what does Arsenal need to do to win title? Instead of doing a “5 things Arsenal need to do” (The rather common clickbait article), I thought of actually going through the fixture list and seeing how we are placed to win the title. A lot of sites are predicting that the title will be won at around 80-82 points. Considering the upper limit, Let us see how we can get those 82 points. Currently, We have 39 points and We have 19 more games to go. To simplify things, I have divided the fixtures into 3 categories

 Note: This article was written before the Newcastle game.

We are at the half way mark in the premier league season and Arsenal are top of the table. What a nice place to be!!  Though our nearest rivals at this point is Leicester City, It is more likely that the team from Manchester is going to be our title rivals.  

So, what does Arsenal need to do to win title? Instead of doing a “5 things Arsenal need to do” (The rather common clickbait article), I thought of actually going through the fixture list and seeing how we are placed to win the title. A lot of sites are predicting that the title will be won at around 80-82 points. Considering the upper limit, Let us see how we can get those 82 points. Currently, We have 39 points and We have 19 more games to go. To simplify things, I have divided the fixtures into 3 categories

1.       Easy – Must Win games – Cannot afford to drop points

2.       Medium – Can afford to drop points but still need to win most  of them

3.       Difficult – Expected to drop points but need to take it match by match

Easy Fixtures

If we have to win the title, we got to win our home games. Considering that we have played all the big teams at home except Chelsea, We got to target maximum points here.

I am not considering even a single away fixture as easy. In our league, There are no easy away games. City dropped points at Villa and we dropped points at Norwich.

These are the 8 easy games remaining in our fixture list. If you see the pattern, these are all home games against mid table and below opposition. So 24 Points in this 8 fixtures should not be impossible starting with 3 points this Saturday vs Newcastle. ( PS : How difficult did we make like difficult for ourselves 🙂 :))

Medium Difficulty Fixtures

Now that the easy ones are sorted out, I have identified the below 5 fixtures to be of medium difficulty.

It will be great if we can win all these games (We will 100% win the title then!!). But it should be fine if we can get 10-11 points out of 15 over here. 10 points from these fixtures is not a tall order considering our away form has been pretty decent over the past 18 months (Barring the last 2 Months).

 Difficult Fixtures

So now comes the difficult ones. There are 6 difficult fixtures remaining.  

Considering that 82 Points is our target, we need to get 8-9 Points from these 6 fixtures. Ideally, those 9 points should include taking some points off our direct rivals like City, Tottenham and United. But Chelsea home and Stoke away looks the easiest of the lot.

Points Available

 Summary

Below is the table of our fixture list by month.  As you can see, we have a lot of easy fixtures in March and April. So we just need to hang in there until then. January is going to be a really difficult month.

Hopefully, we will have our title wrapped up before going to Etihad Stadium on 6^th May 2015. #COYG 

Mean Lean’s Response

Good breakdown of the remaining fixtures, and when you look at it on paper it looks rather daunting.

But the beauty of this 2015/16 season is that Premier league matches have been almost impossible to predict given the leveling of the playing field across the league.

I can’t help but look towards the mid level teams and think those are the key to our success or failure from now until May. As you stated above, our away form for the last 18 months has been very good. Possibly the best in the division but with the squad gasping for a second wind I feel we could be tested good and proper.

As Tim Stillman mentioned in the latest Arsenal Vision Post Match Podcast I think the condition and form of Alexis Sanchez returning back from injury will be vital. Mesut Özil’s silky smooth performances have almost carried the team from an attacking sense but he has started to look tired in the last few weeks. I mean he went an entire 90 minutes without an assist on the weekend, what’s that about?

We need Alexis to snatch the baton out of the German’s hand and run with it. I wish there was some sort of code on Betfred that we could use to guarantee goals as we need them, his ability to win games on his own, but we also need the rest of the team to find the levels they found a few months ago.

It will be tough but we are nicely placed at this moment in time. Let’s see how we get on.

You can find the author of this piece on Twitter by following @simhan87

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