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Relegation Battle?


SNSUN

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More people are talking about the possibility of a relegation fight than finishing in the top 6, which now seems absurd.

Maybe we should give you the benefit of the doubt, and take it that you meant "people are talking about the possibility of a relegation fight" as being absurd, and not "finishing in the top 6".

 

Or maybe not. :lol:

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At the end of the season we'll be nowhere near the relegation places. That's my view. I couldn't care less who does and doesn't agree with it.

 

We're slightly below mid-table in the lowest quality premier league season I can remember. We have been dire by our standards of the last few years, and lost to a long ball danish side in one of those worst and most frustrating saints performances i've seen in years.

 

We're nowhere near a relegation battle and will finish, at worst, in the position we are in (13th). Has everyone forgotten how dismal we were for the entire season when we actually went down? None of the teams below us (and one or two of the ones above) are as good as us. We'd need a disastrous run of injuries and suspensions to still be in the relegation equation in April.

 

LOL. None of the teams below us are as bad as us, are you serious? Chelsea for example. Norwich, didn't they beat us? Bournemouth, are they really worse than us now? That just leaves Newcastle and Swansea (forget Sunderland and Villa). Can they get 7 or 5 points more than us in the remainder of the season. Well, yes on current form they probably can. Will they? Don't know, but unless we make some serious changes very soon then the odds are that they may be less bad than us.

 

We beat Chelsea and they've only looked like they've improved in one match in the entire time since, we beat Bournemouth and they're not 2 goals better than they were then and we're not 2 goals worse. Newcastle we played without a couple of our early season signings having played in Europe 3 days before, and they've got far worse since too.

 

Plus we're also as good as pretty much any of the 6 sides directly above us. We'll still come somewhere between 8th and 13th, which is more or less what I said pre-season.

 

We're currently playing without our first choice right back and centre forward, with one of our best midfielders from last season barely bothering to pitch up, one fairly regular starter suspended and another one dropped for disciplinary reasons. Oh, and Rodriguez out. That will affect results for all but the very top sides.

 

Our supposedly "terrible" run of League form has included completely expected defeats to Man City and Spurs, three one goal defeats away from home to teams around us in the table, a narrow loss to Stoke at home, a 1-1 home draw with the worst team in the League... and a 4-0 win against the best team in the League.

 

In pretty much all of the narrow defeats, despite us being affected by missing players, one tiny thing going either way could have led to us getting a draw or a win rather than losing. Fine margins, and we've been unlucky almost everywhere we could have been. Can't say I'm worried about it, with the notable exception of Wanyama aside there's nothing to suggest they're not putting the effort in - at this stage big changes are likely to be much more detrimental than just having patience and waiting for the margins to swing back towards us.

 

We also played 4-4-2 and finished below Portsmouth, I know what I prefer. :D

 

We haven't been "rubbish so far" either, we've been typical mid-table so far, which is why we're mid-table. It's not as good as being 7th or 8th, but then we don't generally expect to win 11 out of 12 matches like we did last season either... when we also lost 5 in a row, which we haven't done this season.

 

Continue to bury your head in the sand and pretend that we are better than teams below us, even though the evidence is clear for nayone to see that it is not true Losing by an odd goal is still losing and earns zero points. We have only played well once since we played Bournemouth, and even then they completely outplayed us in the 2nd half. The thing you don't seem to take into account is that we have regressed and at the same time other teams have improved or started to improve.

 

You are of course welcome to your view. Still I guess you might be worried now that SOG has agreed with you and called your response "post of the day". Given his predilection to be contrary to everything anyone posts it is a ringing endorsement :lol:

 

I apologise to the team for suggesting we might finish as low as 13th. :D

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There will be more in the summer for sure. No lessons are ever learnt. Hysterical

We're only a few weeks away from this season being described as a yet another Les Reed fluke and just like I said last summer we won't do it again and I never liked Les Reed he hasn't got a clue and look what he did at Charlton and everything and why can't we be Stoke I wish we were Stoke or Everton or Watford or Palace whichever club it is that buys the first player in the first week of June.

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We're only a few weeks away from this season being described as a yet another Les Reed fluke and just like I said last summer we won't do it again and I never liked Les Reed he hasn't got a clue and look what he did at Charlton and everything and why can't we be Stoke I wish we were Stoke or Everton or Watford or Palace whichever club it is that buys the first player in the first week of June.

 

:lol:

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  • 10 months later...

Nothing much has changed then.

 

Quite simply, we need to start taking our f*cking chances. If we do, we will be fine.

 

This is the critical thing.

 

We should have had the West Ham game sewn up at HT, but didn't. Today according the BBC stats we had possesion, and shots. A worrying stat is 9 corners, which should be a golden opportunity for us, but our corners tend to be pathetic affairs where the GK gathers the ball unchallenged.

 

I wondered in the summer where our goals would come from, given how timid we are in front of goal. Rodriguez was never going to be the answer as - Fulham away aside - he always needed about 4 chances before he'd take one of them. Long is proven as a goal in every four games.

 

Not sure we have the answer available to us in the squad as it is. Having scored twice against Arsenal, Long will dine out on that for weeks, and isn't due another goal for about 8 games.

 

This problem is compounded by our mistake riddled defence.Martina, Yoshida we expect the errors from, but it appears pretty contagious this season.

 

No proven goalscorer we can rely on, good job we signed Redmond, and an error prone defence.

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