It is being reported today that the new Man City manager Pep Guardiola thinks that his team are now effectively out of the title race after losing to Everton yesterday. The Cityzens are 10 points behind Chelsea, whereas Arsenal are just 2 points above them in 4th spot.
Guardiola may have given up (and it will certainly be interesting to watch them next week against Tottenham) but our goalkeeper Petr Cech thinks quite the opposite, and points out that we still have games to face against all our title rivals, and if we win them all we can close the gap at the top.
“Our away form was brilliant at the start of the season – or most of the time,” Cech said.
“We had a loss at Everton and suddenly we had another two games where we dropped points. But we gave the right answer here that it doesn’t matter.
“You have to carry on, get ready and there are a lot of games to be played.
“We have to play everybody who is around us, so we can take points from them. So we are in a good position.”
Cech was also pleased that we went on to score 4 goals yesterday, as well as keeping a clean sheet, and thinks that goal difference could be a big factor come the end of the season. Chelsea are currently on +30, Spurs on +29, we are on +26 with Liverpool just behind on +25. No-one else is close with Man City on just +15 after yesterday’s 4-0 setback.
Cech cautioned:”Every time you can score more goals you should try to do so,”
“That is because every goal will be important when you see how tight it is in the top five places.
“Every goal might count so we try to make sure, when we can, to continue to search for more goals.
“And we wanted to make sure that at 3-0 and 4-0 we didn’t concede.”
It’s good that Petr is in confident and positive mood, but as Pep said when asked if City were too far behind Chelsea “Yes. Ten is a lot of points.”
We are only 8 points behind. Is that too many points? Or is Cech right and we have ample time to make up the gap?
We haven’t been in a good position for weeks ever since our double loses. That really hurt us.
We are 8 points behind and it’s not just Chelsea but Spuds and Liverpool look good also.
All we can do is focus on winning every match and hope the other teams slip up
But no we are not in a good position
8 points is really hard to close down especially against Chelsea.
We need 100% focus, commitment and desire from all and most importantly unity in the squad (I am talking about you Sanchez, no more acting like some spoiled kid in a candy shop). Let’s hope our opponents also get to cancel each other out and we get a few more upsets like yesterday’s game between Everton & City.
We cant lose hope now, its still a fight worth fighting till the end.
You are only in a good position if it is still in your own hands. Let’s first get back to that position.
second half of the season is more unpredictable then the first half specially towards the end where teams fighting for relegation show more grit and teams on top getting nervous and middle teams play more freely because of nothing to prove and injury’s piles up for all,
last year spuds buckled under pressure but have learnt from it, if we beat Chelsea on the 31st then the pressure is back on Chelsea, its too tight to call who will be in the top four with Chelsea
Of course, we are not in a good position. If anyone had said before the season, that we halfway would be in 4’th 8 points behind the leaders, most would have considered it to be a forecast of almost a disastrous season. It may be salvaged yet, but it will require much better performances, than what we have seen, especially defensively.
But all players and the manager have to look and fight for the best possible outcome, and it is in this perspective, you can read Cech’s comments.
The bottom line is, we could be totally out of the title race, if we don’t win the next few games, including winning at Stamford Bridge and being out of it already on the 4’th of February would probably be the worst for many years.
Well if Chelsea would lose to Liverpool and we would win at the Bridge (which is extremely, extremely unlikely), we would be 2 points behind.
However, we have away matches to Anfield and White Fart Lane and both Manchester clubs at home coming later. And we will lose 6-8 points in those matches so I guess it’s far fetched.
I think we’d have a chance if we had someone to replace Santi Cazorla. But we don’t. Wenger won’t get anyone because Elneny will be like a new signing when he returns from ACON. And Santi won’t be back until May so.. that’s about it.
I believe even if we drew Chelsea but Liv bet them, that would be a good thing. We need to get within five points, and then not drop any points before Chelsea. Five points coming from behind is a decent place to be, they’d have most of the pressure and if we can show the late form from last two seasons it could be a tight race.
No
Too much football to go yet.. cheer up !
we’ll finish 3rd/4th, and Wenger will sign a new contract. Not what people want to hear, but we all know that’s where this season is heading.
Just keep the faith and take it game by game.
Leicester literally won the league last year – if you are writing us off you’d be daft
Clearly, the race for 2-5 is super close and you can probably even throw in 6th.
You can imagine plenty of scenarios in which we could overcome the 8 point gap to 1st as well. Having said that, in practice I don’t think it will be very likely that we can overthrow this deficit.
One thing is for sure in my mind, we need to win the remaining games against our top 6 rivals. Fail to beat Chelsea and close the gap to 5 points and winning the PL becomes very academic.