Arsenal could buy Lord God Almighty,Jehovah,Zeus and the rest of the boys in the band and still make an enormous pig's ear of matters.
There's a clear pattern emerging with Swansea looking to stay up for the third season running after being utter cack until the New Year and sacking their manager who did well for them the previous season (Monk, Guidolin and Clement). A bit of a coincidence there? They can't all have turned into bad managers the following season, it sums up much about what's wrong with football when player power wins out as seems likely the case here. Much though I'd miss Swansea as an away trip if they went down, I have little respect for a bunch of players who are clearly capable but it seems only pull their fingers out when their Premier League future is on the line and the novelty of the new manager hasn't worn off.
Not sure what you're angry at.. Over three years they've brought in and lost Shelvey, Sigurdsson, Llorente, Andre Ayew, Mawson, Gomis, Leroy Fer, Jordan Ayew, Olsson, Carroll, Narsingh, Clucas, Jack Cork. All key players for them who haven't been there across this three year period. In fact out of those who played today, the only players to have been there for all of the last three seasons include: Fabianski Federico Fernandez Kyle Naughton Ki Even Nathan Dyer took a year out at Leicester in one of the seasons you're on about. So are you saying this line of yours "I have little respect for a bunch of players who are clearly capable but it seems only pull their fingers out when their Premier League future is on the line and the novelty of the new manager hasn't worn off" applies to a massive total of four players?
Hopefully the world won’t get destroyed by a meteor tomorrow . That would be an awful distaster and an absolute nightmare for the emergency services to deal with . I’ll be staying indoors if that happens .
With WBA, who our leading striker wanted to join, squarely bottom & Soton, who’ve had the better of us over the two recent legs, 19th. Squeaky bum time has come early this season.
I'm talking more about the course of each season rather than the whole three year period - obviously the personnel wouldn't change so much in this case, so aside from a supposed new manager "bounce" (after a manager who'd proved himself capable) it's hard to fathom what causes such an upturn in form for them season after season and why largely the same bunch of players can only get it together after the New Year (and it's not just grinding out 1-0 wins against mid-table teams and fellow relegation rivals like Palace did under Pulis - they've beaten Liverpool THREE times in as many seasons, Arsenal twice (both from behind, one of them away), drawn at Man Utd, won at a very good West Ham convincingly out of the top of my head). Looking at last season it was clear the board were most to blame as they sacked Guidolin way too early (a manager I believe the Pozzos were interested in) and appointed Bob Bradley who they should have known would be a disaster, under which the players lost all confidence. But, after Clement restored all confidence and led them to safety from a near impossible situation (even finishing above us), it's not so clear-cut who was to blame for the team's struggle this season. The manager for suddenly becoming crap (which is hard to believe, and who's to say he wouldn't have turned it round the same way as Carvalhal, a manager who most Sheffield Wednesday fans despise, has?) or the players for teaming up against him, like apparently Chelsea's players did against Mourinho 2015/16? People including us fans have been criticising our manager turnover but it's nothing compared to Swansea's of late. If I were a fan I'd be pretty pissed off and would actually rather be relegated, sticking with that same manager who got us relegated and winning games regularly in the Championship, rather than having a terrible first half of the season, sacking the manager midway, having another terrible first half the next season before sacking the manager who did well to keep us up, rinse and repeat - and this is a club that many of us looked at as a role model not so long ago.
WBA, Stoke, WHU, CP all have enough in their squads to stay up. Swansea are in good form, not sure about Bmuff. The only teams I really believe we may still finish above with 3-4 wins are the 3 teams who came up but even then a decent run could save them. The games against H & N will be nearly as important as the game tonight.
Yep I agree with this. WBA, Stoke, WHU, CP are comfortably better than us. I thought Moyes might take WH down but it seems that's not going to happen. Swansea's new manager seems to know what he's doing there. So it all comes down to brighton, newcastle, huddersfield and bmuff. Bmuff have better strikers than us so I think they will stay up. Which means we have to stay above the 3 promoted sides. And at least one promoted side always seems to stay up. And considering the battering huddersfield gave us I expect it'll be them. We will finish 18th and go down and I will win £250. UNLESS we sign a striker.
We need 4 wins and 3 draws to get to 40 points, think in the end 36 will be enough so thats only another 10 points. with so many teams in trouble we now need 7 teams to win 1/2 more than us. So I am hoping we will squeak over the line. Lets hope the new manager bounce can produce some of those results soon. When players are back we do have a team capable of staying up comfortably. But they need to actually to do it on the pitch. I do think the promoted teams are now hitting the wall we did in our first season. which I think could see 2 of the 3 going down as happened last year. Swansea are on a good run thanks to us being so generous. As for the others no one other than Leicester have pulled away from trouble which leaves everyone from Everton down in trouble. There will be lots of ups and downs to come we just need to be less rubbish than 3 other teams. If we do go down it will be due to throwing away points when winning. Even if we drew the games v Palace, Swansea and Everton we wouldn't be so worried. Its snatching defeat from victory that has cost us. One of Silva's biggest weaknesses IMO was the inability to grind out a dull draw. I know its not pretty but that's what we need now until people are back fit and on form. A few results and hopefully the confidence will return. Whats worse about a relegation battle is wanting the big teams to win, watching rubbish teams pick up points and constantly worrying where our next goal will come from...
This is unfortunately more likely to happen than 3 points tonight. My wife is a nurse. I have officially put her on standby.
Did you watch Huddersfield last night? That win against us is their only win in about 15 now...which makes it even more annoying. Shows how pony we had become under Silva. Praying Rafa walks from Newcastle as think if he does they are in big trouble.
We have 14 games to go, inc against 5 of the top 6, mainly away. If we lose those 5, to get to 40 points we need W4 D2 L3 against the rest starting tonight. I just don't see that happening and I think we will need 40 to stay up given the form of the teams below us.
I am not sure these teams are better than us. West Brom have won 1 game in the league since August and are currently rock bottom. A very strong Stoke got battered by Coventry City just the other week. West Ham are having a good spell of late but we played them off the park when we played them. Swansea have got lucky in their last few games because teams cannot finish the many chances they get against them.
Its quite exciting to think we might get relegated. It means we got something to fight for. Last 2 seasons have been ok but we had accumulated enough points so even though a slump happened there was no way we were going to go down. This season its all to play for.
I'm taking a more relaxed attitude to relegation now that the window has closed. Gino is clearly not concerned about the prospect of relegation so why should I be ? If we go down we go down. Life in mid/upper championship was more exciting and enjoyable than the prospect of spending just enough each year to avoid the relegation trapdoor in the prem. The dream of pressing on to become an established prem team chasing cups and europe was always a long shot given our spending power is more limited than almost all of those around and above us. The Pozzo's business is all about finding gems and selling them on at great profit. They can do that perfectly well from the champ and leaving us with a decent champ team to watch without having to spend £20m+ multiple times on players to keep us in the prem.
4 wins or 3 wins and 2 draws will see us survive IMO, surely we can achieve that from our last 13 matches, as long as we get back most of our injured players? 10 to 12 points should be enough to survive, so even just 2 wins and 4 scrappy 0-0 draws could see us safe?
I guess it depends when they get back match fit. It doesn't look too onerous until you factor in 5 games are against the top 6 and our last 12 league matches are W1 D3 L8.
There is a very real chance goal difference could come into play; looking at our -11 to Stoke's and Huddersfield's -25 makes me feel better.
I had no doubt at any point last season that we'd stay up. Not once. This season feels very different and I feel relegation is inevitable. It's strange, considering we've spent more money than in every other season of our existence combined. It's goals that keep a team up, and we have no one capable of scoring them. Even when chalobah and hughes return that fact remains the same. We're doomed.
Seeing all this talk about how many points we’ll need to be safe, I have run a really quick analysis of the last ten years, because the number of draws between teams (i.e. where the league essentially “loses” a point) seemed really high this year. Since the 2007/08 season, there have been over 100 draws in the Premier League in 4 seasons. This year, we are on course to see 103 draws in the Premier League. OK so the sample size is small and there may well be other factors in play, but maybe it gives an indication of what will be required. There does appear to be some sort of correlation between both the number of points that 18th place wins and also the gap between 17th and 18th. Whether or not it’s coincidental I don’t know. Maybe someone that isn’t meant to look like they’re working can explore further… Code: Year Draws 17th 18th 2011 111 40 39 2013 108 39 36 2016 107 39 37 2018 103 ? ? 2008 100 36 36 2009 97 35 34 2010 96 35 30 2015 93 38 35 2012 93 37 36 2017 84 40 34 2014 78 36 33
There is a pretty much indirect correlation between points won to be top and points achieved to come 18th In the two years out of the last 10 with the lowest totals to win (2011 - 80 points and 2016 - 81 points), the points achieved by 18th placed teams were 39 and 37 respectively (also the two highest in the past 10 years) . I suspect that Man City's dominance will mean that something like 36 or even 35 will be enough.... The Undeniable Truth's point that 6 out of the 9 teams below us will get to 40 points looks extremely unlikely. The performance of the Top 6 vs the rest is so dominant this year that few will pick up many if any points against them and by the time you factor in the games between teams at the lower end of the table, it would be extraordinary for this to happen
Yeah, while some teams like Swansea and Muff are capable of getting a shock result here and there v top 6, you can't see it from Brighton, Huddersfield or Newcastle at the moment and to a lesser degree Stoke, WBA or Southampton. While people are saying we still have 5 of the top 6 left to play, with still 13 games to go I imagine most of the others still do too.
