English football fans love their footie and the Premiership provides a brilliant platform for them to divulge in their footballing fantasies. The drama of the Premiership fuels our passion and of course the many other pro and semi-pro leagues that fans go to watch their favourite teams, but I cannot help but feel that the recent TV rights deal, which will bring stupid amounts of money into the Premier league is really not good for the bigger picture. Everyone seems to be benefiting from this mega-bucks deal except the fans and I am really pleased to see the fans coming together to make their voices heard so they can receive a piece of the pie too.
Speaking of making their voices heard, Arsenal and United are on a real bit of decent form. The Gunners seem to have well and truly buried their fear of playing the top 4, as they trounced Liverpool 4-1 yesterday (4.4.15) with four absolutely delicious goals. The win moved them up to second place and credit where credit is due, Arsenal is making progress. The fact is that they are now genuinely competing with petrol-dollar rich clubs City and Chelsea and this will make Ivan Gazidis feel very happy.
Against Liverpool Ozil arguably had his best game for Arsenal and there is no doubt he is a world class footballer. Arsenal needs their top stars to be far more consistent. Only then will they really be spoken as genuine title contenders. For now, it is nice to hear some football commentators make comments believing that Arsenal are now within touching distance of winning the crown that has eluded them for so long. I have to bring a sense of perspective to this though - in fairness, both Arsenal and Manchester Utd have had a very mediocre season. Some of their performances have been shocking, particularly with Utd, so the fact that they are in with a real shout of finishing in the top 4 leaves many fans scratching their heads. Whatever the pundits are saying LvG has struggled to settle in the Premiership and his team has been found out repeatedly this year. Their fans will be hoping for better things to come next year.
For now, Arsenal fans can feel fairly smug that they have a real chance of finishing runners-up in the Premiership. With Chelsea still to come to the Emirates and to the Etihad the title race may well run into May but Chelsea will need to do a City if we are going to see anyone else lift the crown this year.
Source: DSG
