Saints run in - the final 10 games

[The Kraken]

Excellent battling back today, it keeps the sliver of survival alive.  We’ve got 10 games left so we’re into desperation stakes. We’ve got 23 points. I reckon 36 or 37 points stays up this season; could be less but it’s so tight and current “safety” is 25 points from 27, Leicester and Everton each with a game in hand.

Hers our run in. I’ll be honest, I’m struggling to see where 13 or 14 points comes from.

West Ham v Saints

Saints v Man City

Saints v Palace

Arsenal v Saints

Saints v Bournemouth

Newcastle v Saints

Forest v Saints

Saints v Fulham

Brighton v Saints

Saints v Liverpool

[Jimbo]

West Ham palace Bournemouth and forest game are must wins.

don’t see it happening

[Dman]

3 minutes ago, Jimbo said:

West Ham palace Bournemouth and forest game are must wins.

don’t see it happening

We don’t win the big, crunch 6 pointers. Mentally too weak when the pressure is on. 
 

I think come forest we’ll be done 

[Saint Fan CaM]

There is a glimmer of a point, possibly three at Wet Spam.  We could beat Palace who are plummeting at the moment.  Can't see us getting anything out of City and Arsenal to be honest.  So let's say an optimistic 4 points by the time we play Bournemouth which I think we can win.  I don't think we'll get anything from Newcastle away.  We might get a point, possibly three at Forest and home to Fulham, so that's 9 points.  I doubt we'll beat or draw with Brighton or Liverpool so we could be effectively down after the Newcastle game.

So I reckon we'll get another 9 points making our total 32 which will not be enough.  Even if we fluke a win and a draw against two of City, Arsenal, Newcastle or Brighton, 36 will not be enough.  We're still down in my view.

[Dman]

Simply put, we have to stay up, we are going to have to beat West Ham, Forest, Bournemouth and palace and hope to sneak a draw or 2 elsewhere. 
 

Fulham will hopefully have not a lot to play for likewise Brighton. Depends what Liverpool turn up. 
 

Can’t see us doing it. Don’t even think we’ll beat West Ham. 

[The Kraken]

3 wins 4 draws is the best chance I think we might have, certainly can’t see us winning 4 games. Bournemouth and Palace games are the obvious ones where we’ve got a chance. But, look what Bournemouth did against Liverpool. Miracles can happen. I’m not expecting it, mind. I see us limping home to about 30 points.

[Mixedkebab]

The 13 points may have been on the table if we beat Brentford, there have been many lows but that one was the real killer

[The Kraken]

3 minutes ago, Mixedkebab said:

The 13 points may have been on the table if we beat Brentford, there have been many lows but that one was the real killer

Yep, 10 from 10 is doable. 13, given the run in, a massive ask.

Still, magic an away win against the appy ammers and who knows….

Dammit, why do this shower keep making me believe in them?!

[Luke SkyWalker-Peters]

There was always a randomness with teams Ralph would get wins from, and we are playing a similar style. I could absolutely see this team win away at Arsenal, then lose at home to Bournemouth the next week.

8 points in 6 games under Ruben against 2 teams in the CL mix, 2 midtable and 2 in the relegation scrap. If we keep up this form (1.3 points a game) we will be finishing on 35. Ideally we want to be getting wins against fellow strugglers, but at our current pace we will be right there.

For anyone interested, fivethirtyeight.com have us finishing last on 33 points, Bournemouth and Forest both going back to the Championship on 35 and Everton just escaping on 36. They give us a 33% chance at survival.

[Nolan]

Black outline is Selles Games

Blue outline is Jones' Games

we need to expect 3 points from Bouremouth, West Ham, Forest and Palace. Thats the task.! 

If we can continue to grab 1 point from the Top half clubs, thats the bonus!

 

 

 

Edited 18 March, 2023 by Nolan

[S-Clarke]

If you look at our recent form in both performances and results, it's probably our best run of the season. But even our best run of the season hasn't managed to move us off of the bottom of the league, and I don't think we're capable of too much more than we're giving now. That probably illustrates pretty well how it's almost an impossible job for us to stay up.

It's like our relegation in 05, the games against the teams around us have been tossed and that's what's done it. Points and wins against Utd/Chelsea/Spurs are all well and good, but when you blow it against Wolves, Leeds, Brentford then there is only ever going to be one result.

[Tamesaint]

I bet we will get points in the matches which most people would expect us to lose - (Arsenal, Man City, Newcastle, Liverpool ) in  the same way that we have gained 5 points from Chelsea away, Man U away and Spurs at home. What will decide our fate will be how we do I the 6 pointers versus Bournemouth, Forest and Palace. 

[SaintTex]

normally i would say we are done.. but the table is really unusual this year.

• we are 4 points from 12 place (it was 5 points a week ago, 6 points a week before that)
• the 9 clubs within 4 points of each other cant string 2 wins together, no one has really made a strong move
• our 6 match form is 8 points, which is 11th best, best of the 9 clubs.

so we have made incremental progress the last 4 weeks -  slowly, but it has happened. (of course, time may not be on our side if that progress remains only incremental)

 

Edited 18 March, 2023 by SaintTex

[bugenhagen]

City, Arsenal, Brighton and Liverpool are the games to hope we can get points from. They will all attack us, and we might be able to get lucky in one or two of those.

The rest of the games we will draw or lose. We can't play football (against teams that do not attack us). Don't know why poeople think we will beat the likes of Forest and Palace.

[Turkish]

2 hours ago, Jimbo said:

West Ham palace Bournemouth and forest game are must wins.

don’t see it happening

The problem is we’ve lost all our must win games so far this season. 

[Whitey Grandad]

4 minutes ago, Turkish said:

The problem is we’ve lost all our must win games so far this season. 

Everton away?

[Turkish]

Just now, Whitey Grandad said:

Everton away?

Ah forgot about that. Okay we’ve won one of six or seven 

[Black Sea Saint]

20 minutes ago, bugenhagen said:

City, Arsenal, Brighton and Liverpool are the games to hope we can get points from. They will all attack us, and we might be able to get lucky in one or two of those.

The rest of the games we will draw or lose. We can't play football (against teams that do not attack us). Don't know why poeople think we will beat the likes of Forest and Palace.

Spurs didn't really attack us today, sat with 10 behind the ball most of the game

[sibster]

6 minutes ago, Turkish said:

Ah forgot about that. Okay we’ve won one of six or seven 

Leicester? Bournemouth? 

[JRM]

This team is not staying up, absolutely no chance 

[Archers Road Stand]

2 hours ago, The Kraken said:

Excellent battling back today, it keeps the sliver of survival alive.  We’ve got 10 games left so we’re into desperation stakes. We’ve got 23 points. I reckon 36 or 37 points stays up this season; could be less but it’s so tight and current “safety” is 25 points from 27, Leicester and Everton each with a game in hand.

Hers our run in. I’ll be honest, I’m struggling to see where 13 or 14 points comes from.

West Ham v Saints

Saints v Man City

Saints v Palace

Arsenal v Saints

Saints v Bournemouth

Newcastle v Saints

Forest v Saints

Saints v Fulham

Brighton v Saints

Saints v Liverpool

Two wins if we're lucky. 

[Lighthouse]

TBH we’ve just been incredibly lucky recently IMO. Leicester missed enough chances to win 4-1, Man United had arguably their best player sent off after half an hour and as flakey as Spurs defence is, that penalty was as soft as loft insulation. True we’ve shown a bit of bottle in chunks, here and there, but overall I don’t think we have anywhere near enough to get out of it.

[Baird of the land]

We're doing just enough to not be totally cut adrift but we're probably 3 points(plus 1 for Goal Difference) adrift currently, once you factor in team's games in hand.

We're still going to need something special. If we lose to West Ham next you'd have to think it's done but then again this team could bizarrely turn up against City i suppose.

[Eric The Red]

I also agree that it's very unlikely that we stay up. I think with our GD 37 points is the minimum. If we 'write off' the Man C ,Arsenal and Newcastle games that would mean we have to get 14 points  (4 wins 2 draws) from the other 7 games, a massively tall order! 

[OnceaSaintalwaysaSaint]

4 wins from the 5 W.Ham, Palace, Bournemouth, Forest & Fulham games could well be enough - this team is more than capable. They need self-belief, they need to be direct against the teams that will be set up to defend against us. W.Ham in a fortnight should go after us which will create opportunities.

Still hopeful, though last Wednesday was a real setback. Someone needs to have a word with RB and his obsession with playing Ely. It is so wrong on so many levels. Today things changed when he came off - well, there's a surprise.

[RedArmy]

We have consistently blown every chance we’ve had to drag ourselves out of this mess. 
 

There are not 3 teams worse than us in this league. 

[AlexLaw76]

West Ham away is everything that will go wrong.  They are a Moyes team, will defend deep and have decent strikers.

No chance do we win that.  

[JRM]

1 hour ago, OnceaSaintalwaysaSaint said:

4 wins from the 5 W.Ham, Palace, Bournemouth, Forest & Fulham games could well be enough - this team is more than capable. They need self-belief, they need to be direct against the teams that will be set up to defend against us. W.Ham in a fortnight should go after us which will create opportunities.

Still hopeful, though last Wednesday was a real setback. Someone needs to have a word with RB and his obsession with playing Ely. It is so wrong on so many levels. Today things changed when he came off - well, there's a surprise.

What makes you think that this team is more than capable of winning 4 of those 

[ErwinK1961]

West Ham v Saints - Lose

Saints v Man City - Win

Saints v Palace - Lose

Arsenal v Saints - Draw 

Saints v Bournemouth - Lose 

Newcastle v Saints - Win

Forest v Saints - Lose

Saints v Fulham - Win

Brighton v Saints - Draw

Saints v Liverpool - Win

 

14 points, easy.

[Ex Lion Tamer]

Obviously relegation is the likely outcome but any/all of our last three games could be against teams with nothing to play for. They're all winnable

[UpweySaint]

While it's not likely it's good to at least have half a chance. Let's face it, if Jones stayed we didn't have a hope in hell! If we go we go but we at least look like a side that will be fighting rather than going down with a whimper.

Momentum will be key. If we can put back to back results, even a win either side of a draw and the psychological shift will be massive.

Brentford aside we've actually looked like scoring the odd goal in most games since Selles took over and that may be the key to get us over the line. Alcarez, Walcott, a little spurt from Adams (we can hope), JWP to keep doing JWP things ...

The only game I would write off is Arsenal away. CIty at home is almost in that camp but we've shown this season we can pull off a result against them - albeit the cup game they had made several changes. Away at the Amex could be tricky but it may be a non event for Brighton by that point and a credible draw or a sneaky win isn't entirely out of the question.

As ever it's the hope that kills you but results like today keep suckering me back in to believing we could just pull it off. 

[OnceaSaintalwaysaSaint]

9 hours ago, JRM said:

What makes you think that this team is more than capable of winning 4 of those 

What was pleasing about yesterday was that when Spurs tried to park the bus, we still went at them rather than the usual passing sideways. Liked Sulemana's forward charges, Mara is growing in stature. Theo gets in to the right places. Keep AA and Ely out the squad and we're a solid mid table side. There's a lot of crap at bottom of the table. 

[West end Saints]

Clutched straw... 

10 game current form (decent sample) projected for next 10 games. 

Palace 32

Wolves 40

Leeds 35

Everton 36

Nottingham 38

Leicester 33

West Ham 34

Bournemouth 32

Saints 33

Still in it! 

[bangkoksaint]

We’re down. The only reason I say that is because we never start playing until it’s too late and never take the game to teams. If we’d done this post WC we’d have been okay. The WH game will be a rinse and repeat of Leeds and Brentford instead of saying ‘we’re in the mire let’s go at them from the off’

[Pamplemousse]

Realistically - we need to win the three home games against Bournemouth, Palace and Fulham, and avoid defeat against West Ham and Forest. Do that and I think we survive.

[Crab Lungs]

11 minutes ago, Pamplemousse said:

Realistically - we need to win the three home games against Bournemouth, Palace and Fulham, and avoid defeat against West Ham and Forest. Do that and I think we survive.

That truly will test our mettle. Do we have it in us? We’ve not shown it so far compared to the other scraps we’ve been in seasons gone by. ☹️

[CB Fry]

21 minutes ago, Pamplemousse said:

Realistically - we need to win the three home games against Bournemouth, Palace and Fulham, and avoid defeat against West Ham and Forest. Do that and I think we survive.

We need at least a couple more points than that. 34 won't be enough, mainly because as soon as you start applying the SaintsWeb "realistically, we only need to..." thinking to all the other clubs down there, 34 points is a piece of piss for them. Forest 8 points from 11 matches, "dragged into it" Palace 7 points from 11, Leicester 9 from 11 and so on.

We need to get something from maybe 7 of the remaining ten games, so we can afford 3 defeats for the rest of the season.

Look, we're not going to do it. I need to stop going on about it.

[beatlesaint]

2 hours ago, Pamplemousse said:

Realistically - we need to win the three home games against Bournemouth, Palace and Fulham, and avoid defeat against West Ham and Forest. Do that and I think we survive.

Yeah you’re right I think but we have won 3 home games in the league out of the last 16 over two seasons. It’s a big ask !

[OnceaSaintalwaysaSaint]

The bookmakers have us at 3/10 and Notts For & Bournemouth as prime relegation candidates. We're playing both of these two.  Not going to put the house on it but worth a 'lay' punt. Certainly, from how the team has played over the last month compared to the three months previous, I'm remaining hopeful of escaping relegation.....at least until the Palace game.

[Forester]

19 hours ago, SaintTex said:

normally i would say we are done.. but the table is really unusual this year.

• we are 4 points from 12 place (it was 5 points a week ago, 6 points a week before that)
• the 9 clubs within 4 points of each other cant string 2 wins together, no one has really made a strong move
• our 6 match form is 8 points, which is 11th best, best of the 9 clubs.

so we have made incremental progress the last 4 weeks -  slowly, but it has happened. (of course, time may not be on our side if that progress remains only incremental)

 

Good post.  While me may well go down, anyone writing it off now is just not looking at the facts.  As you say the last fortnight has seen us move from six points off 12th to four points off 12th.  So not a single team in the bottom nine has broken away.  I also don’t agree that we have “lost all the six pointers” as some have said.  We have done the double over Leicester, beaten Everton away, won our only game so far against Bournemouth and in the cup won away at Palace.

 

It seems to me likely that half of the bottom nine will not get more than a point per game and so I think 36 gives us a great chance.  We can still lose half our remaining matches and do that.  Before yesterday I said route to staying up was draw against Spurs and Brighton, beat Bournemouth, Fulham, Palace, Wet Spam and Forest and lose to City, Arsenal, Newcastle and Liverpool.  Got the first one right!  That would give us 39 which surely would do it.  So I think we can afford to move one of my “must wins” out of the winning line and finish with four wins and a draw and have a strong chance.  Hence saying we can lose half our remaining games and still potentially do it.

[Turkish]

For me those two home games against forest and wolves have killed us. Losing to a team who had only scored one away goal was criminal, then losing to a team (were then below us at the time?) who played an hour with 10 men and were one goal down is just beyond ridiculous. A couple of wins and we’d be sitting pretty despite being shite even a couple of draws and the table looks very different out of the relegation zone, above forest and level on points with Wolves and Leicester. The Nathan Jones period has killed us this season. 

[James G]

I think Palace, Bournemouth and Forest will go down at this point in time. I think Saints will scrape to safety. Different dynamics come into play at this point of the season. 

Edited 19 March, 2023 by James G

[saintwbu]

19 minutes ago, Turkish said:

For me those two home games against forest and wolves have killed us. Losing to a team who had only scored one away goal was criminal, then losing to a team (were then below us at the time?) who played an hour with 10 men and were one goal down is just beyond ridiculous. A couple of wins and we’d be sitting pretty despite being shite even a couple of draws and the table looks very different out of the relegation zone, above forest and level on points with Wolves and Leicester. The Nathan Jones period has killed us this season. 

Agree on the impact of the Forest game - the only reason they’re not bottom of the league was because they beat us and then Leicester straight after - had they lost to us who knows if they’d have had the confidence to beat Leicester. They’re crap, have been crap all season, they don’t show any signs of gelling like people said they would. It should be Forest and Bournemouth bottom 2 with us trying to catch the teams outside, but we killed ourselves with that game.

[Saint Keef]

Maybe I'm going daft (good possibility), but here's my spin on it. Knowing the fragile nature of the confidence and "flakiness" within this team, and as we saw last season, the way we "relaxed off" after we realised we were safe, barely picking up another point in the final however many games,, in a way I would rather we were in our current position, rather than just above that drop line with 10 games to go. At least being where we are, we know we cannot get any worse position wise, and we MUST get results to climb out of it. Conversely, if we were just above that line there would I'm sure, be a feeling that we MAY NOT need to get results because of the teams already below us, but at the same time a nagging feeling of getting dragged below that line and not being able to reverse the trend. From where we are now, at least we know what we've got to do. There are 8 or so teams above us who will be as nervous or even more nervous than us, of being dragged into the bottom 3 and that will have an effect on how they play. The odds of us staying up are still slim, but if we do pull it off it will be one of the great escape stories. Comments as to my daftness welcomed. 😃 

[trousers]

14 minutes ago, Saint Keef said:

Maybe I'm going daft (good possibility), but here's my spin on it. Knowing the fragile nature of the confidence and "flakiness" within this team, and as we saw last season, the way we "relaxed off" after we realised we were safe, barely picking up another point in the final however many games,, in a way I would rather we were in our current position, rather than just above that drop line with 10 games to go. At least being where we are, we know we cannot get any worse position wise, and we MUST get results to climb out of it. Conversely, if we were just above that line there would I'm sure, be a feeling that we MAY NOT need to get results because of the teams already below us, but at the same time a nagging feeling of getting dragged below that line and not being able to reverse the trend. From where we are now, at least we know what we've got to do. There are 8 or so teams above us who will be as nervous or even more nervous than us, of being dragged into the bottom 3 and that will have an effect on how they play. The odds of us staying up are still slim, but if we do pull it off it will be one of the great escape stories. Comments as to my daftness welcomed. 😃 

Walcott effectively expressed the same philosophy in his interview with Adam Blackmore after the game yesterday, so you're in good company. (Either that or you're both equally bonkers... )

Edited 19 March, 2023 by trousers

[OnceaSaintalwaysaSaint]

25 minutes ago, Saint Keef said:

Maybe I'm going daft (good possibility), but here's my spin on it. Knowing the fragile nature of the confidence and "flakiness" within this team, and as we saw last season, the way we "relaxed off" after we realised we were safe, barely picking up another point in the final however many games,, in a way I would rather we were in our current position, rather than just above that drop line with 10 games to go. At least being where we are, we know we cannot get any worse position wise, and we MUST get results to climb out of it. Conversely, if we were just above that line there would I'm sure, be a feeling that we MAY NOT need to get results because of the teams already below us, but at the same time a nagging feeling of getting dragged below that line and not being able to reverse the trend. From where we are now, at least we know what we've got to do. There are 8 or so teams above us who will be as nervous or even more nervous than us, of being dragged into the bottom 3 and that will have an effect on how they play. The odds of us staying up are still slim, but if we do pull it off it will be one of the great escape stories. Comments as to my daftness welcomed. 😃 

The logic is good. It all depends on mindset. Against Brentford we could have played all day and not scored and with Spurs in the first half we never looked like scoring, yet it the second half there was a complete change in attitude. Similarly, against Man U, we went after them from the start. While I appreciate you can't bomb around for 50 minutes (that's about the average the ball is in play nowadays!), surely you can have that positive attacking mindset for 50 minutes.

[Mr X]

Walcott offered a lot more yesterday than Elyonoussi... Let that sink in 

[cloggy saint]

24 minutes ago, Mr X said:

Walcott offered a lot more yesterday than Elyonoussi... Let that sink in 

Ok, I've let that sink in, now what?

[Daft Kerplunk]

3 hours ago, Forester said:

beat Bournemouth, Fulham, Palace, Wet Spam and Forest and lose to City, Arsenal, Newcastle and Liverpool. 

I like the optimism but out of the last 10 matches, you have us winning half of them. Form-wise over the season, that’s pretty much where Man Utd are and above Newcastle Utd. We’ve won 6 of 28. We have improved of late but we need European qualification form to get to 38 points. Can it be done? Maybe, but the odds aren’t in our favour. 

[Billy the Kidd]

18 minutes ago, Daft Kerplunk said:

I like the optimism but out of the last 10 matches, you have us winning half of them. Form-wise over the season, that’s pretty much where Man Utd are and above Newcastle Utd. We’ve won 6 of 28. We have improved of late but we need European qualification form to get to 38 points. Can it be done? Maybe, but the odds aren’t in our favour. 

Not saying we will get to safety, but isnt your point valid of all the teams near the bottom, they have all been shit.

Literally could go either way for many teams right now.