There are a couple of things that i find a wee bit annoying being an Arsenal fan, but i'm on a rival teams forum so i expect a fair bit to be dealt out. The famous 4th place trophy is one, even though we actually haven't finished 4th in a few years. We also constantly hear Arsenal are a 1 man team, yet we beat Man City, Man Utd, Chelsea last season at various stages, so that 1 man must be pretty damn good. We hear hardly any of our players would get in our rivals team but if you take an aggregate points total of the last few seasons i bet we wouldn't be far off the top. We don't show enough ambition apparently, which it seems in the modern day ambition just equates to money spent.
Back to your point, i would agree that we aren't title favourites, but is it wrong to try and aim to get an extra say 10 points on last season? We were awful for a long spell last season, yet we managed 75 points. We've tweaked a few things, a new formation, added a couple of players that have qualities that we lacked. The likelyhood is that we'll fall short again, but i just want them to show the proper application & give it a proper go.
All this will probably be a fan being overly optimistic at pre season mind you, come the opening weekend when we get beat at home to Leicester i'll be ranting and fuming like the rest of them! :-)
I hear you and fair play to you for remaining civil and respectful while on here.
I would think what you have to endure and may perceive as total misconceptions about your club, from rival fans, pale into insignificance compared to the shite, bile, cluelessness and downright lies that we have to endure from rival and not so rival fans alike. Usually because of some notions they have of us derived from what they read in the national press or are force fed through the media in one form or another.
Football is what it is nowadays and none of us know the full depths of what goes on in the background. What we should be able to see objectively is what is played out on the park. I agree with others that say but for some, let's say questionable refereeing, our season could have been so different. Not least was the Wembley match against Arsenal which I was at.
The most surprising thing for me that day, not having seen Arsenal as much as you would, was not the referee, which I was actually expecting and predicting beforehand,
but how Arsenal who I would associate with trying to play a certain kind of football that is very attractive, went about their business.
It was like they were told to go out and kick anything above grass level that moved. Silva in particular was singled out. And the fact you got away with it is a separate issue that City supports are well used to debating.
Wenger seemed to me to abandon his philosophy of football towards the end of last season and adopted a much more practical and cynical approach.
This to me said 1) he was under pressure, which he was. And 2) He realised that his squad were not up to the task of playing the way he likes and winning.
That's not me having a go at Arsenal. It's just my objective view of what i saw looking in from the outside.
I don't think the Arsenal squad has got any better and I don't think the decision to keep Wenger will prove to be a good one.
Believe me I would rather see an Arsenal team playing good football get into the top four (Or two, as long as we're no.1), than the Rags who spend as much as anyone else and play like Stoke.