People have mentioned the Arsenal home game in Martinez’s first season, which was billed as a top 4 decider at the time. I don’t think this Chelsea game is in the same category, though, as there’s far more teams in the equation this season.
If you remember, we were flying in the league in 2013/14 but we had to beat Arsenal in April in a must-win game to stand any chance of finishing 4th. I seem to remember we were 5th about 4-5 points behind with a game in hand, so really needed to beat them to go within striking distance.
We won comfortably 3-0 playing some great footy and made a big statement that day. The weekend after we won at Sunderland in a scrappy game to leapfrog Arsenal and go 4th. It was our 7th straight league win, and we were now sitting in pole position for top 4 with only 5 games left. That midweek we played Palace at Goodison in our game in hand and nobody saw anything but us winning, which would have cemented us in that top 4 spot with 4 games left. As everyone knows, we played awful and lost. We also lost 2 of the 4 games left, and ultimately ended up 7 points behind Arsenal. 7 points! Not even close.
After Arsenal lost to us, they obviously just kept winning, but we lost 3 of the last 5.
Our points tally of 72 points would usually have finished anywhere between 2nd to 4th any other year, although Spurs also finished 5th with 72 points the year before and Arsenal finished 5th with 75 points in 16/17. Just shows each season is different, and you just have to play with the cards that are in front of you at any given moment. This season is deffo an unusual one, and presents a great chance of either silverware or top 4. Let’s do our best to achieve both, but if we don’t get either, let’s at least go down fighting and believing!