recent form has been poor. We have not shored up the defense. But we have strengthened the attack. (I am not trying to say Mikhi is better than Alexis or Auba is better than Giroud; I am saying that we'll score more goals with the team going forward than we would have without the personnel changes, for a lot of reasons.) We've already played Chelsea twice and can do them no more damage. We play Spurs on Saturday. Chelsea play Spurs and Liverpool later in the season. If we do the business at Wembley vs Spurs, we need to do two points better than them in the other 11 games. It's doable. Chelsea has a brutal schedule and they are not looking good right now, so yeah, we can overhaul them. Liverpool has the easiest league schedule and I expect they'll finish in third, but they could crack. So, sure we have a chance. Much depends on Saturday's early game.
Giroud was brought on for a short-handed Chelsea shortly before they equalized today, but Watford closed out the game in style and left Conte looking haunted. I like him and think he'd be good at Arsenal, but I'm not sure he'd be good for Arsenal, if you take my meaning. He'd have to understand that he had to work with our board, and that most of our spending has already been done, so he wouldn't be getting a big war chest this summer. Wenger really seems to have lost the plot, but maybe he'll regain some of his mojo. It seems to me that his tactical flubs have cost us points this season.
No comments:
Post a Comment