Morning all, a happy Monday to you and may the bragging rights be with you as you go to work and meet all your United supporting colleagues.
Arsene Wenger reckons this could be the tightest title race for years, claiming it’s harder than it was 10 years ago to go to places like Stoke, Bolton and Wigan and get the points. That is probably true to an extent but personally I don’t see United or Chelsea or really Liverpool struggling too much against those teams. I think the title is going to won and lost amongst the big four and whoever has the best record in those games is likely to be the winner.
So far we’ve only played United and come out on top, obviously. We’ve got Chelsea at the end of the month so that’s another huge test. Liverpool have beaten United and Chelsea so far and seem to have addressed an issue in their team. In recent years they’ve had a poor record against the other big four teams.
For us I’m not really concerned about the ‘big’ games. The United game showed the players can perform and get a result. It’s the less glamorous games in which we’ve struggled this season and we have to wait and see if anything has changed there.
Samir Nasri believes that the win against United has put us right back in the title race, saying:
We can definitely win the title this season. Maybe we don’t have the experience of Liverpool, United or Chelsea, but we showed how mature we have become after last season. We showed we have got the quality technically that can help us to win big games.
Big games, yes. Not so big, again we wait and see. He also talks about how the French connection at the club is helping him settle and so far he’s been a real asset to the team. It’s been a bit stop-start with him due to a couple of little injuries but hopefully he can stay fit and stay in the team because he has already become a vital component.
Cesc, after dedicating the win to the manager, also thinks the title is realistic for us, saying:
We have shown here we have the qualities to do it. With losers, their heads go down. We have shown we have character. We played against a great team and won under a lot of pressure. So we are happy.
Next up in the league is Villa who’ll be looking to bounce back from a 2-1 home defeat by Boro.
Before that though there’s Carling Cup action against Wigan. We’ve got some history with Wigan in this competition. We were minutes away from reaching the final until some scabby twat scored a late, late goal to see them through to the final in which they gave Man United one of the easiest trophies they ever won. Steve Bruce has done a good job there and made Wigan a decent side so it’s going to be a difficult game, especially as we’re going to play a team of kids, more or less.
We’ll get squad news on that later today so we can speculate on who might start on tomorrow’s blog. I think we’ll see Amaury Bischoff PI though and maybe we might see Diaby involved to get some match fitness under his belt.
Right, not much else happening this morning so I’ll leave it there. Till tomorrow.
