Claudius wrote:

Qwiss! wrote:

Imagine Ozil playing in the Championship next season. Probably earns more than some XIs he'd face.

I imagine all these contracts would be voided if we were relegated. No more Ozil or Mustafi

Yeah, then we will be moaning about guys like Alex Tettey and Jordan Stevens.

Our recruitment is so bad, I would rather keep our shit players because I'm afraid that the new signings will be even worse.

We cried for years about Olivier Giroud, and then replaced him Alexandre Lacazette. Jesus!

Now we are moaning about Alexandre Lacazette and I don't want to imagine who we will replace him with.

Claudius wrote:

Qwiss! wrote:

Imagine Ozil playing in the Championship next season. Probably earns more than some XIs he'd face.

I imagine all these contracts would be voided if we were relegated. No more Ozil or Mustafi

I doubt it.

Yeah can't see there being a way to void contracts. It's what people always say about clubs who come up and over spend that they risk their status of they go down. Would apply to us just that nobody would have believed we'd be in such s predicament.

As a team your position in the league determines what you're status is. We are now at the half way point for the season and the fact is we are very close to being in the relegation dog fight and irrespective of how well you think of players or the squad the reality is what do they perform like in their current circumstances.

In terms of having a close game against Chelsea well Southampton beat them so what does that say about where Southampton are our should been.

Also I have zero faith in this board to invest money sensibly and in areas where it's actually needed so no confidence they can spend us out of this crisis.

here are our league fixtures, along with the place in the league the other team is. this is in order

man united (5)
@ palace (9)
sheffield united (8)
@ chelsea (4)
@ burnley (13)
newcastle (11)
everton (10)
@ man city (3)
west ham (17)
@ brighton (14)
@ southampton (15)
norwich (20)
@ wolves (7)
leicester city (2)
@ spuds (6)
liverpool (1)
@ aston villa (18)
watford (19)

we are 6 points above the relegation zone with 18 games left to play. the worst arsenal season of my lifetime.

Didn't realise our 2nd half fixtures are tougher.

My goodness

We are playing all the teams in the league.
I don’t know why I’m not that stressed. Maybe I feel like we’ve been through the worst. I think folks underestimate the amount of turmoil we faced in the first half of the season. Mesut and Kola missing the start of the season because of those thugs, Laca missing the start of the season with injury, Pépé not settling, and then Xhaka doing his thing. Top it all with the worst managed managerial transition in recent memory.

Can the second half of the season have that much turmoil?

Every team can say the same. It's pointless to point out the specifics. Before the season most of us are confident as hell in top 4. People told me we don't need to improve the squad much because we are exactly 1 point away from top 4 last season. That's how good we are I'm told.

We are now 11 points behind rookie Lampard's transfer banned Chelsea. They have more young players than us to blood in. United under a crap manager and a crap team is 7 ahead of us. Rodgers is laughed and dissed by a lot of people here but he is +18 points ahead and +28 goals up. No matter how you measure if, this is not recoverable.

I fear we don't have the right mentality in us for a relegation dogfight. We need to pick up some wins very quickly otherwise we will be in serious trouble by March. Got to spend big in January. We need 2 fullbacks a CM and a CB .

GooneriC wrote:

I fear we don't have the right mentality in us for a relegation dogfight. We need to pick up some wins very quickly otherwise we will be in serious trouble by March. Got to spend big in January. We need 2 fullbacks a CM and a CB .

reality: we will sell xhaka and not replace him, and we might bring in a denis suarez 2.0 on loan. we almost never make big january moves. or even moderate january moves.

Have no choice this time. Either we do it or we go down.

GooneriC wrote:

Have no choice this time. Either we do it or we go down.

Lolz, really?

You saw no positives out of today? If we can perform like we did today, the results will come. Shouldn't expect to finish top four but we're not going to get relegated.

We won't be relegated, be real guys. Just treat the league as practice matches and make sure we finish at least mid table. Conserve energy and prepare every Europa League match like do or die. Go all out and win that fucking trophy.

Nobody will care if we finish 17th if we win it.

Of course there were positives , we played very well in the first half. But the second half showed all the limitations of our squad. We need to sign better players , the ones we have arent going to get us out of trouble right now.

GooneriC wrote:

Of course there were positives , we played very well in the first half. But the second half showed all the limitations of our squad. We need to sign better players , the ones we have arent going to get us out of trouble right now.

This is more or less the squad that finished 5th last year. The issues we've suffered this year are about how to organise the team. If we can form a cohesive unit (and there are positive signs we can), we'll be fine.

Losing to a top four team when we're so low on confidence should hold no shame. The manner of it was excruciating but bar an individual error, we would have at least got a point from today.

The teams 5th through 12th are somewhat similar. They are all teams that are struggling to string together a series of wins. The teams 14-18th look like potential contenders for the last relegation spot. We are low in the table, but we look more like the 5th places team than we do the 14th or 15th team. Just look at the results and the table. We should be fine.

That said, we need to stop the rot and stabilize. And then we need to really be brutal this summer. Complete clear out. All the laggards, the tea lady, the rabbits. Everything goes.

Our form is shocking. Yes we looked good in terms of shape, but where are the fucking goals or at least chances created coming from? That is what's petrifying me. We can't beat anybody.

mdgoonah41 wrote:

GooneriC wrote:

I fear we don't have the right mentality in us for a relegation dogfight. We need to pick up some wins very quickly otherwise we will be in serious trouble by March. Got to spend big in January. We need 2 fullbacks a CM and a CB .

reality: we will sell xhaka and not replace him, and we might bring in a denis suarez 2.0 on loan. we almost never make big january moves. or even moderate january moves.

We already have Suarez 2.0, so I guess we're going for the trilogy.