How Do We Survive?

In the past our team was a lot better than the players, now:-
our parts are a lot better than the sum of them!

 

Claudio has cracked it. We just need 'new players' apparently:

https://theathletic.com/news/i-beli...rd-can-be-saved-claudio-ranieri/q0ObSp7Ak8tK/

 

The most winnable game we will ever have in the PL was lost 0-3.

The players don't give a ****. A new manager isn't going to change that.

If you have rotten eggs, you have a rotten omelette. Roy is nothing more than a placeholder that will regret joining. There is no new manager bounce. There is only a group of ****heads that are waiting for their next signing on fee.

 

That's not what he said. I saw the car window interview. He said "I believe with these three new players Watford can be saved, and also arrives a fantastic manager"

https://twitter.com/i/status/1485928362963095553

 

The only real chance of survival that we have has already been predetermined - that is, that the performances we have seen so far turn out to, indeed, actually have been a mix of Claudio just not being that bothered these days and not properly training or drilling the team, and the players being a rotten enough bunch that in that scenario that they just give up, fucck about and barely try themselves - perhaps exacerbated further by the gathering storm clouds of yet another managerial sacking.

If the way they've played these past months was totally in earnest, and they really are that bad, then we're done for.

 

Still the fact we have only eight home games left and ten away combined with other factors makes our task pretty monumental.

We are not massively adrift according to the table, but we are effectively eight points from safety given Newcastle will presumably buy their way out of it and Everton never get relegated. Plus we’ve scored only one goal against the only two defences somehow worse than ours, and that was our only saving grace during the few weeks leading up to those games.

 

Brighton I can understand but Burnley? They've won once all season. We might lose but tearing us apart? I think they are both winnable games to be fair

 

Did you catch Friday’s game?

 

That's the positives out of the way. Any negatives?

 

Sadly yes but hoping that's a one off. I know we've lost a lot of games but that was spectacularly bad

 

Personally I think we're a lost cause (even if we appoint Woy) however I'm going to think positive.

We need to pick up more points than the clubs around us otherwise we won't stay up and that starts with the game against Burnley.

 

I bought my first season ticket under Ray Lewington. It'll be nice to see him again. Was only after he left that I understood how difficult a job it was to keep us up and also managed to take us to two semi-finals.

Cleaning up the mess of Vialli and ITV Digital was a hell of a job.

A job largely forgotten because Aidy came in afterwards and achieved the impossible.

 

No reason to write us off, I agree.

But I don’t believe you don’t see ANY reason for pessimism and I imagine you’re just ignoring it or parking it elsewhere in your minds eye.

Yes, Hodgson could well have an immediate effect. But you can’t just forget the fact that we cannot keep a clean sheet, can barely defend in any coherent manner, reports of players falling out and other reports that the owner won’t sanction any more incomings. Not to mention Sarr is still missing and our owner is still a basket case.

The above isn’t me moaning at all. I’m more hopeful today than I was yesterday - but the above are all things that at least deserve some concern. They don’t just disappear overnight.

 

I think it would be a creditable coaching outcome if the team win six and draw three of the remaining matches. That might be enough to survive.

Can’t see it though.

If Hodgson gets close, Gino will have to look at himself and ask why he went for Ranieri whose record in England in his last two seasons was so poor.

He will then have to get the appointment right for the next Championship season. How close to saving us from relegation, (or at least moulding a team that looks competent), do Roy and Ray need to get to be kept on for next season?

 

For me, Pearson, Ranieri, Hodgson… they all give me desperation and managerial merry go round vibes.

There was a time when we’d pluck a manager from obscurity who nobody had heard of, but they came in and did a specific job well, at least for what was a reasonable length of time back then (compared to the 3 managers as a minimum/10 game stint we’re ending up with per season now) that was one of our skills that set us apart from the rest.

Meanwhile we’d all be laughing at the clubs at the bottom of the table scrabbling around and appointing the likes of Hughes/Pardew/BSF etc. expecting them to change their fortunes.

I think we’re now becoming one of those clubs, we’ve almost completely run out of ideas bar the short sharp shock of a new manager, but we’re getting increasingly desperate about who that manager actually ends up being.

 

We all want a bounce but as @Burnsy said we can't defend! This isn't sorted out in 10 days on the training pitch. As my Dad used to say, you cant polish a turd. But you can roll it in glitter. But how many times can you roll it in Glitter?
Muddling through isn't a way to run a club and progress, we're simply regressing at an alarming rate.

 

Does your dad read Plato?

 

If he wrote for the Sporting life then yes

 

Looks like Newcastle are about to finally get their way on their first megabucks signing, which suggest the answer is 'with ever-increasing difficulty'

https://www.skysports.com/football/...with-lyon-in-region-of-30m-to-sign-midfielder

 

I dont like the fact all they did for the Bournemouth one was turn its mouth upside down to make it look unhappy, tongue is in wrong place now too, as for the teeth wtf.

 

17 points max for me out of that lot which leaves us with 31 points at the end of the season.

 

I think you're predictions are quite fair, however, I think we'll get more than 2 points from Everton, Brighton and Leicester at home, which could bump our total to around 35/36 points.

 

Bold. That would be enough this season.

 

I actually thought I was being a bit too generous, if the players dont come out fighting on Saturday we are a gonna.

 

Trying to be optimistic…

Norwich have some difficult games coming up.

Burnley is a must win. Then they have some tough games after us which could leave them adrift.

We probably need 6 points from the next 4 (West Ham, Brighton, Villa & Palace) to be in with a chance.

 

If we beat Burnley and the 6 from the following 4 we’d be in a good spot. Reckon 7 from next 5 (including Burnley) would leave us in a competitive place. Definitely do or die time!

 

We need a miracle (Clean sheet) and a sh*t ton of Cojones - Can't see it

 

I had a dream we were leading 3-1 in our final game and we were competing with one relegation rival to avoid the drop. If that result and that of our rival stayed the same, we would survive, but it was a real tightrope; if we won 3-2 and the other result stayed the same, or ours stayed the same and the other team got a goal (didn’t know the scoreline in the other game), we would go down. There was a nail-biting finish as we managed to hold onto 3-1 in fear of the late brain fart that has happened so many times this season, THEN as we waited for the other game to finish after FT to hopefully confirm our safety.

Then back to reality after I woke up, and I checked our fixture list and clearly I didn’t know or had forgotten we were playing Chelsea away in the final game, so fat chance of that scoreline happening! Our final month is tough and we really don’t want to be going into it in the relegation zone - April will make or break our season (assuming we are still in the shake-up by then) with crucial home six-pointers against Leeds, Brentford and Burnley and pretty much guaranteed zero-pointers at Liverpool and Man City.

 

Using nothing more scientific than points per game average, I've worked out how the table would look down the bottom if the season played out to a conclusion.

14. Leeds 40
15. Brentford 36
16. Everton 34
17. Newcastle 31
18. Norwich 28
19. Burnley 27
20. Watford 26

It's quite an extraordinarily low bar. Leeds would be 14th on 40 points!!

So, going by the points per game average, we'd stay up on 32 points. Of course, this is only an indicator, but I think it shows that a very low points total is likely to keep you up this season.

 

If we don't beat Brighton, let's just accept our fate. Aftet watching Southampton last night, we're clearly out of our depth in this league. We only looked half decent in the first half against West Ham as we played with intensity. That's not sustainable with our elderly squad. I hope to be proven wrong, but Brighton have only lost 4 this season and generally have us in their pocket in recent matches.

 

I was a bit disheartened when I read that, however their away sequence for the season is WLWDDDLDDDWD (the recent win was a 2-3 victory over the shambles that is Everton)

 

We had them in our pocket for much of the away match in 2019/20 before the suicidal own goal. The reason they’ve only lost four games is because they don’t let in many while scoring a fair few late goals to rescue points. So if we do win, it will likely be a case of us hanging onto a 1-0 lead.

 

Last season was in theory an even lower total:



Of course it’s impossible to say if a team could’ve stayed up on 29 points, because if that team was say, Burnley, then if any of those 10 points they’d lost (compared to their real total of 39) were against West Brom or Fulham then whoever would’ve stayed up would’ve only stayed up with more than 29.