I voiced the same concerns about our away form recently, but looking at that set of results as a group it is a respectable points return for a side chasing top four- Aston Villa, Sunderland and Hull were the three must-wins, two of which we managed, the other was a stinker which every team suffers in a season; Everton (unbeaten at home in 2013 in the Premier League), Newcastle and Swansea are tough places to go, you would expect all three of them to be in the top ten or eleven by season's end; Arsenal are the best team in the league at the moment, so that result is no disgrace.
If you take the games in which we have dropped points in isolation though, and analyse them accordingly, it is frustrating that we have only won two and not at least four...
Swansea - we were 1-2 up. It's always disappointing to drop points from a winning position. In fairness we ended the game with no Suarez (banned), no Coutinho (injured) and a half-fit Sturridge, so it was a decent point.
Newcastle - they went down to ten men just before half-time, the resulting penalty from which we drew level. Doesn't matter who you play or where, if you have a man advantage in this league for that long then you should make it count, especially with our aspirations. They have since beaten Chelsea, Tottenham and Man Utd though, so if you ignore the red card then it's a good point.
Arsenal - no real argument here, they were better than us on the day. We did have an unfairly disallowed goal at 1-0. Were a bit unfortunate in that Johnson, such a key component of our attacking play, fell ill on the day, and we couldn't play our playmaker Coutinho from the start. Like I said though, this result was no disgrace.
Everton - we were 1-2 up when Mirallas should have been sent off for his horrific tackle, and would probably have gone on to win if the ref wasn't such a bottle job. Then Allen proceeded to miss a sitter to make it 1-3. Looking back at those two key moments in the game and thinking what could have been, of course it's extremely frustrating we didn't end up winning. Thankfully we didn't lose either, thanks to a late equaliser, at a team with a very impressive home record (and who always rev themselves up for our visit of course).
Hull - just a (very) bad day at the office. Arsenal had theirs at home to Aston Villa, Chelsea suffered their one at Stoke, Man City with defeats at Cardiff and Sunderland. We were very poor, but still should have avoided conceding all of the goals, especially the first (big deflection) and third (bizarre own goal).
I just hope we pick ourselves up on the road, we'll have to with our upcoming away games. On the other hand, we've got some very tough ones out of the way with the only mega tough trips in the second half of the season coming at Man Utd and Southampton, and it'll take much bigger a sample of bad performances against sides of Hull's standard before I become overly concerned.
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