(Ed’s note, this piece was submitted before the Braga game, and I am still catching up with articles sent in since last Saturday, so writers waiting to see their pieces, bear with me. I’m trying to get them up at the rate of three a day and God alone knows what will happen if we lose to Villa!)

Let’s make no bones about it. The Premier League is far from premier.

The quality of the league has slowly but surely declined over the past 3 seasons, with many world class performers choosing Spain or Italy over England. A glance at the current top 6 confirms this. Bolton. Bloody Bolton in the top 6. Don’t misunderstand me. They are there on merit and Coyle certainly has them playing better football than I can ever remember, but come on… Bolton.

Then we have Chelski. Lost 4 games out of 15 and still top! Man Utd unbeaten but not top? The league has lost some panache. When Henry left our shores, Ronaldo took his mantle as the big talent and although there are still some fantastic footballers here, we do not have, or are likely to ever see a Messi/Henry/Ronaldo type talent in England again.

Then of course we have Arsenal. Like Chavski, Lost 4 by mid November is not league winning form. Most seasons we would now be 12-15 points behind and in our usual struggle to finish in the top 4, but unbelievably we are still in this. I don’t think that we can win it for a moment, but the facts do not lie. Win our early kick off at Villa on Saturday and we go top. But of course we should have last Saturday, and we all know what happened next.

I have more concern over our Champions League status to be honest. Defeat in Braga and suddenly we will be in the last chance saloon at home to Partizan, and as usual Arsenal will have to do it the hard way. Not since the win over Braga have we had the luxury of really feeling comfortable through most of a game. Arsenal will always give their opponents a chance. As it seems does every team in this so-called “Premier League”. This title is there for the winning, but I still do not see us being up there come end of April.