After beating Wigan yesterday it feels like we have reached the end of the recovery phase. Four – nil was the right score rather than just getting the right number of points. I know that Wigan away is a fixture that we’ve cocked up two years running, but all the same it feels like a suitable statement about this season – we’re back where we should be.
It’s tempting to say now for the hard bit, but that underplays what we have already achieved since that dire day at Old Trafford. Pulling a team out of a crisis of confusion and confidence is hard, but Arsenal have done it. It’s just that the next bit is going to be hard too.
The race for a top four slot has got harder thanks to Sheik Mansour and Harry Redknapp. Much as it pains me to say it, Redknapp has put together the most credible Tottenham team in decades. Meanwhile City have spent nearly a billion pounds and this season they are getting the inevitable rewards. We debate the sanity or morality of spending billion pounds on a football club when the world’s in such a state, but there we are, that’s what he’s done, and now Man City and Tottenham are at the races too.
I’m not sure about Newcastle. Their start to the season has been stunning but I get the feeling we are about to see how deep the quality of their challenge really is. They picked up a couple of injuries on Saturday that might be hard to deal with. But for the moment they are in the mix with us.
So too are Chelsea. Like Newcastle, there are still questions to be answered, but on Saturday they looked like they knew their business again. Their defenders held their shape and did a good job. Sturridge looks increasingly good and Drogba looks fitter. You wonder how different it might have been if Luiz had got a red card early on when he brought down Demba Ba. He was clearly last man, but Chelsea got the break and made the most of it.
Tomorrow we will see if Liverpool are still on the pace after a few draws that have taken a bit of the gloss off.
But at the moment there’s a seven way fight for the only four positions that mean anything and we’ve got a tough month ahead. Before Christmas we play Everton (eighth), Man City (top) and Aston Villa (ninth). These are all going to be harder work.
Looking around the web today there’s all the usual transfer speculation, none of it really stood up with convincing quotes, so I think we might leave it be a little longer yet. One pretty solid looking story is that Emmanuel Frimpong wants a loan spell, with Wolves the most likely destination. Sounds like a sensible enough move to me. Coquelin is probably edging him as chief understudy to Song at the moment and after Tuesday’s shot to nothing against Olympiacos and us going out of the Carling, it’s hard to see what time on the pitch he’s going to get.
Mikel Artea won our Wigan Man of the Match poll after initially being neck and neck with Robin Van Persie.
