It is going to be tough

This weekend could have been a major turning point in the season and title race but as it turned out, it was a perfect example of how tough it is going to be to win this title. Chelsea did drop points, which as they were technically out in front – given their games in hand - helps out Arsenal quite a bit. Manchester United were in the headline game of the weekend though and they came out and showed the world just how difficult they are going to be to topple.

Going into this weekend, the prospect of a good weekend for Arsenal looked reasonably possible, Liverpool have often taken points off Manchester while Chelsea were going away after exiting the Champions League once again. Arsenal did their job, although they did it the hard way and made next weekend's game at Birmingham tougher in the process. It didn't really go to plan for Arsène Wenger over the rest of the weekend though.

Manchester United's impressive performance against Liverpool, and after going a goal down early on too, showed just how tough it will be to wrestle the title out of their hands. As it is United have a two point lead over Arsenal and the advantage is obviously with them, given the return of Vidic and Ferdinand to the defence, it makes it even tougher to visualise them dropping many points.

Looking at the fixture list, Liverpool would have been, in many pundits and fans' minds, one of the toughest games in their run in. But if they can overturn a goal deficit and then manage to dominate much of the match in what was supposed to be one of their hardest games left shows what kind of a mountain Arsenal are trying to overturn.

Manchester still undoubtedly have the tougher run in, considering they have games against Chelsea, Manchester City and Tottenham left but the point I'm making, is that if they can come from a goal behind in a game against Liverpool, with Torres and Gerrard, maybe we should be re-evaluating how many points they might drop.

Throw two games against Barcelona into the mix, with the possibility of players being rested in time for that game and it is another road block in the route to Premiership success. Sol Campbell is the player I'm particularly thinking about in terms of resting, with Vermaelen's suspension and Gallas' injury, can Sol be counted on to play two/three games in a week and for that matter, who could step in even if we wanted to rest Sol.

Of course the old footballer's cliché will come out here; we just need to focus on the next game. The next game being a particularly tough one, a visit to Birmingham, the place where two years ago our best shot at the title in recent times was ended and where Eduardo was famously injured. It is not just the mental aspect of this game that is tough, Birmingham are playing well and are difficult to score against.

However another win in the next game, will convince even more people that Arsenal can win the title, it will increase confidence and belief as well as finally putting a few demons to rest as St. Andrews. It will also send us into the massive Barcelona game in the highest of spirits.

This post is not to try and say Arsenal cannot win the title or Champions League, because I genuinely think that at least one of those could very much be ours by May. This post was just to, maybe act as a bit of a reality check because what that Manchester United performance really showed me was that they will not drop points easily and at the end of the day we could win every game we have left but it wouldn't matter if Manchester didn't drop points either. Keep the faith but it's going to be the toughest Premiership title to win in a long time.

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