Top 8?

[Turkish]

And more seriously - if people are willing to stick their necks out and makes some predictions, it is clearly going to be based on a lot of gut feeling and guesswork. To ask for in depth justifications in what should, really, be a light-hearted prediction thread, is all a bit silly IMO. Who f*cking knows what will happen?

 

Personally, I think we'll finish about 7th or 8th, but IF MP can get us creating and converting a few more chances then there's a chance we'll sneak into 6th, as that is my main area of concern ('concern' being a relative term... it's the area we can currently improve the most).

 

But hey, it's far more enjoyable so far this season, so go with it, and who knows what we might achieve?

 

Are you sure this is the mongboard for you mindy?

[Crab Lungs]

We'd have to get 70 points or so for Champions League. Woah.

 

60 odd for Europa. Woah.

[Dr Who?]

Ask me again on new year's day just after we have beaten Chelski at home.

 

For the second time this season? Please tell me it is?

[SaintBobby]

10 games in strikes me as a fair time to make an assessment.

 

Yeah, we've probably played slightly weaker than average teams overall - so our next nine or ten games will be tougher than our start. But not by absolute miles.

 

Overall view - 19 points is probably about a fair return from our matches so far. Our luck has about evened out over 900+ minutes of football. We probably won't average 1.9 points per game for the rest of the season, but then we wouldn't need to in order to have a great season and be in the top six (or maybe even the top four).

 

Reason to be optimistic: If Osvaldo comes good (and it's tough to see him getting worse), we might start to score goals at a more impressive rate which seems statistically to be our problem at the moment.

 

Reason to be cautious: The starting XI are great, but two or three injuries and we do lack depth.

 

Reason to be fearful: Can see the big boys trying to buy quite a lot of our players in January. Shaw, Lovren, Clyne, Schneiderlin, Lallana (and perhaps Fonte?) are surely on a lot of transfer target lists? Lose a couple of these players and we look measurably weaker.

 

Nevertheless, at this stage we look a hell of a lot better than we typically did last season. Finishing as low as 14th would now be a huge disappointment. This is really excellent forward progress (aren't we 11 points better off than in equivalent fixtures last year?), even if it's still obviously a work in progress.

[offix]

This

[Charlie Wayman]

Nah! The top 1 is moving away nobody else.