It’d be very hard to justify Arteta as manager of the year above Ten Hag if they finish above us from the position of being 11 behind us having played a game more at this stage.
Zero fucking chance Neville backs Arteta for manager of the year if that happens lol
United ain’t finishing above us anyways, it’s all a moot point, two way race to the title that I think will be pretty tight between us and City.
Expecting 3rd place to be 15 points or so back.
De Zerbi should win MOTY if Arteta or Howe don’t win the league
Howe has a very good shout if Newcastle make CL.
I’m not even sure Man U are guaranteed top four anyway, let alone second place.
Apart from the top two, which will probably be us and Man City, any of Newcastle, Man U, Liverpool, Chelsea or spurs could get a CL place.
Neville doesn’t seem to realise that although they were on a good run, Man U have only beaten lower league or bottom of the PL teams and as soon as they came up against a decent team, they were beaten and outplayed.
That’s actually form though if your going for top 4.
Nah, think Arteta has it in the bag to be honest. We won’t finish lower than second. That will be enough.
Second? Not sure I’d buy that as manager of the year from here.
Not really charitable, just think it’s not as bad as some are making out. I strongly dislike G Nev.
Even though I was more specifically referring to finishing 2nd, you can quite easily map out a situation where we end up 3rd without having a massive collapse.
We could lose both games to City and draw a few more and get a bunch of injuries and United could go on a run and then stutter at the finish line too, making both ETH and Arteta look not so great. It doesn’t necessarily take something monumental.
Lose the 2 City games which is easily possible and it’s 6 points, lose at Newcastle or Liverpool or both and thats 12 points that might be dropped and not due to some massive collapse. Then throw in 2 or 3 draws and that could be almost 20 points dropped again without the big collapse you mention.
Losing to City twice, Newcastle once, Liverpool at Anfield and drawing vs Villa, Fulham, Chelsea and maybe a shitty draw at home vs the likes of Leeds/Palace isn’t crazy.
At the same time, our jump from last season to being genuine challengers is probably more impressive than ETH taking over a team that had a decent squad and spent 200m.
I personally think if we finished 3rd, ETH is more likely to win it but there’s certainly a possibility we gas out, get injuries and the length of the seaspn takes its toll and we dont finish as strongly as we started without falling to pieces in peak late-Wenger fashion.
Then you can look at performance compared to last year. Maybe the narrative will be that we should have won it from where we were at 19 games or maybe it’ll be that City hit their form, had a deep squad and we tried to fight on 2 or 3 fronts and didn’t have the depth but made it back to CL and showed we can genuinely contend again, maybe part of that is winning the EL as well and hence decline in league form due to load. I don’t think that would be the narrative but I also don’t know for sure.
And then you throw in the ultimate subjective factor which is how its judged and G Nev says he is looking at performance compared to last season. Others might consider performance relative to resources, in which case Howe is probably the guy.
That’s 8 games you have listed. You don’t think dropping points in about 50% of our remaining games is a bit too much given our form?
Neither 8 nor 9 are half of 19, simple maths lol
And no I don’t think it’ll happen personally but at the same time none of those results are particularly extreme so I can see why someone else might say any of them could happen.
Let say it does happen and as you estimated we are on course to lose 20 points. That is still 87 points on board.
For United to finish at 88 points & thereby be ahead of us, they will have to get 49 points out of the remaining 54 points.
The margin of error is just 5 points.
Arsenal just had a world-class first half of the season and we dropped 7 points in 19 games.
ETH would have to pull a legendary campaign out of his ass to top that.
Any of them could happen. All of them won’t.
I don’t disagree that it’s unlikely considering where we are but I also don’t think it requires us to “collapse” to end up dropping 20 points or more. We probably have about 23-27 games left, we could win 15, lose 5 and draw 4 or 5 and that would still be a strong record overall.
Not even saying G Nev’s take is accurate or that I agree just think we are nowhere near home and hosed and I can’t bring myself to take anything for granted when we still have to play City twice and navigate some other tough fixtures.
Probably not, there’s also endless other combinations of fixtures and results that could have us falling away too.
Do the same what if for united and they hit the same
potential roadblocks.
League Cup semi double header to come (probably a final too), back to back League games against Leeds (practically considered a derby) away to pool, spurs and Newcastle too. West Ham who they often struggle against. Throw Brighton in there too. Posisble congestion the further they go in FA cup and EL too.
They have to basically be perfect across all that while we blow all ours outlined (or whatever combination). Just nah.
In the 07-08 season, when we bottled the campaign to let Chelsea finish 2nd, we dropped 18 points in the last 19 games.
No way we bottle this season to that extent.
Lol Neville is still going on about United finishing ahead of Arsenal?
I would say I’m flabbergasted but he is a walking meme now. What a fucking tool. Even if he’s doing it to drive traffic to Sky Sports, it’s such a moronic take that he deserves ridicule. Carra essentially laughing at him says it all.
Neville’s beloved United just got absolutely SCHOOLED and deservedly lost to Arsenal. Yet he thinks they will overhaul a potential 14 point gap despite already showing themselves to be a team in transition that (1) that scores less goals; (2) creates less chances; (3) concedes more goals; (4) drops silly points; and (5) has an unbalanced squad that lacks depth and quality in key areas.
What he is even basing this shithouse prediction on is the biggest mystery? The fucking spirit of Sir Alex living on in the testicles of McTominay? They have no winning mentality. They have no fear factor.
What an absolute fucking twat.
The other thing he goes on about is how Arsenal hasn’t done it in years. Utd have only de Gea from their 12/13 title run. Casemiro has been brought in from Madrid, okay. Ten Hag has won the Eredivisie, but that isn’t the PL. we’ve brought in 2 PL winners and a manager who has been there as an assistant when City won. I just don’t get it. He’s mad. Even his colleagues are laughing at him now.
Look at the roster from the 2020 FA Cup Final. Who’s left? Not very many. Sometimes I forget how much the team has changed. I think pundits who don’t follow Arsenal day to day probably think Bellerin or Kolasinac still play here.