TWar

Fans of saints don't only turn up when they are losing, never when they are winning, and say they are worse than league one pompey and their manager is worse than that of san marino. You'd have thought the name change would have encouraged you to be a bit less blatant about your fishy leanings... Also "made to look an idiot" because I said saints were better than Villa and yet they are currently 6 points ahead? You know the seasons not over yet and we play tonight, right? At the end of the season if Villa are miles ahead of us then I'll concede I underestimated them, but them going through a new manager bounce while we're in a spell of bad form and them happening to play the day before us so they open up a slightly bigger gap does not mean anyone who thinks we are as good or better than them is an "idiot". What is really idiotic is thinking pompey, a team with no academy, no good players, and a toilet for a stadium have more "room to grow" than a team that has produced some of the best players in football.

I feel you might not understand xG super well, based on this. xG doesn't take into account whether the shot is on or off target, it calculates how likely it is to go in the moment it is struck. The outcome of the shot doesn't effect the xG. A free kick is a hard thing to finish, statistically speaking, as of last season JWP had the highest conversion rate of any active player in europes top 5 leagues IIRC and was only about 20%. If Dalot does score free kicks regularly he would over perform xG and it would show him to be a terrific finisher, because he would be.

There were a number of weaker players that game, but there isn't another keeper in the league that doesn't save both of those routinely (who doesn't play for us!). Our strikers could have been more clinical, our attacking mids could have made more chances but lets be real, there was one player that performed at an abysmal level that game and cost us the points comfortably more than anyone else. Certainly not the tactics. We had over double their shots and way ahead on possession, xG, etc. Our strikers could have put a second away but our keeper fucked it.

Huh? When have I ever been in love with liverpool? I recognise they are very good, like City or PSG but I don't love either of them either.

Same, I was relatively calm about the goalkeeping situation until that game, thinking we could see out the season and buy one in the summer but after Macca through away 3 points there (and subsequently two at Leicester) I want a keeper lined up for the beginning of January. Won't happen though.

Tell you what, I'll keep an eye out next time we win to see if you are about and being positive and not trying to call the victory "lucky", saying it was because the other team were shite, or conspicuously absent. Because waiting all season to bump a thread comparing us to another team for the moment they are more than one win above us (deliberately posting before we have played) doesn't strike me as something a fan would do. Strikes me as a troll.

Is "stop digging" becoming a catch phrase? You seem to post it a lot. They happen to be above us right now, with the season barely half way through, a few weeks ago we were above them. If we win tomorrow its a 3 point gap. If this is what you think counts as declaring a victory then you mustn't get many. Also, have you thought about supporting a different team, with how quickly you rush to put every other team above us and only seem to come online when we lose? I get serious SKDMan skate vibes from you sometimes.

You'd think this was a villa forum with how quickly you've come to wank them off for the first time they have been more than 3 points up on us (despite us having a game in hand)

Gerrard has had a new manager bounce and they have been quite fortunate in a number of games. Long term I still back us to finish above them or atleast in the same sort of position.

Oh well that proves he's better then...

This is a battering. Leeds have given up. I wonder if their forum will have an equivalent of SKDMan bringing it up every two days for years.

Most of his minutes aren't substitute appearances, he has started 8 out of 13 since arriving, he just gets subbed off early as he has been pretty ineffective. He also did get a good run of games in the team starting 6 on the bounce, he just got 1 goal and no assist in the run and was subsequently dropped. Also it's not like Benteke or Ayew have been on fire, Benteke having the same contributions as Armstrong and Ayew only having 2. This "he's being eased in because others are playing well" isn't really true. He had a run of games and didn't do much and was dropped for pretty mediocre forwards.

I'd argue we are significantly better than our injury ravaged second half, our depth is a lot better too. Our attack is maybe slightly weaker without Ings as he has not really gelled yet but we replaced him with Armstrong and Broja who between them have a pretty good return. In general I expect we'll finish better than 15th this year, mainly because we actually have other options when our players go down injured.

Last season at the back end we also didn't have Salisu at CB and Romeu, Romeu broke his ankle and Salisu was out of position at LB. For me, they, along with Livramento at RB and KWP at LB are massive improvements defensively. Our GK is still wank, our back up is wank, and our emergency loan isn't covering himself in glory but it's a decent defence other than that.

I think it's a longer term building project. We have a lot of options at 10 right now and none are that great. This summer Elyounoussi, Djenepo, Walcott, Tella, and Redmond all go into the final year of their contracts. I think it's likely a couple will be sold and we will bring in a replacement or two. Same situation with the goalkeepers, they didn't want to do everything in one window, there is a longer term plan imo. For me, new contract for Redmond and Tella, sell Elyounoussi and Djenepo. Stuart Armstrong and Redmond with competition from a new player and Tella seems to be a pretty good set of 10's for me. No idea what to do about Walcott, I guess hold him as no one else will want him on those wages and release for free a year later.

We are still 12th in the league for goals conceded, joint with United, and 6th for clean sheets. We aren't that leaky. Last game we looked awful defensively, but Salisu is back now and hopefully that'll help a lot alongside Romeu.

Palace have a couple of good scorers without him, I'm more scared of Zaha, Eze, and Gallagher. If they did get Edouard firing it's a very frightening attack. Ofcourse the best part of it is going back to Chelsea at the end of the season but for now, that is a very strong attack. Having said all this, I've definitely jinxed it and Edouard is definitely getting his first goal in 8 games!

For goal involvements people often count winning pens. Given this Armstrong has 5 in 1089 or about 0.41 per game. Edouard has 0.38 per 90. For the record, Broja has 0.49 and Adams has 0.52. The lack of minutes in kind of Edouards own fault. He scored 2 goals in his first 12 minutes in this league and everyone thought he was the business. Unfortunately since then he has had one goal involvement in his last 11 games. He is being dropped a bit as he often isn't as effective as Ayew/Benteke.

Really? I thought he started well but hasn't been amazing since. Keeps getting shifted out wide to facilitate Benteke or whoever and has had fewer goal involvements than Adams and Armstrong and the same number as Broja

I don't think we will be, but we could be. I also think we could reach higher than 12. It's all probability really. 538 have a cool predicted chances by league finishing position plot here: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/soccer-predictions/premier-league/ Giving us a 17% chance of relegation and a 3% chance of europe. Thereby a massive 80% chance of boring midtable with our most likely finishing position being about 15th/16th. I don't fully agree with the model, I think we probably have a slightly higher chance of europe and lower relegation, but I think this is basically right. I won't rule out relegation, as that would be silly, but I would say it's unlikely. Unlikely things happen though, look at Leicester.

We'll see. We've not come anywhere near to relegation for the last couple of seasons under Ralph. Will believe it when I see it. Not saying it won't happen, as per my last post, but there are definitely atleast 5 teams worse than us, so comfortable lower mid table will be my prediction. If we had the same numbers we had under our two previous managers we'd be gone though.

This is the same Aston villa that should have been relegated if it wasn't for a fluke dip in goal line tech? Yeah we are better than Villa as a squad, and Norwich, Watford, Burnley, Brentford, and Newcastle. We are a team that should be achieving 12th-16th most seasons, if we do really well we may push higher, if we do poorly we could be relegated. Because there are no awards for finishing 13th instead of 14th the most pressing issue is to avoid relegation. As long as we do that that'll be fine and can keep building hoping to uncover a gem or two with cheap signings and hoping to be bought. I think the same is true of all the teams I listed including Villa despite their delusions of grandeur. I'm not "downgrading my expectations to 4th from bottom" I'm saying that for a team of our size even if there are 5 or 6 worse teams than us relegation is possible with a run of bad form, bad luck, or injury, and avoiding it is our main goal. And since we don't have anywhere near the squad for a European challenge it's our only major goal outside the cups.

I don't think we had a small good patch. I think we got good victories against some decent sides in and around where we were finishing and took points off City, West Ham and United who are all great sides with tonnes more money pumped into them than us. This season we have been more good than bad, even with the poor run we are on right now. Last season we were also fine, that's why we weren't relegated. I would love for an acceptable season for us to mean top half or europe but that's just not where we are financially. A passing grade is survival. We survived last year and we are on course to do so again. For our investment, thats the aim.

A couple of freak poor results doesn't make a manager of Ralphs quality worse than whatever part timer is in charge of San marino, you nutter. You think that manager gets clean sheets at City, West Ham, Liverpool etc. like we have over the last year or so? Definitely not. Pompey don't have room to grow, they basically sold off their academy, their facilities are shite, their stadium is half the size of ours and would take huge investment to get anywhere near our quality, they have no good players. When we were in league 1 we had a quality academy and big stadium so we were appealing, what do pompey have? I shouldn't have to explain this to a southampton fan, I've met skates less deluded about their quality than you. Honestly... No, as Ralph is better than those two. Hence why his win % is almost double theirs... I'm not taking advice on whos a dud from a guy who just said pompey have "room to grow". Absolute bollocks like that is why you get a ban, because it comes across as very fishy...

Things have fluctuated. I was not happy at the back end of last season (with a couple of exceptions) although I thought it was mainly due to injuries and people not coming back fully fit. I was pretty happy with our performances from the start of this season until the norwich game (again with a couple of exceptions). I think if you arbitrarily cut out a time frame with a big poor patch in it you could easily overshadow a smaller good patch. If you look at all of last season and this one, I'm reasonably happy, if you look at all of this season I am happy enough or was until about 4 games ago. If you group the bad bit of last season with this one to prove we are poor right now and have been for X games I'd call that disingenuous.