I'm not sure the first set of five is as bad as it first looks, simply because the results of everyone bar Chelsea have been all over the place as well. If you'd told me, given that we had Away games at Spurs, Man City and West Ham in our first five matches, that we'd be 3 points behind Arsenal, 2 behind Man City, 1 behind Spurs and 1 ahead of both Man Utd and Everton I wouldn't have been overly disappointed. I'd probably have thought we'd have had to achieved 9 points or so rather than six in order to be there, but it is what it is. Perhaps it's the World Cup aftermath or something which has stirred things up, but despite playing sh!te we are right in the mix with everyone bar Chelsea.
When you further dig into the fixtures other teams have had, there is only Man City who could lay a claim to having had a run of games anywhere near so hard as ours. The Mancs in particular must be absolutely smarting, and they have huge amounts of ground to make up. Not on Chelsea as that bird has flown for them and everyone else bar Man City in my view, but on the rest of us who are looking to cement Champions League qualification.
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