Arsenal's brilliant football can bring the title home

 By 1970s Gooner

Watching Arsenal in the last two games reminded me of the Wenger teams who were so good they would go up 2 0 in the first 20 or so minutes and then start taking liberties, passing it back and forth between themselves and show boating which annoyed me no end. They would then concede a goal and would have to work hard to keep the lead.

The difference with this Arsenal team is that they showed that they can't keep the lead. One would have thought that they would have learned their lesson at Liverpool but no they go and repeat the same mistake at West Ham. 

Arteta has to also look at himself, in my opinion, who obviously didn't press the point home enough after the Liverpool performance but more importantly during his in game management for the West Ham game.

So my prediction is that we are likely to see a different mentality for the up coming Southampton game where we are likely to again dominate the ball, create and hopefully score goals early in the game. And if this happens we should not let up and carry on applying the screw until the game is well beyond the opposition.

This will allow us to close the goal difference gap to Man City but more importantly set us up for the game of the season next Wednesday. It will also transfer the pressure to Man City who will be seven points behind and will know that any slip up in Wednesday's game will give Arsenal a big boost, transferring the advantage for the title to our side of North London.

Arsenal have been playing brilliant football in the last nine games where we won seven on the trot and threw away two goal leads for the last two. But the slip ups were not due to us going off the boil, feeling the pressure or indeed playing badly. We were just too complacent. 

Once we cut that out we will surprise everyone and go on to win the Premier League.

Arsenal will bounce back but we need better management of games

 By 1970s Gooner

Xhaka should have a good look at himself. We were coasting, 2 0 up at Anfield and the opponents and the home supporters were subdued.

Up pops Xhaka to instigate a mild handbags confrontation with Alexander Arnold and manages to jee up the local partisan crowd as well as the Liverpool players. 

Reminded me of last season when Arteta had the confrontation with Klopp at 0 0 and then we let in four goals! We never learn...

One minute after Xhaka's madness they score and we go in at half time 2 1. It obviously is anybody's game after that. They are fired up, they have nothing to loose and they throw the kitchen sink at us. 

Worryingly we fail to manage the game, keep our passing game intact and hold them at bay. Arteta also makes the wrong substitutions and Ramsdale becomes man of the match, a disappointing distinction for a title chasing team.

Mikel took Jesus out replacing him with Trossard who offered nothing in keeping the ball. Jesus would have been much more adept at doing that and he wasn't that tired.

He also took out Odegaard instead of Xhaka who was tired. But Odergaard is much better at taking the ball out of defence.

But the worse substitution was the one he made AFTER they equalised. Tierney for Zinchenko. This should have been the first substitution. I am sure Alexander Arnold would not have gone passed Tierney, had he been on, so easily for the cross that led to the equaliser.

Now the margin for future errors is miniscule. 

But we will bounce back as we have done before this season leading to the 7 match winning run up to today.

The main target should be to be ahead of Man City on points, assuming they win their game in hand, when we come to play them on the 26th April.

If we avoid defeat in that game then the title will surely be ours.