The Title Race
Twelve games in, and the shape of the season couldn’t be clearer than it is now. Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea are already decisively clear of anyone who could wish to realistically challenge them for the title, and the intensity of the battle between the three will only increase. Liverpool remain farcical pretenders, having lost by the same 2-1 scoreline to the teams who are all evidently better than them. Newcastle cannot defend, and simply don’t have the physical presence in midfield to out-manoeuvre those teams who they are supposed to compete with. Amongst the other teams who might step up inconsistency and a final absence of true top class players will expose them. Case in point: Manchester City – probably the best of the rest - lost 3-0 today to Leicester. Leicester. Imagine that happening to us, United or Chelsea. You can’t.
Whatever anyone thinks of Abramovich’s injection of unthinkable riches into Chelsea, it’s made two differences already, the first positive, the second more ambiguous. Firstly it’s showed the real depth of fight in United, and decisively in Arsenal. When Wenger spoke, half disparagingly and half insightfully about the difference between Arsenal and Tottenham on Friday, he made it clear that in terms of what he calls ‘natural resources’, that income from historic and geographical fanbase which applies to most teams in the league, Arsenal are not significantly better off than most of their rivals. Aston Villa, both Liverpool clubs, Newcastle, Birmingham, Southampton, Leeds – those clubs at least can draw on a support equivalent to ours. But they can’t beat us. Partly we can thank Wenger and the truly top class players he’s brought in. But mostly we can thank that indescribable notion of Team Spirit which we, Man United, and increasingly, Chelsea, have as our massive advantage over the rest. Neither Arsenal nor United have played that well this season, but here we are, twelve games in, on significantly better points tallies than we’ve ever had before. Thank Chelsea for that, the need for the big-two to compete with an outfit who’ve got cash not even the might of the Manchester commercial machine can match.
Thank Chelsea also for the flipside of that coin, because what they’ve shown is how far the rest have to go to catch up. More than ever before the imperative for us and those two to win week after week continues. I don’t think any of us can afford bad patches, spells when everyone can think ‘ah, never mind, there’s always next week’, and know they can come back. The pressure’s too great. This is a three team league plus a seventeen team league, and expect ‘our’ league to go right to the wire, possibly with a bigger points tally than has ever been seen before, as the struggle to maintain any small advantage on a week to week basis goes on and on and on. Will we win? I don’t know; no-one can. It literally is too close to call. But beyond the challenge of beating each other, the three contenders face certain specific tests of their own ability to maintain the momentum – the tests that will, alongside the unquantifiable luck of the break, determine who’ll be bringing home the trophy come May.
For Chelsea the challenge will be the input of the players on the fringes. Ranieri knows now that he has seven players he can depend on to be good enough regularly to sustain the tactical and line-up changes he has as his luxury. Cudicini, Terry, Lampard, Makelele, Duff, Crespo and Mutu are top class performers, capable of winning any game. Utterly dependable – which shows Ranieri is essentially a smart operator in the market. Yet Veron, Joe Cole, Jesper Gronkjaer, Hasselbaink and others around the edges will each encounter moments when it comes down to them to win a game, and it will be a real test to see if they can measure up. Each of those four names are renowned for inconsistency, but to keep on gaining points every Saturday needs the manager to be certain he can depend on them. To be certain they’re hot periods will coincide with the moments they’re needed most. If they can do that, they may will take the title back to West London.
For United the game will rest on their capacity to be creative, imaginative when times are hard. United, we all know, beat teams most regularly when they play badly. It’s a feature that’s gained them so many championships. Last year most notably. But this year they’ve already lost to Southampton and Fulham on off days. And that shows they face the possibility, unthinkable before, that they may not have the game-breaking flair to win when ideas are at a premium. The burden on Scholes, Giggs and Van Nistelrooy could not be higher, because no-one else in their team has that capacity, Ronaldo’s too young and too much of a trickster to be incisive, Fletcher has a long way to go. Forlan will not sustain his form. They will buy someone to help them in January, but changing teams mid-season often causes more problems than it solves. And so what it will come down to is if their best trio are good enough when it counts. Then, depressingly, it might well be them that wins yet another title.
And lastly us. Arsenal. I think our challenge is the hardest. Because ours is going to depend on the ability to absorb the changes that are already happening to our style of play. Europe, as I’ve said before, has shown up our limitations, our need for a different way of attacking. And in January I think there’s no question Wenger will get someone in who can be that player. As I said though, and as anyone who remembers Asprilla blowing Newcastle’s title shot back in 95/96 will testify, changing your attacking personnel mid-campaign causes difficulties, breaks up patterns which players depend on to get them out of holes.
Whoever Wenger brings in is going to have to bear an enormous burden, simply of being the man capable of playing alongside Henry. The players are going to have to learn how to play to that guy whilst Henry absorbs the space and attention he gets at the moment. Touré has already introduced one new dimension to our play, being, uniquely in Wenger’s reign, a central defender truly capable of moving out from the back, opening up ground for others to utilise with his capability on the ball. He is, with the possible exception of Ferdinand, already the best at that particular movement in the Premiership, and it gives us the chance to press higher up the pitch than is actually useful to us until a target man arrives. The target man will make that feature genuinely useful, and if he gels with our other ten, we will, I believe, I hope, outstrip the other two, simply because we have demonstrated a will power thus far that even United can’t match.
In a competition this tight it is willpower that shall finally present us with a winner. The technical ability of the teams is extraordinary; the managers all of the highest class – Ranieri included. Everything is there for all three to hang in until the last day. When each deals with the individual challenges they face, absorbs the problem and refuses to let it take their eyes off the prize, even for a second, then that team will be the deserved winner.
This, I think, already, will prove to be the greatest Premiership title race for decades. The next seven months should be amazing.
Let the best team win.
Let it, please, be Arsenal.
Twelve games in, and the shape of the season couldn’t be clearer than it is now. Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea are already decisively clear of anyone who could wish to realistically challenge them for the title, and the intensity of the battle between the three will only increase. Liverpool remain farcical pretenders, having lost by the same 2-1 scoreline to the teams who are all evidently better than them. Newcastle cannot defend, and simply don’t have the physical presence in midfield to out-manoeuvre those teams who they are supposed to compete with. Amongst the other teams who might step up inconsistency and a final absence of true top class players will expose them. Case in point: Manchester City – probably the best of the rest - lost 3-0 today to Leicester. Leicester. Imagine that happening to us, United or Chelsea. You can’t.
Whatever anyone thinks of Abramovich’s injection of unthinkable riches into Chelsea, it’s made two differences already, the first positive, the second more ambiguous. Firstly it’s showed the real depth of fight in United, and decisively in Arsenal. When Wenger spoke, half disparagingly and half insightfully about the difference between Arsenal and Tottenham on Friday, he made it clear that in terms of what he calls ‘natural resources’, that income from historic and geographical fanbase which applies to most teams in the league, Arsenal are not significantly better off than most of their rivals. Aston Villa, both Liverpool clubs, Newcastle, Birmingham, Southampton, Leeds – those clubs at least can draw on a support equivalent to ours. But they can’t beat us. Partly we can thank Wenger and the truly top class players he’s brought in. But mostly we can thank that indescribable notion of Team Spirit which we, Man United, and increasingly, Chelsea, have as our massive advantage over the rest. Neither Arsenal nor United have played that well this season, but here we are, twelve games in, on significantly better points tallies than we’ve ever had before. Thank Chelsea for that, the need for the big-two to compete with an outfit who’ve got cash not even the might of the Manchester commercial machine can match.
Thank Chelsea also for the flipside of that coin, because what they’ve shown is how far the rest have to go to catch up. More than ever before the imperative for us and those two to win week after week continues. I don’t think any of us can afford bad patches, spells when everyone can think ‘ah, never mind, there’s always next week’, and know they can come back. The pressure’s too great. This is a three team league plus a seventeen team league, and expect ‘our’ league to go right to the wire, possibly with a bigger points tally than has ever been seen before, as the struggle to maintain any small advantage on a week to week basis goes on and on and on. Will we win? I don’t know; no-one can. It literally is too close to call. But beyond the challenge of beating each other, the three contenders face certain specific tests of their own ability to maintain the momentum – the tests that will, alongside the unquantifiable luck of the break, determine who’ll be bringing home the trophy come May.
For Chelsea the challenge will be the input of the players on the fringes. Ranieri knows now that he has seven players he can depend on to be good enough regularly to sustain the tactical and line-up changes he has as his luxury. Cudicini, Terry, Lampard, Makelele, Duff, Crespo and Mutu are top class performers, capable of winning any game. Utterly dependable – which shows Ranieri is essentially a smart operator in the market. Yet Veron, Joe Cole, Jesper Gronkjaer, Hasselbaink and others around the edges will each encounter moments when it comes down to them to win a game, and it will be a real test to see if they can measure up. Each of those four names are renowned for inconsistency, but to keep on gaining points every Saturday needs the manager to be certain he can depend on them. To be certain they’re hot periods will coincide with the moments they’re needed most. If they can do that, they may will take the title back to West London.
For United the game will rest on their capacity to be creative, imaginative when times are hard. United, we all know, beat teams most regularly when they play badly. It’s a feature that’s gained them so many championships. Last year most notably. But this year they’ve already lost to Southampton and Fulham on off days. And that shows they face the possibility, unthinkable before, that they may not have the game-breaking flair to win when ideas are at a premium. The burden on Scholes, Giggs and Van Nistelrooy could not be higher, because no-one else in their team has that capacity, Ronaldo’s too young and too much of a trickster to be incisive, Fletcher has a long way to go. Forlan will not sustain his form. They will buy someone to help them in January, but changing teams mid-season often causes more problems than it solves. And so what it will come down to is if their best trio are good enough when it counts. Then, depressingly, it might well be them that wins yet another title.
And lastly us. Arsenal. I think our challenge is the hardest. Because ours is going to depend on the ability to absorb the changes that are already happening to our style of play. Europe, as I’ve said before, has shown up our limitations, our need for a different way of attacking. And in January I think there’s no question Wenger will get someone in who can be that player. As I said though, and as anyone who remembers Asprilla blowing Newcastle’s title shot back in 95/96 will testify, changing your attacking personnel mid-campaign causes difficulties, breaks up patterns which players depend on to get them out of holes.
Whoever Wenger brings in is going to have to bear an enormous burden, simply of being the man capable of playing alongside Henry. The players are going to have to learn how to play to that guy whilst Henry absorbs the space and attention he gets at the moment. Touré has already introduced one new dimension to our play, being, uniquely in Wenger’s reign, a central defender truly capable of moving out from the back, opening up ground for others to utilise with his capability on the ball. He is, with the possible exception of Ferdinand, already the best at that particular movement in the Premiership, and it gives us the chance to press higher up the pitch than is actually useful to us until a target man arrives. The target man will make that feature genuinely useful, and if he gels with our other ten, we will, I believe, I hope, outstrip the other two, simply because we have demonstrated a will power thus far that even United can’t match.
In a competition this tight it is willpower that shall finally present us with a winner. The technical ability of the teams is extraordinary; the managers all of the highest class – Ranieri included. Everything is there for all three to hang in until the last day. When each deals with the individual challenges they face, absorbs the problem and refuses to let it take their eyes off the prize, even for a second, then that team will be the deserved winner.
This, I think, already, will prove to be the greatest Premiership title race for decades. The next seven months should be amazing.
Let the best team win.
Let it, please, be Arsenal.
