I’m going to be honest with you, seeing the Financially Doped Sky Blues (FDSB) of Manchester blitz their way through Bayern Munich last night has me somewhat concerned that they are hitting a level of form that everyone expecting from the start of this season. It seems it doesn’t matter whether they are playing the Championship elect winners in Burnley and sweeping them to one side, or they’re up against the dominant team in Germany and giving themselves an assailable lead going in to a second leg, it appears as though City are looking rather ominous to sweep all that is before them.

About seven weeks ago I wrote a piece looking at the points totals, how many I thought we needed to win, what we needed to do and making the assumption that nobody is perfect and City would slip up just like we would slip up. I said at the time that we had to do the business at home and then pick up a certain amount of points away. I identified that I thought we needed to win four away games out of our remaining seven then, as long as we do the business at home, I thought that would be enough to get us over the line as I expected City to slip up in some of their games. The seven games we had away from home at the time were Leicester, Fulham, Liverpool, West Ham, City, Newcastle and Forest. So far we’ve beaten Leicester and Fulham, picked up a point at Anfield, then if we can win away at the weekend to West Ham, according to my old prediction, that might be enough.

But you look at this City team right now and it doesn’t feel like it will be. We could very easily be in a position whereby we we could win four of those seven games I identified, win all of our remaining home games, then STILL find ourselves bested by a City team that looks like it’s going to win every game for the remainder of this season by three clear goals. Their last five games read 3-0, 4-1, 4-1, 6-0 and 7-0. That is 24 goals in five matches. That is frightening stuff.

They play Leicester at the weekend and that will be a cricket score because Leicester are terrible. They play Bayern in the Champions League and know that they can probably keep them at arms length. Then they play Sheffield United at the weekend in the FA Cup and that will be another trouncing, before we have to visit them. Whereas in February I thought City would slip up, they have just entered a phase in their season where they look every bit the juggernaut that we thought we would see from the start of this season.

So yes, I am getting nervy, but no, I don’t think that winning two more away games and the remaining four home matches will be enough. If we did that we’d amass an extra 18 points, which would have us finish on 91 points, which I am now thinking that it wouldn’t be enough.

Imagine going back 10 years and saying that 91 points doesn’t win the league. in 2012/13 United won it on 89 points, which was 11 points better than second placed City. A year later it was City on 86. A year after that it was Chelsea on 87 and a year after that it was Leicester on 81. What we have seen from the likes of Liverpool and City in the last four or five years is, frankly, mind-blowing. The level of consistency that you have to show is off the charts. But we’ve been able to do that up until this point and even now it is looking like we are up against a teamthat is threatening to go Supernova. This time last year City had played 30 games and had 73 points, the same as what we had, but they were out of the FA Cup by the semi final and they got to the semi final of the Champions League before being knocked out to Real Madrid. But in the league they still managed to beat Brighton 3-0 at home, Watford 5-1 at home, Leeds 4-0 away, Newcastle 5-0 at home, before drawing 2-2 to West Ham and beating Villa to win the title on the last day. They won the league by 93 points to Liverpool’s 92.

Sounds alarmingly familiar, eh?

But I guess this is what we are all here for. I couldn’t get off to sleep last night because I was thinking the ‘what ifs’ from the Brentford home game and the Liverpool away game of the weekend just gone. “If VAR would’ve just done its job properly, or if we’d have just been able to hang on to that 2-1 lead against Liverpool another 10 minutes or so…” was what went around and around my mind.

I’ve done these league title campaigns before. I can just about remember 1991, I was 16 when we won it in 1998, then 20 in 2002 and 22 in 2004. The 2004 was Arsenal just being relentless and were clearly going to win the league with many games to go, so I don’t remember it being as fraught as this run in. We were the juggernaut that season though, with Chelski the ‘new money’ upstarts that we were able to keep at arms length. This time around it is us as the upstarts. Only it feels like the bar has been set so high that even if we get to the heady heights of 90 points or thereabouts, it probably won’t be enough. And that’s going to feel mentally draining. To be this good this season, to demonstrate the level of consistency that this Arsenal team has shown, to get to where we have and show just as much progress as we have shown, yet to come away with nothing, will be really tough to take.

Apologies if I am sounding defeatist, but I can’t help it at the moment, because it just feels like we’re playing with the odds stacked against us. And we’re six bloody points clear!! But I guess that lead feels rather shallow when you see what our rivals are doing, and doing in multiple competitions, with swagger and control.

I just hope that the Arsenal players are ignoring everything outside of their own bubble. Ignore fans like me, ignore the pundits, ignore the league table and certainly ignore watching any of City’s play right now. It won’t help anyone for them to ‘check in’ on what they are doing.

Anyway, I’m going to leave it there for today, but hopefully back tomorrow and I can start moving my mind towards the weekend’s encounter with West Ham.

Have a good one peeps!