Having watched everyone over Christmas at this point (football fans should be on their knees thanking God for the Christmas period!
) Arsenal lie best placed to win the league IMO.
However, the match tonight will reveal much about Leicester and City. Leicester looked like their league exertions were catching up on them against Liverpool and were very poor.
United (Rooney aside, they're incredibly ordinary) and Chelsea are too far off the pace at this point. Neither should be winning the league this season.
Spurs - not a chance.
A City/Leicester draw tonight would be the ideal result (i'd even be happy with a win for Leicester as we have them to play in Emirates still) but if City win it could galvanize them again, and to me they have the strongest squad in the PL this season.
I don't see Wenger buying another player for the sake of buying another player TBH. He will (with some justification) point to the fact that the team are top of the table and have a number of players coming back from injury in the coming weeks/months/years. - I don't agree with this POV however.
For me, the thing which might stop Arsenal finally getting PL success is as ever, "ze mental strength". The team and manager showed no mental strength again against Southampton and I fear that, as the title race moves along, there will be other "Southamptons" further down the track.
just as good players don't become bad ones overnight, neither too do crap defenders become good ones overnight.
Ozil demonstrates where the benchmark of "world class" truly lies in football. Alexis aside, there is nobody in the same division as Ozil at Arsenal, IMO.
Congrats to Cech on the record - but again, he's neither as great or as terrible as his recent performances have shown. His World class days are behind him however. Better than Ospina this season? I wouldn't say that TBH. However, he does exude more confidence to his teammates - having won all there is to win in club football.
Finally, Arsenal are the best placed team to win the title this year at this point in time. Whether they can go on and deliver it is really down to Wenger, the team spirit and "Ze mental strength". All 3 will be tested in the coming months.
Speaking of Mental Strength, I fear for us getting a thumping in the CL, given how poor our defence is without Coquelin to cover. Regardless of who plays in the middle - any of Koc/Merts/Gabriel/Chambers/ will struggle to contain Neymar/Messi/Jaws - and any such hammering could have knock on effects in the PL.
Happy New Year from an (unusually!) optimistic gooner!