I'd disagree with you on this, you get 4th by beating the bottom 10 teams home and away, there's 60 points available from the bottom half teams, if you take the vast majority of points from them you've a very good chance of gettign 4th.

You win the title by not only taking the most from the 60 available against the bottom half teams but then beating your rivals for the title, Arsenal did very well against the bottom half teams but as above pretty poorly v the top teams overall.

I do think the Anfield game was a big game for both us and you, it gae us huge befief we coudl mix it at the top and seemed to dent the Arsenal confidence.

We really had to beat Chelsea in that game it was there for the taking. The turning point probably was that Liverpool thrashing, how can you believe you're the best team in the land when you get destroyed like that.

My concern in the away games against our rivals was not so much the scoreline, which was bad enough, but 3-4 goals down after 20 mins is unacceptable against any team in the world.

The Everton and Swansea draws were such small margins as well. Obviously we could've put the result beyond doubt early on, as is the case with any match, but if Giroud's shot had been a bit lower and Flamini had been more prepared to make a clearance we'd have an extra 4 points

Our form against the top 5 was not good enough. You need to pick up wins at home in those, and draws away.

Every team has a few slips against the lower teams, no team is perfect, but the head to heads against the teams around you are key.

It's easy to pick games against non-top 6 teams and say we should do better but I'm sure City and Liverpool could do the same. The fact is we've done poorly against the best teams and even had some properly good thrashings, that has to be the difference!

Besides beating Liverpool at home we didn't pick up any wins in the remaining games against the top 5. We had a trend of drawing at home.and get smashed away, giving each of our rivals an extra 3 points on us a better gd swing. To win the title we need to address these issues, we're good enough beating the lesser teams home and away, but then so are our rivals.

The 5-1 loss to Liverpool was where the rot set in. We were already two-thirds into the season - yet we dropped 15 points in the 13 games after that, when we had dropped 17 in the 24 before it.

That 5-1 thrashing

Wheels came off after that

Liverpool away killed us. If we hadn't been humiliated then maybe we still would have had a chance and have beat Utd.

knapp rash explained it perfectly! Our ability to consistently get 3 points against the bottom 10 was only ever going to secure top 4 which makes it silly that some other opposition fans and pundits felt we wouldn't get top 4!

To win the league you actually have to influence the games against them by mainly winning at home and trying to knock a draw away.

We are the only team not to lose a home game against the big teams but some weird tactics by Wenger esp against united at home meant that we never looked like winning! Even the Liverpool game was a bit tight and we only scored because if moments of individual brilliance! What we did well at home against the top teams was restrict their chances! Suarez and Sturridge barely had a sniff!

We seemed to go gung go away from home and conservative at the Emitates

comment by D'Jeezus Mackaroni (U1137)
posted 24 minutes ago
Our form against the top 5 was not good enough. You need to pick up wins at home in those, and draws away.

Every team has a few slips against the lower teams, no team is perfect, but the head to heads against the teams around you are key.
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At Stoke and home against Swansea killed us finally. Yeah should have won against City and United at home as well which was possible.

Comment deleted by Site Moderator

This graph is very useful

http://img546.imageshack.us/img546/6545/arsenalboombustcycle.png

Its the same most years, teams lose to lesser sides and say it shouldnt have happened, but every year it does..

Id personally say it was the following that costs us -

Arsenal 1 - 3 Aston Villa
Stoke 1 - 0 Arsenal
Arsenal 2 - 2 Swansea

Comment deleted by Site Moderator

Any club can look back through their fixtures and do the same, in fact I could point at Villa and Sunderland as games we got no points from and with a ref on top of his game we’d have had 6 points and won the league. Ifs, buts and maybes.

You can't go into a season and rely on an almost 100% record against the smaller teams to win you the title.

You HAVE to atleast compete with the teams above/around you ffs.

Liverpool game killed our hopes and made them believe theirs...only for them to throw it away in the last second.

Of course games like away to stoke and Everton were the final nail. Though I'm sure by the time we played Everton we were already out of it.

comment by ManUtdDaredevil (U9612)
posted 3 hours, 22 minutes ago
This graph is very useful

http://img546.imageshack.us/img546/6545/arsenalboombustcycle.png
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