I have never felt more confident in us avoiding the drop since the first 2 games. Marco talked about having to perform a miracle to stay up and now having a few games to judge him by I would say he is well capable of performing this miracle. There was a point yesterday when Chelsea just couldn't get out of defence and we had them on the rack. I've not seen this from a City side in years away from home against moderate opposition let alone the runaway league leaders. Tom Huddlestone looks a new man, Maguire is blossoming and Evandro looks very tidy on the ball. Aside from these very obvious positives from the Chelsea game, we are now pressing higher up the pitch and some of our inter-play was a joy to watch. He is obviously a very astute man and doesn't just throw subs on and hope for the best. The detail he gave each substitute and the passion in which he did so also gave an impression of a man who knows his onions! That was Mylers best game for us in a while. Look at the impact of his subs against Swansea - all 3 involved in or scored the goals. We always improve after the break when he can refresh tactics. At the moment we look stronger than Sunderland, Watford, Bournemouth, Middlesborough, Swansea (before their weekend performance) and a number of other teams in mid table ready to drop into the mix. The futures bright, the futures Marco! Here's to staying up and a fat contract extension for the Portuguese!!
And let's not forget this is a chelsea side who won 13 league games on the bounce, who've conceded the least amount of goals and are 8 points clear of second place if he came in the summer...
I can definitely see Boro dropping into the bottom 3. Unrest amongst fans, manager calling the fans. Hilarious!
Forgot to mention Leicester dropping like a stone and Palace struggling under Fat Sam. Just need to keep in touch over the next 3 games.
There is the necleus of a good team, just needs some good additions to strengthen it. I have also a quietly confident feeling that we might just survive. I get the feeling maybe this England debacle big Sam was involved with might have damaged his reputation with players, and maybe he won't have the Allardyce effect this time. Can see Palace, Boro, Sunderland being the ones to go. P.S. Lesta is trying their best to get relegated
I think the biggest shame is that we could lose him in 6 months. It all just points to right man, wrong time. Had he the time to build something, it could be really exciting. I can see him leaving whether we stay up or go down as he would be in demand should we achieve the 'miracle'.
Where's the Smoggie **** who took the piss massively when I said - contrary to most pundits - that they would 100% be in the relegation shake-up? Yeah I know this is uncannily similar to my post about AKCJ.
Re the Silva man, I don't really care if we get relegated this season or not for the key is he has brought optimism and signs in just 3 weeks that there is huge improvement possible. If we get relegated and keep him then I'd expect us to get promoted with ease. And that's not rose tinted, I never expect us to get promoted back up at the first attempt.
New Tiger's anthem.....!!! We believe I'm myracles Marco We believe in you!!!!! We believe in myracles City We believe in you!!!!
If he was available at the start of the season, we should have given him the job then. He seems to have learnt the language of ****wit - therefore making communication with Ehab possible.
Our good performances are nothing new. We were playing well and losing most weeks under Phelan too. We fight and compete but don't have the quality to get a result. What's new?
Funnily enough Harry Redknapp was saying exactly this on the radio just now. According to him the new manager hasn't made any difference at all. We are still playing well and losing. He then gave us pelters saying the squad simply wasn't good enough to survive. He had us and Sunderland as bang on for relegation with the squad we've got. As an alternative point of view Ian Abrahams said he spoke to Tom after the game who'd said the whole squad was buzzing and had really bought into the MS philosophy and were full of confidence. Either way I think it'll be a chuffing miracle if we beat the drop. Just looking at the Swansea result you see we are not the only ones who are going to get a bounce and pick up our performances. Some of those around us will too.
I can't believe people can't see the difference. We did play well in some games West Ham, Man City (as a containing job) but have also been very poor ie West Brom. MP was in charge during our easier run and we dropped in the table after it. MS has won 2 and lost 2 of his 4 games so far and we have played well in all 4 and have improved week on week, I would argue this is an upturn. The real rest comes when we have some 'winnable' games but think we will now at least compete against the big boys rather than rollover.
I think there has been an improvement, we played well in Phelan's last few games and we've played better in the four games under Silva. But my worry about our survival chances is that we can realistically expect 0 or perhaps 1 point from our next three league games, by which time we could be maybe 3-4 points adrift of the others. Which then means we need two wins just to catch up (assuming our rivals pick up a point or two during those same two weeks) - and then need to kick on with more wins to pull clear. Tough ask.
And there difference is, our rivals have the quality to get these results when they play well. We've been playing at our maximum for weeks and still getting nothing, because our maximum isn't very good. Swansea got their win in part because of their world cup winning striker who Chelsea are supposedly after. We've just got Hernandez who barely touches the ball 3 games out of 4. Fact is, if we'd appointed Warnock or someone unpopular like that, and had the exact same performances we have done under him, people wouldn't be as excited. We've got an 'exciting', young continental manager so people have sort of decided that we're going to be much better. Even if he's an absolute genius, he still needs miles better than what he's got to pick from. Particularly out wide and up front.
