Quote Originally Posted by fakeyank View Post
When you say progress in last season? Is that solely based on the FA Cup win? Or is it because we had the most clean sheets? If thats the case, we were also hammered away from home by all the top teams. The FA cup makes me think we made progress from a mentality standpoint, but Wigan and Pompey also won the FA Cup. Other than the game against City this weekend, I have not seen ONE thing we have done that makes me think our style or standard of football is better and where we can say that we look like title contenders.

Are we playing better attacking football? Is our defense better? Is our man management better? The answer to these questions to me is a No and for that, I am not surprised. Wenger really missed the boat with signing a replacement for Tommy V and Sagna. Even now, it is a no brainer to bring in some free agent(s) 'just to get bodies in'. We have absolutely nobody to play in defense other than the 4 thats playing.
Would you say we regressed last season if you compare it to the season before? Besides the hammerings we took to our main rivals, we looked defensively organised and had a CB pairing that worked together and were dependable. We haven't had that since the Campbell and Toure combination. The football wasn't pretty but we grinded out results and it looked as if we had a solid defence. I'm not discounting the hammerings we took, I think that was more of mental issue, but regardless, I'd hope the experience would have had us prepared this season. But that's been taken out of our hands with poor planning and not buying defensive cover where needed.

It doesn't matter about other teams winning the FA Cup. The fact is we won it. We're a team that bottled a League Cup Final against a relegated team. The fact that we turned around a 2 goal deficit to win in extra time without the need for penalties is a sign of progress regardless of opposition. You have to give some credit where it's due.

I didn't say we've made progress THIS season. In fact, it looks like we could have gone backwards in some weird way. As said, I thought we made progress last season but it looks like it could have already been undone. I thought it was going to be hard enough to challenge for the title this year. Top 4 may even be a struggle if Liverpool and Utd get their act together. The last thing we need is to be having this internal battle with our fitness and Wenger is the worst for managing this sort of thing. He'll overplay players, won't make subs, bad team selection and destroy the confidence of a young player....we've seen it all before and I think we could be heading for that sort of season. We're on a uphill battle already and the season hasn't really even kicked off.