Peterborough away Blackburn Rovers home Watford away Barnsley home Nottingham Forest home Charlton Athletic home Burnley away Bolton Wanderers home Hull City away Our competition have eight except Palace, and their panic will not be envied. It is a very distressing period for fans at this time. We needed that win today, but not in our wildest dreams could we expect them to open the magic gate for us. Premiership membership apparantly worth 120 million over four years at our fingertips. I cannot imagine many survivors from our squad though. Seems good enough to win this league, but not a cat's chance of surviving the big one. On that basis, who would make it from our current crop? Hi-Yo!
Let's get there first, before we start tempting fate. Win five more games then we can have all these discussions.
3 more wins and you will be there .. Great to see you do it at last ... we will not get there for a long long time .. i use to love the trips to cardiff, great banter .. well done
I just hope you can control yourself MaskedMan and not look like a prick on the oppositions clubs board. After years of watching us stuff it up at the end of the season, you are setting us up for a massive influx of thrown **** if something goes wrong!! Feels like you are really tempting fate. Also, Cardiff lads have built a reasonable rep on not606. It would be nice to be thought of as good winners and not the rub your nose in it sort.
I think there is more pressure on the chasing pack than on us. 3 teams battling each other worrying more about each other than about us. Irrespective of what we do, they need to do better than each other to get to second and that is before they start trying to catch us for 1st. As time goes by there will be more pressure on them and less on us. As for the squad, we need to get there first. However, I think there are a few players in our squad more suited to the premiership than the championship. When it's mathamatically impossible for two teams to catch us lets re-visit this debate.
Tremendous boost yesterday and not least because of Watfraud and Hell losing, making our 3 points worth more than the face value. But too early to be making open plans on who we should keep, but judging on recent play not many to be honest. I am of the same opinion as CCFCremotesupport though, that some of the players would benefit from being in the PL.
Yeah, we can worry about who should go and who should stay when we know that it is certain. 88 points may be enough I think. If we can follow up against Peterborough,we will give ourselves a nice platform to run home with! The game against Watford could be huge as we may have a chance to take them out of the picture.
Again, the pressure will be on them. A draw would keep the same distance between us and them with a game less to catch us. As has been said a few times. I can see one team catching us, but not 2. Watford have to play Hull as well. We just need Leicester to run into form now as they have to play most of those around us.
Players not good enough for the Premiership on form over the last four months: Whitts, Cowie, Noone, Nugent (potential, bit never a Premiership player), Turner, McNaughton, Helguson, Mutch, Smith, Connolly (the last two were not good enough to get into a side that is about to be relegated) ... the list goes on.... Shorter list - Who is good enough??? Bellamy, Hudson (even though his pack of pace will be exposed), Turner (squad - even though his pack of pace will be exposed!), Conway (possibly squad player), Marshall, Andrew Taylor, Campbell (squad player - as Maynard would be: two very similar options). We definitely need a centre half who is a competent footballer (Ashley Williams would do nicely), and a creative midfielder (who actually plays in midfield and can carry the ball forward faster than Whitts). Speaking to some Watford fans at Sheffield station yesterday they were saying that Malky's style is very much focussed on getting the job done (as we have seen) - I think we would need a total rethink of our playing staff and style in order to stay up. Our style seems to be based on tight defence, hard work and protecting a narrow lead. That won't work - because we very often won't be able to get any sort of lead.
And Palace let it slip today as well. The footballing gods must be wearing red with a dragon on their chests this weekend.
Wow, that's a long list. I don't think we are that bad, not going to get into the top 8 but able to get good points from the other 11 a couple of quality signings and we can survive. The same was said of the Swansea squad a few years ago and they done ok.
How have relegated premiership sides done against us, that is a better yardstick of our players. I agree though, we are not happy with the manager, we are not happy with the players and we certainly are not happy with the way we are playing right now...in fact the only thing we are happy with is being top and 9 points clear of third. jck
The PL is nowhere near as good as some think it is. Look at Blackburn and Wolves. Both could get relegated.
The Swans have done well because they went into the Prem with a playing style which many Prem sides were not accustomed to. Then Laudrup changed the style a little this season so further adaptation was needed for clubs to succeed against them - see Arsenal yesterday. I agree with Iggy regarding Malky's preferred way of playing but I am not sure our squad is that badly equipped. However, it is blatantly obvious that we will (again) need a number of new faces next season, should we get up, to stay up. Perhaps the fact that we have been so far ahead of the pack has given Malky the opportunity to cast his net already and make some preparations for when we reach the promised land - at least I hope so. The rewards for getting up are immense but don't all come up front. Therefore VT will have to reach his long arms well into his deep pockets to provide a lot of the cash needed this summer. This will need to be done with Financial fair Play in mind so one way or another the Langstone debt will need to be cleared, even with Sam's extra £5m if we get up. This will facilitate capitalisation of the money VT has put in and make our balance sheet look much stronger.
Nowhere in my reply did I say I was not happy with the players, or the manageror our style of play (at present to get this job done) or with being nine points clear in the Championship. Your implication is that I was unhappy with things at this point in time - NOT SO! - I was delirious at Sheffield yesterday, and am sure we are going to make it with games to spare.. I was answering a question about NEXT season.
Hilts, not sure you can use these two teams as an example of teams with premiership quality as both had poor managers and have no direction from the owners. However, I agree the PL isn't that scarey a beast.
You are safe to assume Watford will NOT win every game - oh and did you factor in that Watford play Hull so if they DID win every game then Hull drop points. Stop panicking - you are all but up
- no that would be hard and I suspect that if it got down to the last day you might fail as you would have lost so many your confidence would be shot. However you are the best team in the Championship this year and the most consistent - even your blips have been minor. I expect you to be about 9 points clear of second place at the end. Your opposition are all nervous and making silly errors.
