Are Liverpool now favourites to win the Premier League?

Ray Parlour wrote:I'm not sure about that. You have stats to back that up?

I remember it coming up on here before. Eduardo had a purple patch but then didn't score for some time before the injury.

Couldn't take getting beaten. We had already lost in the league, CL and got hammered by Spurs in the CC, each time we had responded. With regards to the united defeat we had to prioritise as injuries were mounting.

The FA cup game was perhaps not the tipping point, maybe you could make the argument that the CC game against Spurs was more like it.

We were already mentally fragile and Eduardo's injury just distabilised the team.

So it had nothing to do with losing football matches, particularly cup games?

Stimulus Package wrote:

Ray Parlour wrote:Sounding a bit of a cliche now and I now people like Saints will add their opinions to this but if Eduardo hadn't gotten injured I do think we would have won the title.

You mean the player that hadn't scored in something like 10 games prior to getting injured?

Lets see, after destroying Everton, he played the following games:

Blackburn
ManU
Milan

and then got injured in the 8th of the following game against Birmigham.

Does that amount to something like 10 games?

The Professor wrote:

Stimulus Package wrote:

Ray Parlour wrote:Sounding a bit of a cliche now and I now people like Saints will add their opinions to this but if Eduardo hadn't gotten injured I do think we would have won the title.

You mean the player that hadn't scored in something like 10 games prior to getting injured?

Lets see, after destroying Everton, he played the following games:

Blackburn
ManU
Milan

and then got injured in the 8th of the following game against Birmigham.

Does that amount to something like 10 games?

Soccerbase has him down as scoring 1 in 10 before he broke his leg:

http://www.soccerbase.com/players_details.sd?playerid=44130

See Eduardo 's games from another season ------> 2007/08

My apologies, 1 in 10 before the injury. As opposed to 0 in 10.


That obviously makes all the difference when talking about Eduardo's injury crippling Arsenal's season.

this is a strange little argument, Eduardo went on a goal-less run which lasted 6 games, 3 of which he started. It's hardly Andy Cole's England career.

Does this prove that Liverpool will win the title?

Possibly.

Abu Glennza wrote:this is a strange little argument, Eduardo went on a goal-less run which lasted 6 games, 3 of which he started. It's hardly Andy Cole's England career.

Does this prove that Liverpool will win the title?

Possibly.

Andy Cole had as many competitive goals for England as Robbie Fowler.

Oh look Dexter Blackstock has joined the discussion

Dexter Blackstock

I was contributing to the convo before you, Dean Whitehead

Dexter Blackstock is such an awesome name.

Ray Parlour wrote:Sounding a bit of a cliche now and I now people like Saints will add their opinions to this but if Eduardo hadn't gotten injured I do think we would have won the title.

Were your remaining fixtures:

Sheff Utd (A)
Burnley (H)
Cardiff (A)

Burnley (A)
Cardiff (H)
Sheff Utd (H)

Sheff Utd (A)
Burnley (H)
Cardiff (A)

Burnley (A)
Cardiff (H)
Sheff Utd (H)

?????

It's nothing to do with that. We had the momentum going with us and were in very good form. The injury aided by the fact Gallas went AWOL royally fucked us.

Well we drew 0-0 in our first friendly, so of course not! What a tragedy! Our season is already over.

COTR #3 wrote:Oh look Dexter Blackstock has joined the discussion

Ray Parlour wrote:The injury aided by the fact Gallas went AWOL royally fucked us.

Okay, assuming this is true for a minute (it isn't, but assuming it is) does that not show that Arsenal never had a proper winners' mindset? You never get action heroes in movies stopping and saying 'my sidekick has been shot in the leg, I can't go on'...

What do you mean we have never had a winner's mindset? What happened to all the trophies we have won under Wenger?

Toure. Clichy and Cesc are all from the unbeaten team albeit the last two didn't contribute as much as Toure did. These players including RVP were also present when we won the F.A Cup in 2005.

Had it been anyone else apart from Gallas I doubt we would have got the same reaction...

The winner's mindset that has gone in the last 4 years.

So you win 1 trophy for the first time in donkeys years and you have the winner's mindset...

Ray Parlour wrote:What do you mean we have never had a winner's mindset? What happened to all the trophies we have won under Wenger?

You stopped winning them when Wenger finally had a squad of players he'd bought.

Toure. Clichy and Cesc are all from the unbeaten team albeit the last two didn't contribute as much as Toure did. These players including RVP were also present when we won the F.A Cup in 2005.

You mean when you fluked an FA cup win in 2005 having been comprehensively outplayed and barely managed a shot on goal in 120 minutes?

Yeah, real winners mentality.

Had it been anyone else apart from Gallas I doubt we would have got the same reaction...

You doubting something doesn't make it false. The facts remains the facts - Eduardo's scoring record for Arsenal was mediocre prior to his injury, particularly when you look at the teams he scored against. The injury was a horrible foul and looked nasty, but no nastier than a dozen others in recent memory that didn't result in the team losing its head. Eduardo himself made a very similar tackle, on Nani I think, only a week or two before, so for Arsenal to play the victim is simply wrong.

If your team lost because one player got injured, and not because of that players contribution but because of the psychological impact of that injury then yes, I'd say that team lacked a winning mentality. Plenty of other teams have won stuff in years when players got horrible injuries.

Well 2004 and 2005 was Wenger's squad so i don't know what your going on about.

We may have fluked it but isn't winning when you haven't played well a sign of Champions?

Just becase Eduardo didn't score as many as you would hope for in his first season doesn't mean he didn't contribute. He was a great foil for our other strikers.

If anyone else had come up with this sort of arguement you would have let it go but because it's Arsenal you always have to find some reason to shoot it down.

Anyway your diluting the arguement and we have deviated off topic from what we were first talking about so I'm going to leave it there.

If you don't rate my team I really couldn't give two shits but when you try to infect everyone with your narrow minded views then I have a problem.

Ray Parlour wrote:So you win 1 trophy for the first time in donkeys years and you have the winner's mindset...

I never claimed that we ever had it.

It's a brutally true fact that Wenger has won nothing since the Arsenal team became composed of players that only he has signed.

Ray Parlour wrote:
Anyway your diluting the arguement and we have deviated off topic from what we were first talking about so I'm going to leave it there.

We were discussing your claim that had Eduardo not been injured then Arsenal would have won the title.

We're still discussing that, and if saying Arsenal didn't win for a different reason to Eduardo's injury (i.e. disagreeing with you) constitutes 'diluting the argument' then so be it.

This does mean that every exchange of any kind that involves disagreement is 'diluting the argument' but hey ho.

We'd have won the title if Ronaldo had been injured, or not there

MadVillain wrote:

Ray Parlour wrote:So you win 1 trophy for the first time in donkeys years and you have the winner's mindset...

I never claimed that we ever had it.

It's a brutally true fact that Wenger has won nothing since the Arsenal team became composed of players that only he has signed.The Premier League became the best league in the World - 2004/2005 onwards

What about now?