comment by Sayid Jarrah (U18355)
posted 8 minutes ago
The right teams won because they had the bottle and mentality to win when it matters

But we still should have won the league in both those seasons. 10/11 was a spectacular bottlejob especially when you look at the fixtures we dropped points in after being humiliated by Birmingham at Wembley. And 15/16 was meant to be our year. We had the best squad, all our rivals were in transitional periods with squads and/or managers. That was our chance to win the league and instead Leicester were the ones to take advantage of everyone else being awful
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I genuinely thought it was yours after that late Welbeck winner against Leicester, but then you went backwards and Leicester just carried on winning games.

Oh man I lost my shïiiit when Welbeck scored. Then the next week we went and lost to United U21s. Biggest bottlers of all time

Was that game the next one? Ffs, you made Rashford’s career with that

And then the Van Gaal dive too. Good times.

Tbh I’m glad Leicester won it.

5000-1. We’ll likely never see anything like that again.

Couldn’t give a feck about Leicester, I was so happy for Ranieri. He was in absolute tears, the bloke was a legend and fully deserved it.

I don’t have any particular liking for Leicester. I just meant any 5000-1 team.

For context, Buster Douglas was 42-1 when he beat Iron Mike, and that’s considered one of the biggest upsets ever.

Leicester winning the league was the most glorious football moment ever. Especially because of arro.

I bet you could have got long odds on Liverpool not winning the league by mid May

comment by #LiquidGenius (U20571)
posted 5 hours, 10 minutes ago
Honestly, people forget just how good Arsenal were in 07/08
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The football we played was sublime.

I’d never seen a team dominate games with the ball as much as we did. We went to Anfield around November time and made Liverpool look like a scrappy League 1 outfit (we had 70% possession).

We were Barca before Barca were Barca.

Unfortunately it only lasted until mid-February. Then the whole thing went up in smoke because the team was mentally weak, in the image of Wenger. We let one injury, to a player who wasn’t that important, sabotage the whole operation.
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I think it's partly unfair to blame our mental strength. The thing is that Martin Taylor's challenge wasn't an aberration. Teams had been setting out to commit challenges just mildly less dangerous than that in every game. It was only a couple of years earlier when they got Diaby in the same way.

Yes, you can say that they shouldn't have let it get to them, but they were largely a group of young players making a name for themselves in a league full of Martin Taylor happy to prematurely end their careers. It was the mid 10's before teams fully stopped this strategy.

It's a good thing that players like Xavi, Iniesta and Messi weren't playing in England. There's a good chance they would have been kicked out of the game by players who weren't playing anything even reminiscent of football.

The goals against Spurs in the 3-1 away win from Adebayor and Cesc were sublime, who would have thought that they would have turned into a right pair of c@#%$

That spurs game was insane, we genuinely could've had double figures. Then I think they took the lead with a bale free kick, massively against the run of play.

Good article, I remember this season too well. My main emotion when I look back is one of heartbreak for Wenger. It would have been a remarkable achievement to win the league that season, and if you took this freak, once in a blue moon incident out of the equation, then we would have won it, no question.

We were robbed by the ref in that Birmingham game as well. If nothing else we were awesome to watch that year.

comment by Sayid Jarrah (U18355)
posted 22 hours, 19 minutes ago
And going out to Liverpool in the fashion we did still bothers me today.
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Amen

This was a very significant season in PL history.

When the season ended it was widely reported that refs errors had cost us the title. This was the final season that an alternative table was widely published showing standings with obvious goal errors corrected. After that the PL put a stop to it.

Just for thought, imagine if we could drop a young Özil into that midfield. As desperately underrated as he was, drop Hleb and play Rosicky, Cesc, Flamini and Özil.

Put me in front of that midfield and I'd get 20 league goals just by standing still and waiting for the ball to bounce off of me.

What lol. Ozil is a fraud and has no place in that team. I young Cech would have been a much better addition

Whatever you make of Özil's ability now, the idea that he wouldn't add anything in his early twenties is hilarious.

comment by Giröulski Alt-153 and Alt-160 forever (U14971)
posted 5 hours, 55 minutes ago
Whatever you make of Özil's ability now, the idea that he wouldn't add anything in his early twenties is hilarious.
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Im actually with Sayid on this, not quite in the scathing manor of his, but I don’t actually think any version of Ozil would have improved that midfield - especially not for Hleb who continues to be ridiculously underrated. He was the one dribbler/ball carrier we had in that team and was, at that time, the best in the country at it. He was a vital part in the possession based play we mastered that year as he was so adept at keeping the ball in both tight and open spaces, whether that be making passes or carrying it long distances. His range was vital in our transitioning from defence to attack and his angle of approach covered that entire midfield (he came from all angles). He had an urgency that others in that midfield didn’t as well. Yeah, his goal sucked and he delegated too often, but good grief he was outstanding at making things tick and setting us off with a pass or a carry of the ball (would be very interested in seeing his pre-assist ratio).

To me, he was the vital part in helping Cesc elevate his play year as he relieved so much of the reliance we had on cesc (and he’d go on to suffer the following year from having to do it all himself).

As for Ozil, his best years and best passages of play came in counter attack based systems where he was masterful at exploiting gaps and space left by those coming on to his team. We were very much a front foot team at this time and not one I think Ozil at any point in time was best suited to (young Ozil would have bossed it playing for the early Wenger teams).

DJ I like you. But I find this article strange. Sorry bro

In fact could be argued that if our two best players were fit and we had a manager Chelsea should have won it that year.

comment by Nickasaurus (U9257)
posted 19 minutes ago
In fact could be argued that if our two best players were fit and we had a manager Chelsea should have won it that year.
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You are welcome to argue that, more than one team can have "could have, should have" seasons in the same year.

Could have I agree with ya. Should have, not so much. Arsenal never had the Best team, and even a fellow arsenal fan said you were playing above your normal level for that squad.

Yeah we didn’t have the team that United or Chelsea did that year (especially United who were stacked back to front).

The season we really should have won was 15-16 when we did have the best team. But I’m glad Leicester won it tbh.

5 points clear with 2/3s of season played (8 ahead of Chelsea) when we went into that Birmingham game.
Doesn't matter if you think our squad was weaker, up until that point we were winning more points than anyone. We only needed about 25 points from 12 games, we were averaging 2.4 points per game up until then.
It was a position we should have won the league from. Not sure how you can argue against that, tbh.

Because your team wasn’t good enough.