Saturday 11 November 2017

Is Arsenal's Away Form Wrecking Their Season

With yet another dreaded international break upon us it's time to look at how the season is going for Arsenal so far. When the season began their only realistic goal in the Premier League was for a top four finish and they're currently only three points off that target after 11 games. On the face of it a top four finish is well within their reach and we should be hopeful they can make it.

For me the problem could be our away form because it is, to put it mildly, awful. We have lost four of our six away games and failed to score in theee of those games. Sure we have had to go to Liverpool, Chelsea and City, but that ignores defeats at both Stoke and Watford.

The only away win so far came away to an Everton team struggling at the wrong end of the table. We scored five of our seven away goals in that game and only managed two goals in the other five games. If we're going to put any pressure on the teams above us that away form has to improve drastically as well as maintaining our home form.

That's where our problems could arise because so far we've had a pretty good run of fixtures at home and our five wins out of five have all come against teams from the bottom half of the league. We had to come from behind to win in two of those games and we haven't really turned on the style against anyone at home. When the good teams come calling that could be a real problem and if our home form doesn't hold up we might have to kiss goodbye to our top four hopes.

It's not all doom and gloom though and we're actually only four points behind second placed United after playing away to three of the top six clubs. We have United, Spurs, Chelsea and Liverpool in our sights if we can put any sort of decent run of results together. The first step in that will be a game at home to Spurs as soon as the international break ends and it's a huge game for both clubs.

Spurs finally managed to finish ahead of us last season for the first time since Arsene Wenger took the reins at Arsenal in 1996 and the perceived verdict is that that are the better team. While it's hard to argue with that opinion at the moment a win for us would put us only one point behind them and it bears remembering that they have not won a trophy in almost 10 years. In fact if you don't count the League Cup as a major trophy (reserve teams and all that) then it's currently 26 years and counting.

In that time Arsenal have won three league titles, seven FA Cups and a European Cup Winners Cup. If that's what it means for them to be "better" than us then long may it continue. Even last season when they eventually managed to finish ahead of us we picked up our third FA Cup in four years.

All of that will count for very little if we lose at home to them next week though. It's not only a game the fans want to win, but it's also a game which could be so important to how the rest of the season goes. A win against our local rivals who are ahead of us in the table might just be the catalyst the players need to push on and cement a place in the top four, but a defeat could send us plummeting in the opposite direction.

We have seen in the past what a bad result can do to the team's confidence and how it can take a long time for them to recover. I just hope our home form can hold for that game and our 100% record at the Emirates in the league this season remains intact.

That's it for today.

See you tomorrow.

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