Although West Brom are flying high, pundits are not expecting them to stay as high approaching the new year and Chelsea will be up against it with their new appointment of Rafa. Everton have begun to look a little shaky, as have us and Arsenal.
We have 7 games in the run up to the end of the year, but its not necessarily as easy as that for us or the other teams.
Here is the next fixtures for the considered teams;
3rd
West Brom: Swansea (away), Stoke (home), Arsenal (away), West Ham (home), Norwich (home) QPR (away) and Man Utd (away).
4th
Chelsea: Fulham (home), West Ham (away), Sunderland (away), Villa (home), Norwich (away) and Everton (away).
5th
Everton: Arsenal (home), Man City (away), Tottenham (home), Stoke (away), West Ham (away), Wigan (home), Chelsea (home).
6th
Arsenal: Everton (away), Swansea (home), West Brom (home), Reading (away), Wigan (away), West Ham (home) and Newcastle (home).
7th
Tottenham: Liverpool (home), Fulham (away), Everton (away), Swansea (home), Stoke (home), Villa (away) and Sunderland (away).
Chelsea certainly seem on paper to have an easier fixture list, but with Rafa Benitez coming in for RDM it may not run as smoothly as expected for them.
Everton have a very hard fixture list approaching the end of the year and although West Brom do not necessarily have a tough fixture list you would expect for them to begin to drop points.
I expect to see Chelsea rise into 3rd for the tail end of the first half of the season, which would put 4 teams in contention for the 4th spot. As I expect West Brom to drop points and see Everton in for a hard run, it would seem that it is left between Tottenham and Arsenal again! There will not be much between the 2 come the end of the season with similar opposition in the domestic and European leagues coming up. If we can maintain the current work rate and composure I feel that we may just pip Arsenal. There are plenty of factors to look at, but most notably is the players we have coming back from injury that will give us a major boost.
The next few games will shape how we will look come the end of the season with the Liverpool, Fulham and Everton games coming first (and the latter 2 are away). If we can achieve 6 points from those then we have moved on for sure (however I feel 5 points is more realistic).
Come on you Spurs!
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