Barclays Premier League

Saturday 11th February 3pm

Sunderland AFC v Arsenal

Founded in 1879 as Sunderland and District Teachers AFC, Sunderland joined the Football League in 1890 and went on to win the League the following season.

If there is one thing I've noticed about the Liverpool fan forums, it's that our level of performance and league position in relation to them is directly correlated to how much they bitch and moan about Spurs and how many posts riddled with bile spewing hatred of us there are.
As you can imagine, this is currently a high proportion.

Ahead of this afternoon's game against Chelsea, Darren Mantle from CFCNet has taken the time to talk to us on all things Chelsea.

Scott the Red: Does your current league position match with your expectations at the start of the season or had you been anticipating a serious title challenge from Chelsea?

Fine margins

February and all we've collected from 2012 is a solitary point in the league. Unfortunately for a club the size of Arsenal and the ambitions that we harbour, that is not good enough. 7th is where we are right now in terms of the league standings and hopes of staying with the top pack and clinching that vital Champions League position is not mathematically out of grab.

How bad was Wolves' 3-0 home loss to Liverpool on Tuesday? Andy Carroll scored the match's opening goal. That's how bad. It was his first league goal since October. Liverpool scored two more second half goals to leave Wolves with 18 points from 23 matches and slumped over at 19th in the table.

There's no doubt that Newcastle will go all out to win their FA Cup 4th round tie at Brighton tomorrow, in a late game that kicks off at 5:15pm tomorrow. Alan Pardew taking the Cup very seriously Newcastle have not taken the Cup competitions that seriously, especially over the last four seasons, where we have been more interested in our league position than [.

Written by MickyDidIt89

I do wonder how difficult all this football management malarkey really is. You see, I'm a Rocket Scientist and even that, which is so often used as the benchmark clever dick occupation, is not that hard either.

However, for the purposes of this article, I think it would be fair for me to clarify my qualifications as a Rocket Scientist.

Liverpool midfielder Charlie Adam insists the club remain in the hunt for a UEFA Champions League spot despite dropping down to seventh in the Premier League.
The Reds were held to yet another home draw against Stoke last weekend, their seventh at Anfield so far this season.
Those dropped points mean the club have fallen out of the European places and are five points adrift of Chelsea in the final Champions League position.

It's a question that can make some people uncomfortable but I think it deserves some consideration.

Many seem to agree that last season crashing out of all three Cups in a short span of time flung the squad into a confidence depriving free fall that the manager could not curtail. It had a massive impact on the players' psyche, Arsenal's league position at the end of the season, and quite possibly played a part in some of the summer's transfers.

As a follow-up to yesterday's post about offensive performance in the Premiership so far this season, here's a simple graph summarizing clubs' defensive performance this season. Naturally, it's limited in what it can tell you - all stats are - but the picture does provide some interesting pieces of information.

Guardian: Which former player would you bring back to your club?

Paul Scholes and Thierry Henry have returned to former clubs, but which old stalwarts would you like to make a comeback? After the comebacks of Thierry Henry and Paul Scholes, we asked Premier League fans who they would like to see return.

As things turned out, Heidar Helguson's late equalizer in Milton Keynes on Saturday afternoon wasn't quite enough to keep Neil Warnock in his job. Rangers without a win of any description in the FA Cup for a decade may well remain in the competition for now, but Warnock won't be at Loftus Road for the replay.

Luckily we're no Abe Simpson.

Mick McCarthy's Wolverhampton Wolves (or Wanderers, properly) visit the Emirates for the first of our trio of games over a six-day span. Wolves sit just above the relegation zone, one point ahead of Wigan. They have a pretty dreadful record on the road, having managed just one away win and six away goals in eight games.

Liverpool 1-1 Blackburn Rovers | Premier League match report

Blackburn lead a double life away from home, and taking a welcome break from the poisonous atmosphere at Ewood Park they quite enjoyed themselves in earning a deserved point at Anfield. They played with a freedom that belied their lowly league position and at times made Liverpool look pedestrian.

If everyone can stop doing racisms for just one minute! Phew. Glad we got that sorted. Rightio, ahead of tonight's big game with Chelsea, I've roped in one of the chaps behind the fabulous movie trailer review site, Trailer Trash. It's Harry Thompson and he just happens to have the grave misfortune of being a Blues fan.

We should win.

Aston Villa
League Position: 10th, 16P, 4W, 7D, 5L, 18GF, 21GA, -3GD, 19pts
Home Form: 8W, 3W, 2D, 3L, 10GF, 9GA, +1GD
Last Meeting: Arsenal 1-2 Aston Villa (May, 2011)

Tomorrow we travel to Villa Park, the site of an Aston Villa team that has been mediocre in every sense of the word this season.

Hitting the halfway stage of the SPL Advent calendar. Another annus horribilis for Hibs.
Even those well versed in the grimness of the SPL might have been taken aback by the sheer scale of the despair Hibs have engendered amongst the faithful this season.
If appointing Colin Calderwood was a mistake it was an exponential error, compounded by every signing he was allowed to make and every show of support the board made.

Martin Jol was trying to take the positives from his side's Europa League group stage exit, but the reality is, there are very little.
True, it now means his side are free to concentrate on improving their league position, currently a below par 14th.
But given their participation in the competition began in June and incorporated 14 matches it does seem like a huge waste of time given they are now out of it before Christmas.

Almost every team looks over their shoulder this time of year, and not at the teams around them in the league, but at the clubs who are coming to try and sign their prize assets.

The harsh realities are that most clubs are defenceless against the big boys and that an offer will get tabled that the smaller clubs are forced to accept.

Preston chairman has wasted no time in stamping his authority in club, sacking the club's manager Phil Brown barely a week in the job.
Brown took over the Lancashire club last January and was immediately plunged into a relegation battle.
Those who bet on the Championship certainly fancied Brown's men to lose their fight against the drop, which they duly did, given the desperate nature of the situation it did not reflect poorly on Brown.

Goals, goals, goals. With Liverpool wasting chance after chance, profligacy to blame for home draws with Norwich, Swansea, and Sunderland as well as away losses to Stoke and Fulham, the number of goals scored has become both millstone and mantra, a clear problem in obvious need of fixing, the major fault keeping the side from reaching its full potential.

I may have a few crumbs of comfort for the Bolton fan who rang 606 last night to bemoan his side's lack of application and effort. The same thing happens after every game these days, the fans of the opposing side making a similar complaint, and the common denominator is Spurs. Rather than your team not trying, it's because they couldn't get near us.

The sound of sharpening knives is in the air at St James Park this afternoon, but they're not for Alan Pardew. Newcastle United arrive here for the final match of the trilogy that will go some way towards determining whether their early season league position was due to the order of their league fixtures.

We really should win.

Squillaci cost us two points last season in this fixture with an own goal in the 81st minute.

There are are must-win games because a team needs points late in the season or to progress in a tournament, and then there are these kind of games (of which Fulham at home was one).

RvP numbers shows he might crash

With the weekend's Premiership action ended, things at the top of the table remains almost status quo. Along with us; Manchester United, Liverpool, Manchester City and Newcastle all achieved similar 1-1 draws. The only benefactors in that section of the table are Chelsea and Tottenham who both won their respective fixtures.

RvP numbers shows he might crash

With the weekend's Premiership action ended, things at the top of the table remains almost status quo. Along with us; Manchester United, Liverpool, Manchester City and Newcastle all achieved similar 1-1 draws. The only benefactors in that section of the table are Chelsea and Tottenham who both won their respective fixtures.

Follow us on Twitter @UntoldArsenal

Possession, pass success or shots?

By Alek Pan

Almost everyone knows that Arsenal is very successful in the areas of possession, pass success and shots on target, but which component is more influential in terms of league position?

Andre Villas-Boas is confident his Chelsea team can still qualify for the Champions League knock-out stages, despite last night's 2-1 defeat at Bayer Leverkusen.

But confidence seems to be severely lacking for the Blues so far this season, and last night's result means they have now lost four of their last seven games.

Phil Jones has set his sights on United getting to the top of the table by the start of next year, with City having some tough games to play between now and then.

"City have done fantastically this season," Jones said. "I am not taking anything away from them. But they do have some tough games coming up.

It's too easy to paint this as an important clash for Champions League position contenders. Not only would it be too easy but it would also be a fallacy. These are two teams that probably had title ambitions at the start of the season. Chelsea as last season's runners up had genuine hopes of leading from the front and Liverpool, a team which had been on a great run of form in the second half of last season since Kenny Dalglish took the managerial reigns, had hopes of being surprising unexpected challengers.

THFC1882 welcomes back Rob for another guest blog. In June Rob wrote this about Harry Redknapp. So have the last five months changed Rob's opinions? Has the manager won him over? Read on to see what Rob has to say:

Five months ago I asked this blog site if I could do an article on Harry Redknapp.

Two weeks without league football and the opening days of the season a quickly fading memory has put many in the mood to pick at what has for Liverpool gone from a year of hope to one that seems to offer more of the same. A season that after an expectant summer only seems to offer more missed chances.

West Brom
League Position: 13th, 3W, 2D, 5L, 9 GF, 13 GA, -4GD, 11 pts
Away Form: 2W, 1D, 2L, 6 GF, 8 GA, 7 pts
Last Meeting West Brom 2-2 Arsenal

We return to the Emirates tomorrow to welcome an old fiend, West Bromwich Alvion, now headed by Liverpool legend Roy Hodgson.

Back to back Premiership wins have done wonders for the confidence and league position of Arsenal but a trip to Chelsea is testing at the best of times, especially when you're not at full strength, and the bookies make Chelsea the hot favourites to inflict a fifth loss of the season on the Gunners. Chelsea [.

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- Throughout the day, the QPR Report Messageboard has news updates, comments and perspectives - even links to other board comments of interest re QPR matters (on and off the field) along with football (and ONLY football) topics in general.

I think we've been here before. There's little to say about today's game in terms of tactics, team set-up, approach or anything. It's very, very simple. Win.

Three points are a must today, again were back in the realm where performance doesn't matter. A good win and a good performance would go some way to help restoring confidence but such is our league position that how we get the three points isn't even an issue once we get them.

Key Stats
League Position: 16th, 1 W, 3D, 3L, 9 GF, 8 GA, +1 GD, 6 pts
Away Form: 2 D, 1 L, 2 GF, 3 GA
Last Meeting Arsenal 0-0 Sunderland (March 5, 2011) (Premier League)

Well, we're back to our regular programming.

Kenny holds no United envy

Kenny Dalglish insists he is not envious of Man United's league position as he seeks to overhaul the Red Devils.

View the full story here: Sky Sports

A news article on 2011-10-14 14:57:42 from: Sky Sports

This news item has been reproduced from today's media.

Newcastle haven't been placed as high in the Premier League at this stage of the season since way back in 1995, when Kevin Keegan was managing the Entertainers. Things are looking up at Newcastle! Newcastle are 4th top at the moment and in a Champions League position, and we are hoping after the game at home to Spurs [.

The boy's time has come, let's give him a little help

If you listen to any football pundits or experts out there (ones in the British game anyway), they will tell you that the catalyst to a championship (Premier League, if you like) winning side is one with the meanest of defence as the backbone.