He very well might be yes
Most Arsenal fans are incredibly bitter towards United. After all we won 4 league titles against them, whereas they only won 1 against us (1998, when we came 2nd behind them).
A coach in charge of a club with the second highest spending power after Man City. When you guys can afford to throw 80 million pounds on an average CB, can afford to throw over a 100 million for a player without having your finance stretched to the limit, that's a lot easier to reach the top 3.
Ole will come closer to the top teams than Arteta, but Ole has a big financial advantage that Arteta doesn't have.
Youre an exception to the rule though. After our window the vast, vast majority werent tipping us to challenge City to any extent thats suddenly being expected here.
Hmm, not sure why you’ve quoted me and gone on a tirade about uniteds bad spending when I spent most of the post you quoted saying exactly that.
We would. The point is though that we did drop those points. We also conceded very late V Leicester and lost and drew with the worst Arsenal team in a generation.
The best 'drama' in the last decade: 2012, 2014, 2019. All Manchester City wins.
Even 7 points isn't a small gap. It requires them to lose 3 more games or 2 games and 2-3 draws or something while us winning every single game in the same period (considering that they have much higher goal difference).
We have to try and get excited about trying to finish within single digits of City now if not securing a top 4 place.I must commend you for having so much faith. I was once positive that we’ll catch them but not so much now. Let’s keep our heads down and finish second and come back stronger next season by getting real quality and not missing out on obvious targets and then coming to the caf decrying our inability to compete.
7 points dropped from those 3 games. If we had won all 3, could have been easily just 3 points behind city.
A bit unfair on Ole. The gap between the 2 clubs was bigger when he took over in terms of points, squad quality and performance but yes we have rivaled City for spending these past 5 years. They were starting from a better point there as well though and their resources are unlimited whereas ours are fixed somewhat.
What do you propose?
Yeah you're right it's incredibly tough. But that is the nature of sport. Somebody has to be but teams will still go through peaks and troughs. My argument is that city have bypassed other professional teams on that journey, stole the opportunity to win cups from teams that might otherwise have. Think of all the years moyes was rebuilding Everton. Most other times they'd have won an fa cup. Likewise Stoke. Think a Wigan fan would swap the fa cup win that day for winning a league cup the way City do? I very much doubt it. They're operating in a way that is delivering the exact results you'd expect. It's robotic, financial and soulless
I was quoting the other posters. I've misquoted you by mistake, sorry. As for Arteta... He has only managed to get the team he wanted in the middle of the season, with EMR and Saka coming into their own and we finally have a proper CAM in Odergard. Prior to that the Arsenal team is utterly devoid of any real attacking threat.
And it's drama for all the non-United fans.
Ole took over a squad that had one of the most expensive midfielders of all time in Pobga and plenty of expensive talents. Talents that you can afford to sell at a cost and still have money to spend on expensive players. But you guys wasted a lot of time and money chasing the wrong players as well.
Well I can certainly agree to that.
Yh agreed. Add in that City aren’t actually that good this year - compared to their monster team of 2/3 years ago - and it’s more about the drop off from other teams for me. Football across the globe seems to have suffered from covid, this season is about who is the least shit.
Apart from Everton we didn't deserve to win any of those games. Our performances were poor in majority of them so I am not sure they count.
You make some good points. I wonder where United would be now and what their style of play would be like if Pep had been their manager for the last few years.
Utd have scored more goals than City this season. They arent clear because of dynamic attacking but changing to a pragmatic style. They will win this based on their defence which is nothing but buying in expensive players.
Guardiola didn't need to change his style to be defensively solid.
If we could sort that defence out we will be a lot better. We could have scored even more goals if we could also fathom out how to score against teams intent on defending. The defence has been the main culprits though. Lack of concentration and sloppiness. Ole has to be ruthless. If he needs to drop DDG, then drop him. If we need another CB, make sure you chose the right one. We need to able to change our game, not just look lost when surprise, surprise some teams do not want to attack against us.
He doesnt play with a striker now, play isnt controlled with midfield and instead of dictating play they have Gundogan making runs beyond the forwards. Even their FBs arent the interverted midfielders they were before. Theyre a lot more rigid in their movements now to lessen the impact when they lose the ball
I agree. The popular opinion is he buys the best players, which is not the reason City are so dominant. Because of the system they play (excellent, organized pressing) their defense is never under pressure.
That may be true (I don't really watch City that much this season), but he hasn't got more points than in his previous title winning seasons with it, and also not less goals conceded.
Well that’s why I said ‘almost all’. That’s the only genuine title race of the last 7 season. All other seasons it was done 3-4 weeks before the end, usually even sooner.
The thing is I could see Klopp squeezing one last title out of his team next season. They are basically where City were last season, off the pace.
been that way for years!
Isn't that the case for most PL seasons? You either get a close title race to the end of the season, or the season is already well wrapped up a few months before the end of the season. I mean there's always teams like Liverpool and Arsenal (Emirates era) that LOOKED like title contenders, but will always drop off from actually winning the title.
Even if we aren’t in title race for another 50 years I would still much rather see a league with close title races until final weeks rather than what we have largely witnessed in the last decade. It was super boring when we were winning the league easily too, 2012-13 for instance was a season with almost no excitement from Feb onwards and it was boring as well.
