We're still third la lala la.....................

Solskjaer out!

2 points ahead of Man U with a game in hand. We need to press home the advantage and beat Everton at the weekend.

This was a game I had down as Man U dropping points in, so it’s good that they did.

I would love it if Palace can ruin Spurs opening of the stadium tomorrow, with their pace up front they are the sort of team that can turn it on and cause an upset on their day

So both Wolves and Watford win tonight and we have to beat both of them.

Strangely I'm feeling a bit more confident...............

We have a genuine chance of finishing top 4. United still have to play City and Chelsea so it’s going to very tough for them.

If Emery could finish top 4 that would be a great achievement. I’d probably prefer a win on Sunday rather than Thursday.

Great result for us this morning. Now come on Palace - be the first to take a win at the toilet bowl. Even a draw will bring a smile to me. I think Utd will only get to around 73 points now- whether we can get to the 78 I want is a total unknown.

Saw a bit of first half from the Wolves-MU game. I admire the off-ball running of the Wolves players. And they played with confidence.

We win at Goodison we should be able to effectively eliminate Man Utd from catching us. Chelsea should win at home versus Brighton but if they draw or worse and we win at Goodison they should be pretty much eliminated from catching us as well.

Maths not a strong suit in the US. So just say we won at Everton that would take us to 66 points. Just say we got Taylor as ref in the rest of our games - that might be the end of the points for the year. Or we start looking at the table and the mental collapse reoccurs. We may struggle but I still think Man U will get more than 66 points and I don't think the Everton game will see them off.

Expect Man U to win their games v west ham, huddersfield and cardiff - then they have chelsea (h), city (h) everton (a). They'd do well to win two of those. Lets put them at 13 points from those 6. That takes them to 74 so your 12 points would seem about right by my estimations.

With our schedule compared to theirs (MU) if we can't be above them with a 5 point lead (assuming we beat Everton), something is wrong. Most people would deem that kind of lead with both schedules in mind as effectively a done deal barring a collapse with 6 matches to play.

The last three games of the 1988-9 season would show that nothing can be taken for granted in a run in.

We were never going to beat Wimbledon for the simple reason I knew one of the Wimbledon players well. The fact it was him who got their late equaliser was the ultimate piss take though.

C'mon Long Tine Gooner show some testicular fortitude. Lol
Of course anything can happen and I qualified it by saying barring a collapse but the likelihood of finishing above Chelsea and Man Utd with 6 games left with the schedules we all have makes us odds on favorites
That's it. No guarantees but it's a darn good position to be in.

Chelsea leading but their winning doesnt worry me as much as Tottenham's result. As long Tottenham drop points we will go into the fame against Everton in a great position overall.
For me the only big question is if we can finish 3rd.
Top 4 looks very, very good.

Mate it’s only a 2 point lead, possible yes but very very good not In my opinion no way. It only takes 1 blip and we will drop out of the 4. It does look likely we will finish above united though.

Chelsea will become a worry if Sarri starts playing Hudson-Odoi, loftus-cheek and Giroud regularly over the likes of Pedro, kovacic, higuain.

Spurs attendance 59,000 odd, capacity is 62,000. So they make so much effort to ensure they are ever so slightly bigger than us and then don’t even fill it on the grand opening

Lol

City have a very good chance of winning all the domestic trophies. First time ever I think for all clubs but I'm not sure.
Outside chance they win the CL. Imagine if they got the quadruple? The only reason I would laugh about it is that it would eclipse Man Utd's '99 season. But the Arsenal in me would hate seeing it and the hoopla surrounding such a feat.

Agreed. As usual, AG's reading of tea leaves is a bit wonky. The best we can say is that it is in our hands, albeit the road is paved with bananaskins. Prognostication about our rivals' likely form are extremely risky. They're all quite capable of going on a good run.

The fat lady is not even in the building yet, and the chickens are still just a naughty glint in the rooster's eye.

Why do you think City have only an outside chance of winning the CL? They are favorites after all.

So Spuds have a bigger, better stadium than us now, I know we all want to run them down but lets not pretend this isn't the case, however a lot of Levy's talk sounds similar to what we were told when we moved into the Emirates, they certainly need to maintain CL football if they are to fill the ground, they don't have quite as big a fanbase as we did moving into the new stadium having won 3 titles in recent years, I suspect if they drop out of the CL then quite quickly there will be plenty of empty seats and a lot of 'asset stripping' (Kane off to Madrid), however with our own lack of ambition will we be able to push them out?, United and Chelsea can but I feel if we don't get CL football next season we could be in Spurs shadow for the long term and that is truly unacceptable.

I think if we beat Everton away we have a solid chance however I don’t see spurs dropping many points between now and the end of the season. I think we will need to get fourth it will be at the exception of Chelsea who have to go to Liverpool and united but sarris job rests on those games and our away form can be hit n miss.

I wouldn’t count any chickens and what’s more if this does go tits up rather than thanking Emery for trying his best and a decent effort I bet our fan base gives it to him both barrels.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/47813193 Record profit for Spudz. I think their stadium looks better than ours. The stands are closer to the pitch and appear higher. I always failed to understand why at the Emirates the stands behind the goals have suc a large space in front of them.

They play Man City away on April 20th. Apart from that hard to see them losing any of the other games.

At the time, in the Champions League the front few rows were not to be used at many grounds to get round some UEFA regulation. Wasn't it something to do with that? Apparently Tottenham's new ground is acoustically perfect as well, so will have a better atmosphire.

I've not been there yet, but regrettably I think we have to accept Tottenham have a better ground than Arsenal. Like all scientific knowledge, architectural design presumably improves as time moves on. Thirteen years later, Tottenham were always going to have the opportunity to build a better stadium than Arsenal's. Sadly it seems they took it.

Moving into a new stadium is pretty exciting. Paying for it isn't. Let's see how they're going minus Pochettino, Kane and Eriksen, battling with Wolves, Everton and Barnet for a Europa League spot in 2023/24.

Tottenham's' stadium looks the nuts.

My only concern about the run in is we have 5 away games and are yet to keep a clean sheet away from home, whereas Tottenham has 5 home games. If Emery finishes top 4 in his first season, he's done remarkably well considering how awful we looked for a while not so long ago.

Their new stadium does look really good from the photos I've seen.

The major difference between The Emirates and their version is the nature of the original sites. WHL sat in an scruffy location in a low-value residential area in Tottenham, most of which is a low-value dump anyway. Ashburton Grove may have been a derelict brownfield site but it was in a very expensive residential area. This meant that the Emirates was subject to stringent planning restrictions, most notably, cap on capacity and a height restriction. On the other hand, there were virtually no restrictions for the Totts, largely because a mile-high turd could only have improved the area.

It was the height restriction that drove the design of the Emirates. To achieve the numbers, the rake of the terracing had to be shallower than the ideal. Also, to accommodate the facilities around the perimeter of the building, the roof had to slope inwards; this is unusual and it must’ve been a big decision. This all means that the stadium is hardly visible within the neighbourhood - so planning objectives achieved - but the downside is shallower rakes, spaces behind goals (it’s a function of the geometry of a symmetrical bowl), poor visual access to the big screens and an inability to appreciate the drama of the whole stadium from the higher seats. The Totts’ stadium interior scores better than ours on all these latter points. Inside, there seems to be a real sense of scale because there’s real height to the structure and the entirety of the crowd is on view to everyone. Externally, the stadium looks really good too, largely because it’s in Tottenham where a 20 storey scrapyard would be acceptable, so they could do what they liked. The Architects (who are the same bunch who did The Emirates) were given plenty of design freedom and the results are very impressive.

What sets us apart though is the differences in the public spaces and the connectivity. I’ll be amazed if there aren’t serious issues with crowds pouring out directly onto the High Rd, because there’s nowhere else to go. There aren’t any significant public concourses at the new ground because it’s all been crammed in to the site of the old stadium, minus a couple of buildings on the corner. This is exacerbated by the fact that 90% of their crowd want to exit the stadium to the West onto the High Rd. Imagine if the most of the Emirates crowd discharged directly onto Holloway Rd without any holding or milling space. What would happen is exactly what happens in Tottenham – the busy High Rd has to be closed for long periods.

The other point is connectivity. Most fans will get to the new stadium via White Hart Lane or Northumberland Avenue over-ground stations, or they'll walk to and from Seven Sisters Tube about 1.5 miles away. Buses are no use when the High Rd is closed and there’s virtually nowhere to park private cars. WHL was always one of the most difficult grounds to get to and from and they’ve almost doubled the capacity without any new initiatives on transport. The Totts' new business model needs to attract the moneyed morons from the City – it’s only about 7 miles as the crow flies – but if it takes you 2 hours to get there and another 3 hours to get back home, the attraction will soon fade. I remain amazed that these wider issues were largely ignored in the planning process, but then Tottenham is a deprived area and as noted, virtually anything goes.

Bit of light reading:

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/ ... 09021.html

Nice stadium and all that but there’s some right old guff being written about it.

You have thought it was a piece of technology that broke the lanspeed record or something they way people are harping on about it especially reporters. I can’t recall half the fanfare when the emirates opened,

Same mattaface tweeted a video about one of its bars which apparently is the longest bar in all of Europe. I’m sorry mate I’m happy if you want to polish your cock about it but it just looked another stadium bar to me.

How did the Spuds finance the stadium, I know tv revenues and sponsorships etc have risen dramatically but didn't it cost around £850m?.

It looks fantastic, really futuristic etc, but are they not going to have the same financial restrictions that we had for the forseeable future? Or is their billionairre owner part funding it?

Difficult to be certain but it sounds like their stadium cost a bit more than double ours. However in the 12 years since The Emirates was completed, TV money has probably quadrupled and players values have done something similar. General Commercial revenue has also sky-rocked. All this probably contributes to their sense of ease at the massive cost over-run.

Kane's now being touted at £200m but how much would he have been worth in 2006? £30-40m? Remember we sold Anelka, Overmars and Petit around that time for a total of about £50m.

Here's a question: given that AFC has for many years been better funded than the Totts, and at worst, we're currently funded at a similar level to them, yet it costs us a paltry £20m or so to service the debt for our stadium, so what's happening to all our TV money and Commercial revenue? I suspect we all know.

Historically excessive Wages and crap players with little resale value.

If our TV money is something like 142 million a season it doesn’t even cover the wage bill.

Plus the roof is essentially and appropriately a giant toilet seat.

No chance we'll do much improvement to the Emirates either, not with uncle Stan siphoning off cash for more important investments, a few more corporate boxes and that'll be it. No chance I'll be spending any of my money on 'his investment'.

I really hope it all goes tits up for Spurs, otherwise I really am at a point of losing interest in football anyway, watching them actually lord it over us for years because we have a total c**t owner is enough to turn one off completely.

The Emirates has been a total disaster for us, hopefully their new plastic bowl turns out the same!.

Everton could easily be a draw but the good thing is the lads know they have to go for 3 points and so I am assuming no malaise, they will go for it from the first kick. If we win, we'll be 5 points ahead of Man Utd. That should see them off. 6 matches left, 5 points ahead. Odds are they can't catch us, barring us shooting ourselves in the foot considering their schedules vs ours.

If we win, we'll be 3 points ahead of Chelsea. Not much room for error but it's a decent enough lead considering their schedule as well. They draw their next match and we win and that should just about do it..just about. .

Tottenham will be another story, but if we are effectively 5 points ahead of both Man Utd and Chelsea after the next 1 or 2 matches respectively then its just a matter of who ends up 3rd or 4th between us and the scum.

I agree, Darren.

I think the race for top four is totally up in the air. We don't have to play any of the big boys but having so many away games, some of which are very tricky, is by no means the easy run-in that is being suggested.

Maybe some people are suggesting it's an easy run-in, but I doubt it's the majority. Seven out of 10 football writers at The Guardian reckon we're going to miss out, for starters:

https://www.theguardian.com/football/bl ... gue-fa-cup

I agree that our run in looks very tricky. All those away games against strong teams hovering just outside of the Europa League places. It would be impressive if we manage it and a vindication of Emery's first season in charge.