I feel ya PnG, it's exactly how I feel. I've started watching them closely lately and they control games, they are not up there by luck. I dont necessarily think they are the best team in PL, but they are the most organised with arguably the most balanced 11, their spine isn't to be laughed at either.Originally Posted by Power_n_Glory
We are going to need to play at a high level to get anything out of the game in a few weeks time.
I think you need to watch the games to be able to compare and as painful as it is to say it, Spurs have been the better and more consistent side so far this season. Just comparing points is a superficial way of coming to conclusions. That's like looking at shots at goal and possession and assuming the one with the most was the better team. If so, Man Utd would've won the league by now on that basis. I've seen most of their live matches and they rarely look out of control in games, always a threat. The same certainly can't be said for us this season. We've had quite a lot of games where we've been fortunate not to lose and not solely because of Cech because I agree having a great keeper is part and parcel. Getting points from bad situations is a strong battling quality we have. But as an overall team, controlling the ebb and flow of a football match, then Tottenham have been the best at that all season. But enough of this pro-Spud talk before I ruin the rest of my night talking about that shithole club.No, we didn't. The Spurs fans I spoke to at the time agreed a point each was about right.
The reason we didn't lose is because of Cech, he kept us in it at 1-0. And that isn't luck, that's what a world class 'keeper does for you.
We had periods of dominance in that game and towards the end in the spelcril when we equalised and till the end it was all us and Spurs were hanging on.
Made up 'facts'
We've got the same points as them. Early season we were looking like the more consistent side (Spurs were hard to beat but were drawing too many) right now I'd agree Spurs are in better form but they've got the tougher run-in I reckon.
But I agree with PnG, they definitely need to be taken seriously.
Yeah, the loss of De Bruyne may well have killed off City's challenge, he's been their best player this season by some distance. Spurs and Leicester have definitely been the most consistent, I hate to say this but Spurs look to be the best team in the league at the moment to me, we really need to beat them in a few weeks time as it could potentially damage their season.
I agree regarding our returning players, Santi is crucial for us in the run-in, if we can get through the next 3 games (Man U, Swansea & Spurs) without him and are still in touching distance then we could be good to go.
NOTE: The location of this post has been moved and the thread title (which was previously Wenger is Leaving) has been manipulated by a notorious pro-Wenger moderator. What was previously a message that contained no profanity and made a comment on a real life event has now been manipulated by a deliberately provocative title. An old and crude propaganda and censorship technique.
written by the great footballing pundit Safwan Khawaja - he must be a spud.
If your gonna start praising mediocre players because at 6ft 4 he can win a few headers then why not buy Crouch who would win even more. Continuing to offer contracts to the likes of Giroud, Merts, Arteta & Flamini is the reason why 10 years on from the promise of European domination ( in order to persuade us to leave Highbury & pay the highest ticket prices in the world ) we are now creaming ourselves after beating 10 men Leicester City by a goal in the last seconds whilst in the same sentence hoping that Barca don't put 10 past us - glad that some of you seem happy with what your getting. Mr Wenger & the board certainly are.
Telegraph.co.uk :
It is workplace gloating, schoolyard swagger, the banterlicious emblem of a generation of supremacy: the one taunt that Tottenham fans are powerless to rebut. And understanding its powerful pull is of the utmost importance if we are to make sense of this most senseless of title races.
Since Arsenal gained a decisive ascendancy in the mid-Nineties, St Totteringham’s Day has been celebrated as early as March 9, as late as the final day of the season. But it always comes. This is the thing about the Arsenal-Tottenham rivalry: like an episode of The Simpsons, it has twists and turns and thrills, but in the end everything has magically reverted to the way it was at the start. Nothing, really, has changed at all.
And so in a sport defined by flux, where stars are made overnight and empires crumble in a twinkling, Arsenal have enjoyed the luxurious certainty of dominance. Around the turn of the century you would hear Arsenal fans quite openly discussing whether Chelsea, in fact, were now their real rivals.
For any fan under the age of about 30, beating Tottenham is not something that has required a great deal of imagination or willpower or even effort. It has just happened, as reliably as gravity, as inevitably as death. It is quite possible that there is not a single player in either squad who remembers the last time Tottenham finished ahead of Arsenal in 1995. That is not just a psychological edge. It is a pair of handcuffs.
Three times in the past decade, Tottenham have been ahead of Arsenal at this point of the season. Each time, they have been overhauled. In 2006 Tottenham were still a point ahead going into the final weekend.
Martin Jol’s furious touchline argument with Arsène Wenger towards the end of the season was interpreted as the symbolic defiance of a club who would no longer be dictated to. Ultimately, Spurs lost their final game at West Ham courtesy of a germ-riddled lasagne. Order was restored.
The reverse of 2012 was, if anything, more dramatic. Arsenal were 10 points behind going into the north London derby in late February, and when they proceeded to go 2-0 down at home, the curse of St Totteringham appeared to have been lifted at last.
Instead Tottenham’s midfield capitulated, Arsenal ran out comfortable 5-2 winners, and, as Harry Redknapp’s team waned, Arsenal ruthlessly swallowed up the ground between them. It was a similar story the following season, when Arsenal came from seven points behind with 10 games remaining to pip Tottenham to the Champions League yet again.
It is the sort of record that breeds certain expectations. The Wenger era has been underpinned by two non-negotiable rules: annual Champions League qualification for the board, and an annual celebration of St Totteringham’s Day for the fans.
The problem comes when you have a season that rips up the rules entirely and threatens to create an entirely new order.
The first objective may be pretty much guaranteed, but the second is more problematic. This is both the blessing and the curse of being Arsenal at the moment: bright, strident hope slow-dancing with dark, mortifying fear.
The most open title race in years is threatening to awaken Arsenal’s deepest, most repressed nightmare: the prospect that not only will they blow their best shot at the Premier League for a decade, but that they will hand it to Tottenham in the process.
Wenger, for his part, is too busy managing a football club to entertain his deepest, most repressed nightmares. “I am not obsessed by finishing ahead of Tottenham,” he said this month. “Spurs are always a threat. But we are not thinking about Tottenham. We just want to do well and are focused on our own performances.”
Tottenham and Arsenal have tussled for Champions League qualification before, but this is largely uncharted territory: the first genuine title race between the two north London rivals since 1952. And so, for the first time, Arsenal’s traditional primacy may be as much of a hindrance as a help. They have a better squad, more money, higher expectations, a virtual monopoly on title-race experience. They have far, far more to lose here.
Arsenal’s moment of greatest insecurity has coincided with Tottenham’s moment of greatest confidence.
For Arsenal fans, the sight of Tottenham looming in the rear view mirror and then sidling past them conjures all sorts of unwelcome thoughts. Losing the title to Leicester could be put down as a freak result. Losing to Manchester City would be disappointing but not unprecedented. Losing to Tottenham, on the other hand, is the sort of experience that scars a club for years. Arsenal fans still sing about winning the league at White Hart Lane in 2004, and they had only just stopped singing about winning it there in 1971.
Every time Tottenham beat Arsenal you hear pundits and broadcasters wondering if the “balance of power” in north London has shifted. It never has: not yet, anyway. Yet Tottenham have something Arsenal do not: freshness and froth, draughtsman’s drawings for a brand new stadium, the gleam of renewal.
Arsenal, meanwhile, have status, security, the solace of the known. They have world-class players, a manager they trust and a robust set of accounts for the most recent fiscal year.
They have enjoyed an era of stability that is virtually unmatchable in modern football. And for those same reasons, they are fearful in a way that few supporters of other clubs can really imagine. For two decades, St Totteringham’s Day has arrived as regularly as day follows night. What happens when the sun no longer rises?
Get your St Totteringham’s Day beer in, it will be happening as usual. The board and Wenger know this is a line that can't be crossed. This is like their 4th place trophy being in doubt, they'll do what it takes to preserve it when the time comes.
Für eure Sicherheit
Spursday night football int the Europa league will come to the rescue...
Pls God . Make it so.
Make 2mrw better than 2day
Hallelujah Brother, hallelujah!
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