not too bad, innit!

It’s not all doom and gloom. ‘Cautious Optimism’ is what my teacher used to call it when we wrote codes in C++ on a vi editor – chances of it to fail were various, you could easily miss out a semicolon and things won’t work, the error descriptions weren’t ‘descriptive’ enough and you would have to start from line 1 to debug and fix the problem. Mikel is trying to do it on a football ground with 25 players from last 3 seasons and he is still to run it, successfully.

It was called a ‘Good Job’ when we finished 2nd for the first time in 2022-23 season. We lost the games in 36th and 37th week, against Brighton at Home 0-3, and Forest Away 1-0 and we lost the title by just 5 points. It wasn’t a bad result for the club and the fans, in a sense that we finished 2nd after a very long time, the players had the better days ahead and we had built a solid defensive unit. After the defeats, we picked ourselves up, and started from scratch in the next season.

2023-24, we finished 2nd again against Man City who were in tremendous form in the second half of the season. They had 91 points, we had 89 by the end of it. This time, we did well towards the end winning 6 out of last 6 games, beating Chelsea and Spurs on the way. Aston Villa did beat us which allowed City to go in front and they never dropped a point after that. Arteta & Co. were beaten by Pep and his players in a title run. We did well, very well and learnt from some of our earlier mistakes. Mikel bolstered the back up options in an attempt to keep the injury factor away. Alright, lets go again, boys.

2024-25, we finished 2nd again but it hurt this time. Almost everyone struggled but Liverpool, because of an extra ordinary season from Mo Salah, won the title with 84 points. We finished our season with 74 points, not good enough considering our points tally had dropped massively, we had improved in every area of the field, we had better back up players and almost everything else was in a better shape around the club that earlier seasons.

So far, this season, we have been doing good, again. We are sitting at the top after 21 games with a 6 points difference to our rivals – Man City, amidst injuries to many players. Martinelli was out for few games, Gabriel / Saiba partnership wasn’t available for few games, RB was a problem, Madueke picked up an injury, Saka was out after ages and Havertz / Jesus has made it for the selection only now. We have also managed to beat Unai Emery so, yeah.

There has been some concerns apart from the injuries. We spent some money in the CF department which hasn’t paid well, but it has been the system more than the player in my opinion. If Arteta things Havertz and Jesus will better suit his style, they are available now and he can do what he wishes. Bukayo has some drop in form, and it hasn’t costed us still but we surely need the best player in his best form if we are going to compete at all levels and win something of importance.

Premier League – sitting up top with 6 points lead and 17 games to go. It’s achievable and let us just agree that not winning from here should be called a bottle job.

Champions League – we haven’t dropped a point in Champions League so far and we have beaten Atletico and Bayern in the process. We were beaten by PSG in Semi Finals last season, and they went on to win the title, so it wasn’t a all-sad affair. We can do better than that, this season. We can go all the way.

Carabao Cup – We are playing Chelsea in a 2-legged semi finals. Chelsea has sacked Maresca and we can take advantage of that. It’s not easy considering we will face one of the Man City and Newcastle if we manage to beat Chelsea but again, it’s achievable. We have beaten all three and we know how to do that.

FA Cup – FA Cup third round got us some very unexpected but sweet results. Forest lost to Wrexham in a penalty shooutout, Newcastle somehow managed to win against Bournemouth after a 3-3 result in regular time, Tottenham lost to Aston Villa (lol) and Brighton beat Man Utd. We beat Portsmouth 4-1 after going down in 3rd minute which was expected. We are going to play Wigan Athletic in 4th round. We will have a 5th round, quarter finals, semis and finals – so it’s a long road and we have just got started.

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Yeah, we are doing well. I am Cautiously Optimistic.

Could it have been better?
Certainly.

Are we struggling in some departments?
Yes – because some of those games in PL were won by set pieces and our open play goals had dried up.

Can we make it to the end?
I hope so, considering we have 3 seasons of falling short and we have practically 2 playing XI that can finish the season in the top half of the table.

See you in the comment section.