The next 5: Page 5 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

The next 5

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert

Play like we did today and it won't be good. Jesus needs to find himself again. Or find Jesus.

lorddulaarsenal

Could really do with a fit ESR for this period

Qwiss

Hopefully surgery goes well cos we'll need him more after Christmas.

banduan

IBL wrote:
Southampton next Sunday at theirs, usually a gauranteed loss for us, we really need to overturn this trend to keep the momentum going.

we've got way too many hoodoo fixtures.

Qwiss

Like Liverpool and Palace?

goon

Not sure about it being a hoodoo fixture, quick check up tells me we've won 2 and lost 1 in the league there since Arteta has come in and we're in a better shape than ever.

A draw away to Southampton isn't the worst result in the world in isolation but we need to win for a few reasons. Firstly because it would be on the back of that Leeds game/performance which would start planting some seeds of doubt. Secondly because we've got Chelsea away soon and we need to take the pressure off the result of that game.

Qwiss

We need to be winning every game thats not the Chelsea one, a draw there would be acceptable.

Tam

I was watching Chelsea Villa yesterday as I struggled to get a stream for our game, and they weren't that all that impressive. Villa were better than their position suggests and kept out by an extremely good Kepa, but there wasn't anything from Chelsea that worried me. Their two goals were both the results of massive errors, one being poor positioning and movement on a freekick from forum favourite Emi Martinez. If we tighten up the form a little I've every confidence we walk away from Chelsea with a positive result.

Pepe LeFrits

Next 2 weeks:

Arsenal vs Southampton (a), Forest (h)
City vs Brighton (h), Leicester (a)
Spurs vs Man United (a), Newcastle (h), Bournemouth (a)
Chelsea vs Brentford (a), Man United (h), Brighton (a)
Liverpool vs West Ham (h), Forest (a), Leeds (h)
Man United vs Spurs (h), Chelsea (a), West Ham (h)

Win our next two games and we could be looking very good in the top 4 battle at least. Expect Liverpool will be up to 5th by then also

MistaT

Would love a Tottenham tie/loss somewhere soon.

Don’t rate Chelsea or Manchester United, while Liverpool will struggle to catch up

goon

Those runs for Spurs, United and Chelsea look delicious.

To be perfectly honest it would need an incredibly underwhelming final 2/3rds of the season to miss out on top 4 - I think we're underestimating a little how good our start has been. Even if we need a record equalling 76 points for 4th, we'd only need 1.75 points per game for the remainder of the season. Win our next two and it's 1.65. To put that into context we'd be able to drop points in nearly half of our remaining games.

Bit like Chelsea last season, as bad as they become they were never really in any danger of missing out on top four simply due to how well they started.

Qwiss

Missing out on top 4 now would require a complete collapse, I'm not worried about that really.

Clrnc

Qwiss! wrote:
Missing out on top 4 now would require a complete collapse, I'm not worried about that really.

You just brought back bad memories from last season when most of us said this as we were so far ahead of Spurs at one stage.

Burnwinter

What it pretty much requires, over the remainder of the season, is at least four of these things happening (probabilities just sticking my finger in the air):

A 4 point turnaround with City (on the cards) - 90%
A 4 point turnaround with Spurs (happened last season, within the realm of possibility) - 50%
An 8 point turnaround with Chelsea with a game in hand (not impossible) - 50%
An 11 point turnaround with United with a game in hand (less likely) - 30%
A 14 point turnaround with Liverpool with a game in hand (less likely) - 30%
A 12 point turnaround with Newcastle (would have to say that's pretty unlikely) - 10%

Not actually sure how to calculate the overall chance with the six different probabilities, don't have a handy Poisson Binomial Distribution calculator.

But if you simplify the idea and model it as 100% City gets past us, and 30% on average the other five do, then it works out about a 16% chance we miss top four.

Burnwinter

Incidentally the bookies have us at about 1/5 to get top four (City 1/150), which matches up surprisingly well with my bullshit above.

RocktheCasbah

Clrnc wrote:
Qwiss! wrote:
Missing out on top 4 now would require a complete collapse, I'm not worried about that really.

You just brought back bad memories from last season when most of us said this as we were so far ahead of Spurs at one stage.

The difference this season is that we're not just dealing with Spurs. There are 11 points between us and United in 5th - and whilst they have a game in hand, given that they're playing Spurs this week, it doesn't feel certain to me that they'll win that. That gives us a fair bit of space for fuck ups (historically, not beyond Arsenal, I know) but there is something different going on with this team. Even our luck appears to be turning.

So whilst I wouldn't discount City, Spurs and possibly even Chelsea overtaking us this season, it's asking a lot of both Liverpool AND United just to get themselves back in the game. Not saying it won't happen, but they can't afford many more slip ups and - we know this from last season, that brings its own pressure.

Clrnc

RocktheCasbah wrote:
Clrnc wrote:
You just brought back bad memories from last season when most of us said this as we were so far ahead of Spurs at one stage.

The difference this season is that we're not just dealing with Spurs. There are 11 points between us and United in 5th - and whilst they have a game in hand, given that they're playing Spurs this week, it doesn't feel certain to me that they'll win that. That gives us a fair bit of space for fuck ups (historically, not beyond Arsenal, I know) but there is something different going on with this team. Even our luck appears to be turning.

So whilst I wouldn't discount City, Spurs and possibly even Chelsea overtaking us this season, it's asking a lot of both Liverpool AND United just to get themselves back in the game. Not saying it won't happen, but they can't afford many more slip ups and - we know this from last season, that brings its own pressure.

Yeah I agree.

To be honest reading all the stats and watching the team with our own eye test, I would say we are legit title challengers as long as we strengthen the team in january. The first team is good enough, the backups, not so.

Pepe LeFrits

We've had catastrophic runs before under Arteta, which looked like our second half vs Leeds, repeated over sequences of matches. I'm not saying I think that'll happen this season as we are clearly a much better side than previous iterations, but I wouldn't totally rule it out. Injuries to the likes of Partey and Jesus could hit us hard and there's no guarantee we'll be able to do good business in January.

I remain cautious, but optimistic

RocktheCasbah

Fair.

Hopefully, we can get at least 10 points out of the next 4, 37 points from 14 games will be leaving us looking very tidy running into the World Cup. Although, just looking at the Christmas/New Year period - Brighton away on NYE and then Newcastle home less than 48 hours later (assuming these aren't rearranged for TV) looks a bit bananaish.

Sicario

Brighton under new manager are a shadow of the side they were.

And Arteta will give the mother of all speeches ahead of Newcastle at home following what they did to us last game.

Artets’s biggest job is to continue to ensure the players have the fire in the belly they are clearly showing after what happened last season and how we lost 4th place the way we did. Almost in an unjust way (Spurs away officiating).

He needs to remind them every time and to make sure the players go in every game looking to rectify what happened last Spring and more.

In short, we have to continue being a wounded animal, never give in.

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