Arsenal’s February Challenges Assessed: Winnable Premier League Clashes and Champions League Return

rosicky-brighton

By JA

Only four days to go until the first month of 2015 is over. Can you believe it? Where has the time gone?

Therefore as my life now seems to be in a time machine where I blink and lose a month I wanted to look ahead at what is in store for February.

This time of year, especially last season, the wheels were well and truly on there way to coming off for Arsenal as predicted they would by every Arsenal hater and commentator known to man and sure enough we delivered in devastating style. It was the last time Jamie Carragher predicted something that was correct, which when you think about it is probably even more degrading for Arsenal then their results as I’d imagine if you asked Carragher to spell his name he’d get it wrong. Scally Twat! Can’t work out how these people get a job in the media.

However, this season as we move soon into Spring (well that’s March, but near enough) I feel Arsenal are starting to open a few buds, blossom is appearing on the trees, and eggs are starting to crackle and open. We have new life, a new beginning, a team that again looks fresh (and fit) and a manager who seems in the last few weeks (certainly after the win against City) to be restoring his ”Je ne sais quoi” and surely I cannot be the only one to notice something has changed.

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All in all we have a mixture of competitions in February. We will pretty much have a better understanding of the outcome of our season come 1st March.

In the meantime we face Villa at home, Spurs away in the Premier League, which we know is always going to be tough and they look a much better outfit than the one that somehow stole a 1-1 draw at the end of September at the Emirates, then Leicester at home.

Then we have a home game against Middlesbrough in the last 16 of the FA Cup after drawing then in the cup last night. I think we should be quite happy especially with all the Premier League sides that drew each other.

So far, I am feeling confident, even with Spurs in there I wouldn’t be surprised with 9 Premier League points, and in the hat for the last 8 of the FA Cup. Here’s hoping.

Then we travel away to Pardew’s revitalised Palace who I hope have lost a game by then as that could, and more than likely, will be tricky. I hope their run has ended as they will not need any further encouragement. They will be without Sanogo though.

And finally to end the month we have the tie we were all wishing for against Monaco in the Champions Legaue. However Monaco have been on a 13 game unbeaten run in all competitions since the end of November, are now up to fifth in Ligue 1 and are only 5 points off of second (I think they were around 8th when we drew them.) So you can see that they are also getting their act together and that tie I feel will be trickier than we would like.

Either way, looking at February and the way we are starting to get our act together you’d be hard pushed to think that we should not improve on our league position, and progress to the next round of the FA Cup. You would also like to think that the Champions League tie would certainly leave us in a positive situation to move into the quarter finals for the second leg in March, which by the way are far less favourable for Arsenal than February….

COYG!!!