Quote Originally Posted by Letters To Santa View Post
What would you accept as evidence for a step up? I've listed endlessly a few signs of hope I see. The signings of people like Ozil, Sanchez and Cech has made a clear difference. We've finally started winning trophies again. Not the biggest prizes yet but it's a start. And some of the results in the last year or so have shown something - a few years ago we wouldn't have won either the away Utd game in the FA Cup or the home game this year. Before the home game this year many were predicting a repeat of previous home games vs Utd where we dominate possession but end up losing, but we blitzed them. Yes, some of those results have been followed by disappointing ones but isn't any season like that? It certainly has been this year for everyone, there has been no standout team this year.
Ultimately we'll only know whether we've stepped up come May - well, maybe earlier if we start to seriously fall out of the title race.

I was endlessly mocked early season for daring to suggest that maybe we should wait till the end of the season to see where we are but it's obvious. This result is a case in point. Do you judge our performance in the CL group stage after 2 games when it was looking like a fiasco or after 6 when we've qualified? Right now we're in the title race and we've qualified for the last 16 of the CL, I think that's a pretty decent season so far. Ultimately we'll only be able to assess the season properly and whether we've made progress or not at the end.
You judge it after ONE game and then you judge it again after the next. The things you are listing as progress are things a club like Arsenal should be doing at a minimum - signing decent players, winning the odd minor trophy, actually getting a few results against clubs that are supposed to be rivals. Minimum. This is what Wenger does well - the bare minimum. The fact we scraped through CL qualification does not eliminate his amateur hour fucks ups in the earlier rounds. When he stops making these fucks up then people will become more confident in our ability to mount and sustain a challenge for the big prizes. It's perfectly understandable, given the history, many fans are not cheering in a new era based on us scraping through a group that contained two teams making up the numbers.