Crimbo and New Years fixtures

Timbob

Arsenal; Wolves (h), QPR (h), Fulham (a)
Liverpool; Newcastle (h), Man City (a)
Chelsea; Aston Villa (h), Wolves (a)
Spurs; Norwich (a), Swansea (a), West Brom (h)
Utd; Blackburn (h), Newcastle (a)
City; Sunderland (a), Liverpool (h)

I'm liking Liverpool's fixtures, especially as their next league game after New Years is against Stoke 2 days after playing City in the CC semi. Think they could be 5-6 points behind us come mid Jan. City have quite a trying run of games coming up too, with league, Carling cup and Utd in the FA cup, we'll see what they're made of.

lorddulaarsenal

Nine points from our games and things will start looking Milhouse

Klaus

Liverpool won't get more than three points out of those fixtures at best. Expect Spurs to fuck up somewhere too because that's what they do.

Tony Montana

So far we've been doing worse than them.

As for Liverpool we can laugh but we're only a point ahead.

Klaus

League position is detemined by total points accumulated after 38 games, not 18. So far it's been two decades since we did worse than Spurs and they don't really have the quality to change the scales at the moment.

lorddulaarsenal

I think you're under rating them klaus

Mirth

Spurs are a legit threat. Unless King gets injured for an extended period. Liverpool and Chelsea are as weak as us at the moment.

Although Chelsea look set to make a few transfers this January and leave us behind.

lorddulaarsenal

Ah fuck off

Claudius

Klaus, are you still on with your 'Í expect Spurs to fuck up' routine?
Right now they're playing their rapier football, and Bale is back to scoring. Looking back, I wish we had nabbed him instead of Walcott.
Spurs are going to finish 3rd unless something catastrophic happens.

4th will be a two-way battle between us and Chelsea. I don't expect Liverpool to survive the blow of being without their two best players for over a month. They'll fall below Newcastle in that period.

Klaus

Caligula wrote:
Klaus, are you still on with your 'Í expect Spurs to fuck up' routine?

There's no routine. It's just an estimation based on the quality of their squad. They will drop a lot of points in the next few months. If we somehow should finish behind them it will be our own doing.

Nela

They won't be able to keep up the pace and energy they play with. How damaging that drop will be reamains to be seen though.

Having said that, we could learn a thing or two from them(ew) and United about attacking directly with pace and energy.

Claudius

Spurs do not have European games for the rest of the season, Nela. They can survive the rest of the season playing this fast-break football. If they weren't our reviled neighbors, they'd actually be quite admirable. They play direct football and have had a very good transfer policy over the last 3 or 4 years while being able to retain good players on small salaries. We can learn something from the scum.

Klaus

Only thing we can learn from them is how to finish 5th, which we're actually well on our way to do. I wouldn't count it as a valuable lesson though.

Tony Montana

Klaus wrote:
League position is detemined by total points accumulated after 38 games, not 18. So far it's been two decades since we did worse than Spurs and they don't really have the quality to change the scales at the moment.

That's the final league position yeah.

But we have a table now already.

Klaus

We had a league table after the first five games too when we looked like we were going to get relegated. It means nothing until all the games have been played.

Tony Montana

It sort of does, because after 5 games we knew we weren't gonna win anything and we knew 4th place was seriously in doubt....which is still the case.

I mean we're relying on 2/3 teams to fuck up because we are not kicking on as we should.

Claudius

Tony, we've played half a season of football. Not sure how much more information people need.
We are actually not an awful team. We are doing reasonably well. The problem is

United and Citeh are performing as well as any team in Premier League history, despite all the United fans claims of a disastrous season.
Spurs have kept their stars and built an excellent team, moving ahead of us and Chelsea.

United and City will finish on late 80s/early 90s, Spurs will finish on late 70s, early 80s and we will finish on mid 70s in terms of points.

y va marquer

Based on our respective form, performances and results it's just empty bravado right now saying we'll finish ahead of Spurs.

It's pathetic that we've put ourselves in a position where it's completely out of our hands.
Sure they might collapse but I don't exactly see us making it to the end of the season without further screw ups.

Biggus

Who's "we" and "us"?
It's Wenger's fault- He won't invest in the squad.

lorddulaarsenal

It's strange cos the one thing you could count on him to do was replace departing talent with top notch replacements. When Anelka left we got Henry, Pires in when overmars went, nasri in after Pires etc.

Time to replace cesc, though not like for like