Hey Eboue, what do you think of Arsenal's chance this season?
Last Season’s Record: 20-12-6, 72 points, +31 goal differential. Good enough for 4th place and a place in the Champions League.
Transfers:
In: Thomas Vermaelen (CM, from Ajax for about £10 million)
Out: Kolo Toure (CM, To Manchester City for about £15 million), Emmanuel Adebayor (FW, To Manchester City for about £25 million), Harvard Nordveit (DF, Loan, Nurnberg), Abu Ogogo (MF, free to Dag and Red)
Arsenal took a step backwards last year, they went from dominating the year before and narrowly missing out on their first title since 2004, to being outside the top 4 for most of the season last year. Injuries and the lack of a cohesive squad (and no decent holding midfielder) contributed mightily to their downfall last season. Thankfully for Arsenal, Aston Villa struggled to hold onto the fantastic form they had at the start and they were able to jump back into 4th place, with a lot of help from January signing Andrei Arshavin.
While they’ve only had a single transfer in, Arsenal actually gain two key players back that weren’t really around last season. Midfielder Tomas Rosicky and striker Eduardo will both be back from loooooong injuries. Eduardo will be the most important of the two as Emmanuel Adebayor made his exit to Manchester City over the summer and he’ll probably be slotted in to replace him this coming season.
Arsenal also lost their longtime central Midfileder Kolo Toure to the Mancester City fantasy team, but have replaced him with 23 year old Beligain defender Thomas Vermaelen. Toure didn’t have his best season last year, but Vermaelen will have to show some quality in order to show that he’s an adequate replacement for Toure. Arsenal also may lose defender Philippe Senderos to Everton if the latest rumors are to be believed, this would leave the center of defense very thin if nobody is brought in to replace him, even though Alex Song can be played in that position, he’s more valuable as a holding midfielder.
Arsenal may be looking to add former captain Patrick Vieira to their squad on a pay as you play basis, this is seen as a move to strengthen their midfield a bit and give some mentoring to Song and Abou Diaby.
The key to the season is injuries, if this team can stay healthy, they should be able to at least fight for the title. As we saw last year though, there were more than enough injuries to go around. Samir Nasri has already gotten on the injury train and will be out for about the first month and a half of the season at the least.
While everyone’s favorite Red said yesterday that Arsenal has done little to supplement their side, I’d say while they haven’t done a lot, they have enough there to make a run at the title. They’ve gained back Eduardo and Rosicky from injuries that have kept them out forever, Cesc should stay fit for a whole season, and everyones favorite pocket sized footballer Andrei Arshavin will be playing in his first full EPL season.
We can’t forget the youth, the posse of teenagers Arsene is constantly assembling seems to have a few players ready to break through to some first team action. Namely Jack Wishire, Aaron Ramsey, and Fran Merida. Their impact would probably be minimal, but would help to set Arsenal up for the future.
But you’re here to know how they’ll do this year. The title race is completely wide open this season, nobody has an extremely strong team in the big four where one could say that team is the sole title contender, so Arsenal is right in the mix with the rest of them. The fan in me wants to think that they’ll easily be able to win it, but logically it’d be a tough task. The biggest challenge comes in a stretch at the end of January that’ll see them face Liverpool, Manchester United, and Chelsea right in a row, if they can come out of that with at least 7 points, and not have silly losses to teams they should beat, I see no reason why they couldn’t be in the thick of things at the end of the season.
I actually think they’ll finish third, but I think that will be above Manchester United for the first time in awhile. I don’t think Wenger is done signing people, but he’s so finicky about keeping things quiet that you never really know what’s up. They could have someone tomorrow or at 11:59 on the last night of Transfer, but he doesn’t want it in the papers. The schedule will be tough, and I’m sure they’ll have another tough CL grouping. We just hope for the best, year in, year out.
Yeah, I think they have a shot at the title, but 3rd would probably be more accurate, unless Wenger pulls some crazy deal for someone.
This was honestly one of the hardest things to write. I know so much about the team that it was hard to find the truly important stuff to talk about, whereas with Chelsea I don’t read about all the day to day and it was much easier to just read the news and see what stuff sort of came up the most.
I agree, the Liverpool one took me all day to write yesterday. It’s hard to preview your own team, because you’re filled with equal parts hope and doubt.
Unless you’re a Newcastle fan, of course. It’s all doubt for them.