Match Reaction vs Sunderland (away).

[fakeyank]

Well...yes. We finished 4th

We won more games than anyone outside the top 3.
We lost fewer games than anyone outside the top 3.
We scored more goals than anyone outside the top 3.
We conceded fewer goals than anyone but City, Chelsea and Everton (Liverpool contrived to concede significantly more which, I guess, is why they failed to win the title).

In brief, by every reasonable metric in terms of overall league performance we were about 4th best. The word 'good' is a bit vague but I'd say that's a pretty good team.

And yes, we got 79 points, that's more than in the 97/98 season when we did the Double.
Football has moved on, you need to do better than that to win the title these days, but it's a decent tally, only two fewer than Chelsea and seven fewer than Champions City.
It's the most points we've got since 2008 and, it's also the smallest gap between ourselves and the champions since 2008.
The bit in bold is significant IMO, I would call that progress.

I'm interested how you would back up the claim that our points total 'means nothing'? Surely in assessing league performance it's pretty key.
We got hammered in the 3 away games against the top 3 (I thought we played well at City actually and on a different day, with a different ref, that would have been closer, I didn't see the Liverpool game but heard we were hopeless, I did see the Chelsea game and we were hopeless!)
Against those sides at home we won one and drew two. Not good enough overall and showed up our title credentials. But the league isn't determined over 3 games, it's over 38. And it's surely better that way round than getting better results in those games and then keep losing to teams we 'should' be beating and overall doing worse. The ideal is both, obviously.

Last year we did seem to make some progress, the league points tally was encouraging and the FA Cup win finally got the monkey off our back about not winning trophies. It seemed like a good platform to push on and whatever you think of Wenger he deserved the chance to lead us on if he wanted to (for his sake he should probably have retired on a high, but there you go). And we seemed to be making good signings in the summer. I'm completely baffled as to how we can suddenly be as crap as we've been this season although it has to be said at the tail end of last season we were struggling through games a bit and maybe that's carried on to this season. We're not good enough to win the title and I agree about the style of football but we're a better team than our results and performances are suggesting so far. I'm a bit baffled at how clueless we're looking tbh.

I'll first answer by saying why total points mean nothing in the big picture. While our points gap may with the PL champions was the lowest in a while, we knew in March itself that we were out of the title race. Like I mentioned in my previous post, we always show promise one season and mess up the next. Case in point would be the 2008 season where we finished on 83 points and the next season, we barely scrapped past Villa into 4th. The same thing is happening this season yet I find you at a loss for words to describe how this is happening! This has been happening for the last 5-6 years. It shouldnt be a surprise anymore!

I dont know about the other Wenger critics much but my criticism of him has never been about spending. Its about why he has changed our style of play into something horrible to watch. I do not understand why he plays players out of position and then wonders why we play with a 'little bit handbrake'! That man is doing this to us every season with the same out of date tactics and player selection yet he gets backing from many. I have said this before and I'll say it again... we can get Ronaldo and Messi in the team and AW will coach the directness out of them as well. He really shouldve retired after the end of last season and gone on a high.. instead now he is trapped in a place where he cant hide behind the 'money argument'. He is slowly destroying whatever goodwill he has at the club. While I do not like him as a manager, I really wish he had walked out on a high. Pity!

[Globalgunner]

Think back 2 seasons ago . The season when we overhauled the Spuds 10 point gap. We won something like 8 of the last 10 games but each 1 was a shitfest horror show.
We maybe played better last season overall but this was the season where we suffered some absolutely horrible maulings. Scandalous scorelines that would have seen any other manager shown the door. We are not going to drive Wenger out on our keyboards but we should not allow some self important individuals mendacity to smokescreen us into believing that things aren't really so bad. It is a shitty league, apparently so. But right now that seems to be our only saving grace. If cavemen like Allardyce can identify weaknesses in their team and take steps to correct it. Why the heck cant a man with 5 times the resources and 4 times the pay.

[Letters]

Case in point would be the 2008 season where we finished on 83 points and the next season, we barely scrapped past Villa into 4th. The same thing is happening this season yet I find you at a loss for words to describe how this is happening! This has been happening for the last 5-6 years. It shouldnt be a surprise anymore!

That's a fair point but with the signing of Ozil last summer (whatever you think of his performances, that was a major signing which showed some real intent) and Sanchez this it really did seem we were starting to show more ambition. So while you're right, we've been here before far too many times, the new financial deals are in place now so it did seem things might be different this time. Alas, it seems not.