How Do We Survive?

We’re doomed then.

 

Yeah, I guess Newcastle having owners worth £300bn doesn’t come into it, or give them greater scope to improve compared to us shuffling players in from Udinese on the cheap, or the fact that Burnley start the majority of seasons under Dyche slowly, but tend to pick up and grind results out in the second half of the season when the chips are down. 27 points has never been enough to survive so I admire your optimism.

 

That’s a vivid imagination you’ve got.

 

One of them is the richest team in the world by a distance. And one of them has recent history of pulling away from trouble over the second half of the season.

So yeah, they are more likely.

 

It does show you that some teams have played more games than others, and so have fewer remaining opportunities to save themselves, though.

Also not entirely sure how you can come out with 'the table doesn't lie' and then predict us finishing two places above our current position, displacing two teams who are further away from us than a single win - truthfully finding themselves in those positions over the course of half a season.

 

Not saying we shouldn't discount that, but so did Wigan and more recently Bournemouth, and they still went down under the same managers who kept them up against the odds. There's only so long you can go on treading water.

 

Well of course everyone is lucky until they are unlucky or vice versa - but the points made were in reply to the point made that they ‘are no more likely to improve’. I don’t think that’s true and very recent history shows that.

As things stand, at this very moment, if you give anyone the choice between us and Burnley of who they think will survive - I bet overwhelming numbers would say Burnley.

 

Mostly the betting on getting relegated is around Watford 4/7, Burnley 4/6 and Newcastle evens, Norwich 1/20.
So, far from overwhelming numbers, but you are marginally right.
It seems a lot of people think Newcastle will just buy their way out of trouble.
Norwich are everyman's 'good-as-gone'.
None of this is too surprising.

 

No chance we sign 3 more players for the first team. I cannot see it.

 

Why? Fletcher is not even a top championship striker. If he's a starter next season we're ****ed

 

We're down already but at least Duxbury gets a second crack at learning from his mistakes.

 

I was looking at the final positions of teams in the Prem that had 13 points from 18 games (or closest to it) and I'm afraid the majority of them didn't stay up, and of those that did almost all of them were in the relegation battle until pretty much the final day. I did find something interesting though:

https://www.11v11.com/league-tables/premier-league/5-december-1993/

I miss those days when you could get clubs the size of Chelsea rubbing shoulders with the likes of Oldham and Swindon...

 

Chelsea weren't a big club in 1993

 

Agreed.

 

If Newcastle and City are considered 'big clubs', then I think the same should apply to Chelsea too really

 

Re the original question, I think that apart from the new additions coming in - CR has to find an 11 that can concentrate on the game plan, and also maintain high energy throughout the game.
There have been a few games where we used the high press to good advantage but lately its just not happened. That's one area that cleverly excels but players like Tufan have not got that in them.
We need players out there who can give their all. I've noticed we've got too many players that Swan around and think that putting in a last ditch reckless tackle that leads to a conceded goal or yellow card is a display of "effort".
I played a lot of football, average skill but a 100 percenter, ran for 90 minutes, walked off every game knackered, but too many of the players we buy just can't cut it. It really hacks me off that so many players always play like they're saving themselves for the next game.!!!!
Sort out the energy and we will be a threat.!!

 

In 1993? Chelsea had a smaller ground and smaller fanbase with little success

 

To stay up we need a top keeper. It's not just about making saves and catching crosses, it's about organising the defence and inspiring confidence. Creating a solid back 5 that ain't a piece of pi$$ to score goals against.

 

Pereyra probably couldnt believe he was being told what to do by a player of Deeney's calibre.

 

Yep, I made the same comparison recently. Even in the relegation season Pereyra had flashes of real quality. Well taken penalty to bring us level against Arsenal, great skill and strike for his goal against Bournemouth and a really well taken goal against Everton. He also played his part in the Liverpool win where I thought he was impressive especially defensively.

 

Peyrera was a high quality player when he put his mind to it with match winning potential, there is zero evidence Tufan has any such ability.

 

What was the outcome for teams on 11 or 10?

 

By hoping the teams below us continue to be equally as sh*t or even more sh*t than we are, as they have been for half the season so far, and by signing a competent goalkeeper and another competent centre back as an absolute minimum.

At this exact moment I think we still have just as good a chance as the other three. Burnley and Norwich are terrible and Newcastle are woeful, with a crap manager, and currently don't look like suddenly building the team full of stars that people feared, and even then there's no saying they'd turn it around quickly enough.

Our chances mostly rest on the next three games. 5-9 points from those and no more injuries to key players and I'd back us to stay up. However if this time in 10 days we've only picked up 1-3 points then it's game over.

If we beat Newcastle we will be on 16 points for half the season. I would be amazed if survival required more than 36/37 this season, meaning we'd likely need only 20/21 points from the remaining 19 games, only 4/5 points more for the second half of the season than we got from what most would consider a woeful first half. It's doable.

 

It's a pretty time-consuming process going through nearly 30 years of Premier League history, so for now I'll just list what happened to teams on 11 points from 17 games (or the teams nearest to it), the equivalent of Burnley:

1992/93 Nottingham Forest, 22nd (R)
1993/94 Swindon (9 points from 17), 22nd (R)
1994/95 Ipswich, 22nd (R)
1995/96 QPR & Coventry (both 12 points from 17), 19th (R) & 16th
1996/97 Nottingham Forest (10 points from 17), 20th (R)
1997/98 Everton & Barnsley (both 13 points from 17), 17th & 19th (R)
1998/99 Nottingham Forest, 20th (R)
1999/00 Watford, 20th (R)
2000/01 Middlesbrough, 14th
2001/02 Derby (13 points from 17), 19th (R); Ipswich (9 points from 17), 18th (R)
2002/03 West Ham (13 points from 17), 18th (R)
2003/04 Wolves, 20th (R)
2004/05 West Brom (10 points from 17), 17th
2005/06 Birmingham (12 points from 17), 18th (R)
2006/07 Watford, 20th (R)
2007/08 Wigan (12 points from 17), 14th
2008/09 West Brom (12 points from 17), 20th (R)
2009/10 Portsmouth, 20th (R)
2010/11 West Ham, 20th (R)
2011/12 Bolton (12 points from 17), 18th (R); Blackburn (10 points from 17), 19th (R)
2012/13 QPR (10 points from 17), 20th (R)
2013/14 Sunderland (10 points from 17), 14th
2014/15 Leicester (10 points from 17), 14th
2015/16 Sunderland (12 points from 17), 17th
2016/17 Swansea & Hull (both 12 points from 17), 15th & 18th (R)
2017/18 Swansea (12 points from 17), 18th (R)
2018/19 Southampton (12 points from 17), 16th; Burnley (12 points from 17), 15th; Huddersfield (10 points from 17), 20th (R)
2019/20 Norwich (12 points from 17), 20th (R)
2020/21 Fulham (12 points from 17), 18th (R)

As you can see, the odds are overwhelmingly in favour of teams getting relegated from such a poor start, but there have been quite a few cases in recent seasons of teams surviving (most notably the great escapes of Sunderland in 2013/14 and Swansea in 2016/17), so we have to be wary.

 

People get very keen to look at patterns to predict the future. Personally I think it is extremely difficult for promoted teams to survive if they have a poor start to the first 19 games. Obviously you always have exceptions, but our previous survivals were all based on good starts. Walter had a shocking last quarter, but we were comfortable at this point in his season (18 games played).

The only way we survive is very simple - stop losing games. With Dennis proving more important than Sarr this campaign, we always have the chance of turning draws into victories. Avoid defeat in our next three games will be a good start. 36 points to survive means finding 23 from the sixty available - that means a getting out of the rut of constant defeats.

I am not particularly confident it can be done. Our hope is that we just manage to do better than the three clubs below us. All of whom need to beat us more than we do them. We need to avoid defeat. Three draws will no doubt be seen as failure, but losing to both Newcastle and Burnley while defeating Norwich would be a far worse outcome for the same aggregate points tally.

 

Sounds strange, but you are correct. We have only drawn once all season. Turn narrow defeats into draws and we've got a chance.

 

So what you are saying is we are in a bad position, but there are 3 teams in a worse position. We have a chance of staying up, it is not all lost yet.

 

We can’t even draw games though.

 

We'll be fine once we get WTE and Masina back from AFCON. So unfair that we face this challenging month without these mainstays.

 

Agree that’s a huge problem as shown against Brentford and Spurs recently, if we go down at the end of the season it could well be because of those two results.

 

Woods moving to Newcastle within 48 hours apparently, wont have time to settle in before the game and Burnley lose the only decent striker they have, good news hopefully.

 

Looking at the table this morning and didn't realise how deep in trouble we are.

Norwich are gone, there's two other spaces between us, Burnley & Newcastle.

Everton obviously won't go down, Leeds could but if they manage to get Raphinia, Phillips & Bamford on the pitch together for a substantial run of games they'll also be fine.

Newcastle seem to be doing ok business so far and will desperately throw money at it come the last week of Jan, really think it will be us and Burnley.

I had Southampton down as a dark horse but they've pulled away, funnily enough only 1 more win from 2 more games played but EIGHT more draws. 1 draw all season is awful and keeping us down there.

 

Even though Brentford are on 23 points currently, I can see them getting pulled into it over the second part of the season. I don't think they can be counted out from joining the relegation fight just yet.

 

There is a fairly good chance Brentford only need about 10 more points to be safe, which is the equivalent of achieving 21 points over the season, which is the same as Sheffield Utd last season, so it would need to be some collapse.