There’s still lots of introspection and online discourse as to whether or not Arsenal have ‘ceded the advantage’ or similar such wording, in relation to the title race. The likes of Gary Neville are saying things like “I still fancy City to win it” and to be honest with you, if you take your red and white tinted specs off, we’d probably look at the situation in a similar light if it was one of our rivals up against the juggernaut that is Man City.

A Man City with a striker who will most likely break the goalscoring record this season. A Man City who the Premier League are looking to prosecute because they are alleged to have broken rules around financial fair play and their reporting. A Man City who have won the title four times out of the last five.

It feels like the world is waiting for us to slip up, whereas the expectation is that City will just keep on winning. If it happens, if they win their remaining nine games, then you can’t really argue with that because they’d have won 14 games in a row and that would be an achievement they have never done before in a title race. So if they win it like that and we fall short, I’d like to think – although won’t hold my breath – that the media narrative won’t be around us bottling it. In fact, the argument should be that Arsenal are just about the only team this season who haven’t ‘bottled it’, because our players have stood up against a club who have been making the Premier League seem about as competitive as the Bundesliga and Scottish football over the last decade.

We have much harder games, we aren’t on a slow procession towards a Premier League title playing relegation-threatened fodder each week, we will have to win this title the extremely hard way, we might just fall short. But that doesn’t mean we should be falling for the pundits and media narrative of desperate desire to see us slip up. Whether it is farcical football journalists talking about ‘insufferable Arsenal fans’, the muppets that want to chastise us on TalkSh*te (although there are some good presenters on there, I know), or Sky Sports presenters talking about how City will eventually win this league, let’s just keep on keeping on. We’ve got this far this season playing some great football, some scintillating stuff at times, with a collective of players we all feel a connection with. So whilst this period is scary right now, whilst we have it all to do and still some very difficult weekends ahead of us, at least we’re being treated to that feeling of emotion and not just counting down the days until the end of another season in which nothing really has counted for anything by the time you’re getting to March or April.

It will be weird if we lose out to City though, because we’ll have basically have led the league table since about match week two in the season. We’ll have been the team that has been the best in the league for 90% of the season, only to lose out in the last few weeks of the season. That feels kind of harsh. But that is the game that we all know and love. Like a boxer who batters his opponent for ten rounds, only to fall to the canvas on a knock out in one of the final rounds, we could see ourselves missing out to City just as the big prizes are being dished out. I’m trying to think of a season like it. The one that springs to mind is Newcastle losing out on the title in 95/96 to Man United, but even that doesn’t feel the same. Back then at match week 30 Newcastle had 64 points, had played 29 and were level on points with United, but with a couple of games in hand. They went on a bit of a wretched run of form and United ended up overtaking them by match week 31 and never looked back. That season Newcastle were the ones who set the pace, led most of the way, but fell apart around match week 30, having lost 1-0 to Man United at the beginning of March, to us 2-0 at Highbury, then the famous 4-3 at Anfield, before losing a couple of games later in April to Blackburn. We haven’t gone through that level of blip up until this point, only a small one in February in which we lost to Everton, were robbed of two points at home to Brentford, before losing at home to City.

If we can somehow continue to win five or six of our next eight games, but fall short away to Man City, Newcastle and, say, West Ham, then lose out the title to them, I don’t think you could be arguing that a team who has finished in the high 80s in points has ‘bottled’ anything. In 95/96 87 points would have seen us win the league by five points over United. In fact, it has only been since a financially doped nation state had come along that we have seen how 90 points isn’t enough to win a title any more. Liverpool had to get to 99 in 2019/20. Then you have to go back to 2015/16 before the title was won with any of what you’d call ‘normal’ points tallies, which was Leicester City on 81 points. We aren’t competing on a level playing field, nobody has for years, so calling anything a ‘bottle job’ when the odds are already stacked against you as they have been this season, is a little odd to me.

We’re the only ones flying the flag for any kind of perceived normality. If we don’t win the league this season – to which I too still think we’re outsiders even with our six point advantage right now – then so be it. But we’ll have been brilliant this season and when the dust settles I will still find time to say I’ve been proud to be in the thick of the excitement watching The Arsenal this season.

That’s enough rambling from me for one day I think. You have a good one and I’ll catch you all in the morrow.