Will Arsenal now push on for the Premiership Title?
With the season looking so rosy for Arsene Wegner and his team, in a matter of 13 days Arsenal saw themselves dumped out of three competitions including their shock League Cup final defeat to Birmingham City. The Gunners are now staring down the barrel of a sixth consecutive trophy less year, or are they?
Just under a fortnight ago, Arsenal were contesting for the League Cup final, European Champions League and FA Cup, but since then they have been knocked out in all three honours, crushing their beliefs of a unprecedented quadruple. With only the Premiership crown to contest for, Arsenal still have high hopes of ending their torrid trophy less run, only being three points behind Manchester United (current Barclays Premiership leaders)and with a game in hand over their old foe, the title race is perfectly poised to run right the way down to their final showdown on May 1st.
The Red Devils will be doing everything in their powers to make sure that Arsene’s horrific past six seasons long continue by winning their nineteenth league title. Although it may become very tough for Sir Alex Ferguson’s men with them still challenging for the FA Cup (beating Arsenal recently to progress to the semi-finals) and also for the Champions league. With them still in these competitions, their fixture list may well become very congested. Evidently fitness and mental strength is going to be pivotal if they are to overcome their congested fixtures with them playing up to eleven more games than Arsenal if they manage to reach the final stage of all other competitions!
It remains to be seen that the title race is firmly in the hands of Arsenal; by winning all of their remaining games they will be crowned the best team in England for their fourth Premier League title. Arguably, Arsenal have the easier Premier League run-in and with United still having to play Chelsea, it seems that there should be no doubt that Arsenal will reclaim the title for the first time in seven seasons.
But the Premiership story is never as straight forward as some managers would want; to add to a poor two weeks for Arsenal, they now have centre back issues, with the rising star Johan Djourou dislocating his shoulder against United in the FA Cup Quarter-Final, ruling him out of the rest of the season, leaving Arsene Wegner to select two faulty centre backs when partnered together, of Sebastian Squillaci and Laurent Koscielny. In the ten previous occasions these two have been partnered together they have only managed a win percentage of 37%, only winning four and leaking 17 goals in the process. Adding to this, with their number one keeper Wojciech Szczesny also adding himself to their injury hit list, it leaves Wegner with just one fit Manuel Alumina and with plenty of speculation surrounding his ability and mental attributes, the Spaniard probably isn’t the ideal person to be in between the sticks for such a precious time in the season.
Arsenal fans have shown plenty of patience towards Wegner, and have stood by his policy to not dip into the transfer market as frequently as other managers but if they fail to win anything this year, then surely there will be calls for Arsene to either start buying quality players or get someone else in who will. They are clearly in need of a consistent goalkeeper, a rock solid centre back and possibly a new central midfielder to replace Cesc Fabregas; this will most definitely be his last season if they fail to win the premier league this year with signs that his ties with his beloved Barcelona are continuing to be on his agenda.
This is arguably Arsenal’s best opportunity to win silverware for the first time in six seasons and you feel that if they can get past that final hurdle, then they will be able to finally kick on and start winning more trophies. But evidently they failed to show that mental ability in the League Cup final against Birmingham, a fault they have most likely to have gained throughout this trophy less time as three quarters of the team have never won any silverware before.! Mental strength is going to be tested to the limited through these final six to seven weeks of the footballing calendar and will be Arsene’s ultimate task to whether he can make his players believe they can win.
