That little table on the right shows we are still one point behind last seasons cumulative total, one problem with that table (other than the lack of progression in 2010/11 from game 27 onwards) is that it does not take into account the opponents played. On Saturday we made a big step forward, like for like games compared to last season we are now 3 points up.

In one respect this makes the second half at Ewood, the unfortunate event in N17 and the late goals against Liverpool more costly. If we had gone like for like in those games we would now be up seven points on last season. Unfortunately one of those games occurred in the wake of the most turbulent pre seasons this club has ever seen, one in the early days of rebuilding, and one caused by the once in a lifetime goal immediately preceding disappearance to football obscurity.

Since those games we have been on a run which has seen us turnaround a number of disastrous results from last season, including perhaps most impressively and key to the change to a more cheerful Emirates faithful the victory over the Chavs down the Kings Road.

Whilst football seasons don’t go to exactly to history the majority of games go with form and expectation, especially where the top clubs are concerned. With that in mind I have looked at our nearest rivals using the same like for like basis to see if they have started the season as well as the current table suggests.

For the sake of this exercise West Ham were replaced by Norwich, Blackpool by Swansea, and Birmingham by QPR.

This is the result:

What does this tell us?

In my opinion it shows us that at United appear to be standing still, Chavs performing worse whilst Dippers, Shitty and Spuds have shown big gains.

Depending how you interpret this swing and how you extrapolate it gives various outcomes.

If you assume the remaining games will go as they did last season the final table will end up something like this:

Clearly that shows United retaining their championship and the rest of the top 4 being the same as last season. Whilst that will satisfy us after our poor start should we really be looking at the swing compared to the points gained last year, and then extrapolate that swing over the remaining games (and points achieved)? If so that would give the following:

Whilst all of this is playing with numbers it is important to show that despite our recent form and surpassing our points total from the same games last year we are not out of the woods yet. This could turn into one of the most exciting races for the Champions League ever, with not just two teams chasing the final spot, but four or five teams chasing three spots, plus a Championship to win.

The shake down is a long way off but the teams performances between now and January are crucial in achieving Champions League qualification.

Out of interest, to still be three points ahead come New Year’s Day we have to win every game but one (which will need to be a draw). That is the task that lays ahead of the manager and players to stay ahead of last years performance.

Written by Gooner In Exile

Written by Double 98

Sir Alex Ferguson choked back the tears when the Manchester United people unveiled a stand in his name. It was a fitting tribute to a legend of the game and so much more pertinent to honour the man while he is still alive and running the club. Club allegiance aside, hats off to the man – 25 years at the helm of the biggest club in world football and enjoying unparalleled success in trophies and medals deserves mention and accolade.

Down the road in North London, Arsenal were beating a team that they should beat easily enough by 3 goals. That Arsenal beat West Brom 3-0, is not remarkable in a normal context but in November 2011 it is monumental. 12 – 18 weeks before in the close season, Arsène Wenger was confronted with a crisis in his club – in his own words half the dressing room wanted to leave. He moved quickly to clear some of the deader wood and tried desperately to get his world class players to stay.

To no avail, In Fabregas he lost a player that his third great team was entirely build around – an attacking quarterback with unbelievable passing ability, incredible panoramic vision and a ludicrously fast footballing brain. In Nasri he lost plan B, Nasri was spiky and mercurial, while not an exact match for Fabregas, he was a player that Arsene Wenger could have built a team around quite quickly. Over the summer along with the heart being ripped out of the club, and the replacement heart looted by the Dubai heart collectors we also had the periphery annihilated – among them Clichy – our one time class act at left back and Bendtner, precocious and arrogant, he always seem destined to be (in eddie vedder’s words) a “sun in somebody else’s sky..”.

So Wenger stood 2 days before the transfer deadline, with a half a team, 1 point from 3 games and having just taken a hiding from Manchester United the likes of which no Arsenal Manager has ever taken from anyone. The crowd had turned, the mumbling voice of the disaffected had grown to a howling, crescendo of hate and rejection. It would have been easy to do two things – leave or abandon his self sustainability model and buy some over priced class.

He did neither, he looked around the club and noticed the last diamond at his disposal – a diamond so fragile and unreliable that even in the form of his life had not attracted any serious interest from those that have plagued our club for the last 10 years – he ran a cloth over Robin van Persie and saw a resolve where others saw a fracture and thought – I can rebuild an empire around this fellow. From what I can tell he sent his team of negotiators out each with a players name, a bottomline value and a maximum weekly wage. Most of the people his team negotiated with laughed at the offers, or the agents laughed at the wages but the bottomline was hard.

At the close of the deadline, the news was confirmed that we had signed Arteta, Santos, Park,  the BFG and on loan Yossi Benayoun to go with the earlier captures of Gervinho and Jenkinson. Each of them had a point to prove, and a hunger to fill – each of them could have earned more money elsewhere or at their old club. Wenger looked at his gem cabinet and found Walcott, Koscielny and especially Rosicky, looking under used and brimming with unfulfilled potential. He shined them up and went to work binding them together into a cohesive unit. It wasn’t easy – he was two months behind in preparation and already 8 points off the lead.

Since deadline day (and the Old Trafford humiliation) Arsenal’s premier league results are W 6 D 0 L 2 while in all competitions it reads W 10 D 2 L 2. In amongst that statistic was the away wins in Marseille and a thumping of bogey team Chelsea. Whatever way you look at this form it is, if not title winning then title contending form. Have some of the wins been fortunate – yes, has some of the defending been shocking of course but you know what? It has been exponentially better week on week even the boo’s have stopped and it appears that the crisis is averted.

The media have stopped their feeding frenzy – even to the point where MOTD gave no analysis of our game against WBA. As little as a month before they had analysed every defensive mistake, gesture and position as forensically as a crime scene in an attempt to convince us all that Arsène Wenger had lost the plot, the crowd and his dressing room.

So where does this all bring us? Well as the accolades quite rightly come in for Sir Alex, all his achievement is, for me, second to the real world achievement of Arsène Wenger – in 12 weeks he has had his heart ripped from his chest, he has been humiliated and beaten to within a inch of his life by his biggest foe, he has had to sit and endure the cacophony of boos and jeers from his own supporters, he has had to endure former Arsenal players telling him on tv that his time is up, he has had to stay quiet while players that never had the talent to play for him (Savage) tell the world that he hasn’t a clue, former managers telling us that he needs a defensive coach, he has had to look Robin van Persie in the eye every day and tell him not to waver in his faith, he has had to take old dogs like Arteta and teach them new tricks (well in Arteta he just converted him back to the Pepe Guardiola defensive fulcrum type player that he started out as).

He has not veered from his philosophy and now in our traditional black month of November – we the supporters of the greatest and most rewarding club, while maybe not seeing the promised land, no longer see the threatened land and I for one can’t wait til Manchester United come to town in late January. We might not win by 6 but we will demonstrate that the circle is turned and I expect to win.

Ferguson has never, ever had to endure even half of what Wenger has this season. Sir Alex may be the Knight of Manchester but Arsene is the King of Arsenal – Long live the King – We should buy our way out of the naming rights and call the Grove the Arsène Wenger Stadium and ensure that his legacy is indelible with the future of the club.

Back in January 1964 the Beatles released a track called “can’t buy me love” which considering the money they have  made since then and the fame they have enjoyed,  probably wasn’t strictly true.  Certainly they have enjoyed a kind of loving, revered by millions of people in countless countries worldwide.

The same can be said  for a select few football clubs, whose names are for ever lodged in the hearts of lovers of the game, even those football fans too young or too far away to have seen them play, in those pre satellite days, knew of them by reputation.

So clubs like Real Madrid who dominated the emerging European cup for years, whilst  introducing the world to a new breed of footballer, led by the legendary pair, De Stefano and Puskas. Herbert Chapman perhaps the first of the great managers assembled the Highbury heroes who elevated our club to greatness.  The Manchester Utd of Busby babe’s fame, Cloughies Forest, Shankley’s Liverpool and even the Spurs in their push and run heyday. Our own invincible’s of recent times would be included as would Fergies Utd  and their dominance of the Premier league since its inception, along with today’s European club champions the exhilarating and exciting Barcelona, who include every fans dream player the superbly gifted Messi goal poacher extraordinaire in their ranks.

All have earned their place in history by style, grit, skill and pure entertainment to be read, remembered and talked about by football fans of all hues and nationalities with admiration and respect wherever our beautiful game is played and studied.

How sad then that on Sunday, whilst watching the Chelsea and City millionaires perform, I felt no admiration or respect, just a kind of pity that these magnificent players had succumbed to the power of the oil buck. The very fact that Fergies finest had been done for 6 by his so-called noisy neighbours, after themselves doing us for 8 a few weeks ago didn’t cheer me up. Nor seeing Chelsea’s arrogant superstars have their nose put out of joint, by a combination of questionable refereeing, a bunch of hastily gathered journeymen pros and a manager who is reputably about as welcome in football circles as a fart in a space suit. None of these facts raised even a smile.

Rather it produced a degree of real sadness, especially for those loyal City fans including my own son who have been waiting a lifetime to win the league and here they are excitedly watching their newly purchased heroes showing the ability to do just that. Whilst the rest of the football world looks on with a kind of studied contempt, that the glories that others have earned by patience, hard work  and natural progression, could well be short circuited, devalued and sullied by the excesses of individuals who possess the kind of wealth that many nations would give their eye teeth to have as their GDP.

How frightening therefore to realise that a significant number of our fans would gladly, see our own lurking Russian unceremoniously installed in a position of power in the boardroom at the Emirates. This, his reward for a promise to sign the cheques and superstars we supposedly need to compete, distributing his oily roubles across the football world. For the love of the club I wonder or with the sole purpose of basking in the reflected glory of the myriad trophies his supporters say we are guaranteed to win?

What these individuals who call for such change seem not to understand is, we like John, Paul, George and Ringo, don’t have to buy love,  because we with our tradition and style have already earned it.

Written by dandan