Not really, we finished a pt above Tottenham thanks to an epic collapse and 5 pts above City and van Gaal’s Utd despite having Mesut Özil playing Zidane level and fit the whole season, and Alexis fit for most of it.
The point is those teams made a clear statement about that not being acceptable and a change needing to be made in terms of management, we didn’t.
Which should have led to a League title, the fact that it didn’t is a disgrace.
Why though? Why can’t people appreciate how brilliant Leicester were at breaking the status quo.
For one season three of their players were playing better football than every single superstar big money player in the league.
They deserved so many of their results, nothing disgraceful about their achievement based on the football they played, so there is nothing disgraceful about not beating them to the title imo. If you step back from the Arsenal tinted goggles it’s one of the most amazing footballing stories any of us will ever see.
It is and you use some valid points. However after beating city at home before christmas we were in the box seat with a team team of talented players.
Also when we beat them at the Emirates it was a golden oppertunity wasted within in a couple of games.
We should never have been out of the race with 10 games to go. That imo is the saddest aspect of last seasons demise.
Because with how the season went along it became clear it was pretty much our title to lose around matchday 20 or so and we had a huge opportunity, an opportunity we might not get ever again, and we blew it. Their League win is as much a symbol of our shortcomings, perennial also-rans in the Emirates Era, as it is of their greatness.
What was even more annoying was that it wasn’t just Leicester in the title race, with that many games to go, but spurs as well.
I doubt if either of those tow clubs had more than one or two players that would have got in our first team and, as I said before, both had new managers and far less resources, and we had two world class players, Sanchez and Ozil.
How many seasons will we see all the other big clubs fail so miserably?
It was the perfect opportunity to take advantage of the situation, yet we also failed miserably, and there really is no excuse.
If we had bought the players like Xhaka and Mustafa, as well as a decent striker, to play alongside Sanchez and Ozil, we would have won the PL comfortably.
But Wenger chose to only buy a GK, which he should have done ages before, and not to strengthen.
So we started most games with a combination of the super quality of Flamini, Mertesacker and Ramsey, and hoped Sanchez and Ozil would be able to win the PL with Giroud or Walcott playing in front of them.
Can you envisage a situation in which we don’t win the league and you don’t find a way of excusing it?
There have been plenty if occasions. But we probably wont see anything like this again in our lives, Vardy even got a bloody film out of it.
It’s genuinely amazing and I see no need for being bitter about something I have no control over.
Fact of the matter is, the best team won. Credit where it’s due.
If that’s the case then why feel any sort of emotion about things you have no control over? Are we only allowed to feel positive emotions towards things we have no control over?
No one is denying that the best team won the league, and I think nearly everyone credits them for winning the league. The point is that we should have been the best team, and I can’t see what the problem is with pointing that out.
Why should we have the best team? We had better resources and a high probability of success but that is no guarantee. All the stars aligned and everything fell into place for them.
I’ve always cited unpredictability as what attracted me to football and they were a great example of that.
Edit: so to round off my opinion, no, us no winning the league wasn’t a disgrace at all. Not going down to the wire absolutely, but not winning? No.
@Oliver. You’re telling it like we were unlucky or something like that, whilst we had a 1 out of 100 opportunity which we let slip out of our hands.
Isn’t it logical to claim Arsenal has to win a title when City, Chelsea and United are failing as they did and not doing so is a massive let down? Because of our place in the food chain and the hierarchy of the League? The fact that we didn’t show up when we were supposed confirms us as being the biggest bottlers in this League. I don’t understand why it’s so hard to acknowledge the size that last seasons screw up was.
The whole ‘Oops, shit happens…-mentality’ towards is boggles my mind. It’s a mentality more fitting for a club like Tottenham Hotspur or Everton.
Of course, however on this occasion I believe that Leicester were simply the more deserving team.
I have a number of reasons why I believe we as a club didn’t maximise our potential and potentially take the gold.
However that still shouldn’t detract from what Leicester achieved, because they had the 3 best / most consistent players in the league last season and their team somehow managed to rip everyone (but us…) to shreds.
It’s really not ‘oops shit happens’ but more a balanced viewpoint for football not exlusive to Arsenal.
Because we were the only stable club of the ones you listed. Liverpool sacked their manager in October. Chelsea manager had a meltdown and got sacked in December, being replaced by an inner in. Manchester United are in the midst of a failing transition. Manchester City fell out the title race immediately after announcing they were replacing their existing manager.
Our manager is 20 years deep, signed no outfield players and lost the title race to Leicester fucking city.
If it was in the CL, or a cup game, I could see that being true, but over a whole season we should have won it.
As I said, Wenger chose not to strengthen, apart from a GK, and it cost him the PL.
It was possibly a contributing factor in not winning the league, but it wasn’t definitively the only reason. After all we finished higher than every team bar one, that all invested (in some cases heavily).
Chelsea already had a title winning squad, City had the most expensive squad, and United had the most available resources. All acquired new players, none won the league either.
Edit: took out a paragraph, didn’t think it helped illustrate my point.
[QUOTE]“No, I fell asleep,” he confessed. “But I have watched the goals and he looked very sharp.
“I will watch the game today. I know him so well, like all my players that I observe every day, so I will be able to see if he was playing with a restriction or not.
“But for the first goal he scored he ran from the halfway line and resists [a challenge]. If you are really injured with a hamstring you cannot do that.
“It is a very difficult one because I am sure he will come back saying he is alright.”
Talk about advanced scientific methods! No wonder we have such a fine injury record over the years!
I am positive you aren’t being entirely serious here. But didn’t we send someone to check him out? Or at the very least didn’t he get a medical assessment?
Surely we don’t just go “yeah you can run, fuck it you can play”. 
You’d have to wonder how many points playing a player like Flamini in as many matches as we did cost us.
Did he look fine in the end?
Albeit internally delighted to see Arsenal get a penalty and score, A big part of me that admires Sanchez wishes he didn’t dive.
That dive is not gonna leave my head soon.