Arsenal: How were our top four hopes damaged exactly?

Arsenal dropped massive points against Crystal Palace, but how is everyone saying that our top four hopes were dented? Nothing changed.

I love to hate the English soccer media. They’re always, always good for a laugh. All these former players running their mouths for ratings and when they get proved wrong, they just act like it never happened, that they never said it. Arsenal fans would know this better than most, with even former players like Paul Merson ranking as the worst of the bunch.

This time, it’s coming on the backs of the Crystal Palace loss. Now, granted, it was awful. In no way should we have lost, especially at home. It was pathetic. But the outcry after the match was that our top four hopes were seriously damaged.

Uh… no they weren’t? Even going into the match, we knew that the result wasn’t going to have an immediate impact. Yes, third place was beckoning, and by rights, that’s exactly where we should be. But it’s not like the loss dropped us into sixth. Or dropped us into fifth.

It dropped us into… fourth. Which, last time I checked, was still in the top four. Meaning that losing to Palace did absolutely nothing to our top four hopes. It just didn’t give us the cushion that we were hoping for.

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But with everyone now level on matches played, the Gunners still hold their fate in their own hands. Meaning that if they take care of business, they don’t have to worry about any favors being done anywhere else.

To me, that’s exactly where you want to be. And again, obviously we’d rather have a cushion so that we would be entitled to a slip-up or two, especially seeing as how they still have to go to Leicester and go to Wolverhampton. But Manchester United still have to host Chelsea and Manchester City and Chelsea still have to obviously travel to United and travel to Leicester as well.

How does that mean that our hopes of finishing in the top four are any more damaged than anyone else’s? If they were to be damaged, that would have to infer that we are giving up ground, or in some way worse off. But we’re not. We just didn’t do ourselves any favors.

But then again, what do I really expect from the media? To be fair and balanced? Nah. That’s not them. They live on outrage.