by bigmick » Mon Dec 17, 2007 8:53 pm
This "can we win the league" reminds me of one of those threads where we discuss a new player, "I know it's early" and all that nonsense. Those who are showing loyaly, support, faith or whatever else you like to call it are entirely entitled to do so of course, but so are those who doubt the possibility are not being disloyal or fickle, simply realistic.
In my opinion (FWIW and I know it's not very much) we are absolutely dead in the water, gone for all money in the Premeirship for this season. Now as already stated you can get 16/1 with the bookmakers against us winning the league, and I don't think that is a price which will see the punters kicking the door in to get on. Should we fail to beat Portsmouth at home on Saturday we will be 66/1 at least, so precarious is our position. If we were to lose at the Emirates later in the season, we are needing to make up thirteen points or so on Arsenal between now and the end of the season. If Manchester United win their game on the corresponding weekend, we will have to make up twelve points on them as well. Should we however win at the Emirates, then we will only have to make up nine points on Manchester United, and then also go to Old Trafford and Stamford Bridge and probably win there as well, because if we lost at Old Trafford, we'd be back to square one, twelve points behind the Mancs.
This weekend the so-called most exciting race in the Premiership for years was reduced to a two-horse race in my opinion. If you went on a Chelsea forum, you would no doubt find people alluding to the fact that as all the other big four teams still have to visit Stamford Bridge in the second half of the season, they are still in it. I suppose just about, possibly, they are.
The Arsenal fans will rightly think that as long as they keep their best players fit, and the excellent Van Persie continues to show the quality in his return which he did when he came on against Chelsea (I fecking watched both games in the middle of the night, it nearly killed me) then they are right in it. They do though have to go to both Stamford Bridge and Old Trafford, and they do have the African Nations looming large.
Then there is the Mancs, they've been to Anfield and won, beaten Chelsea at Home and were denied in injury time at the Emirates. Few if any African Nations players and a strong squad. We're nine points behind them, admittedly with a game in hand but with our fixture list to come, I think it's beyond us by a fairly large margin. We couldn't afford to lose the game on Sunday, a draw wouldn't have killed us off but a loss did I'm afraid.
"se e in una bottigla ed e bianco, e latte".