Caldwell has had to have double pain killer injections to even make the bench, they genuinely think its 50/50 whether he will have to retire in the summer because of the injury so they are reluctant to play him. Anyway I wasn't saying that the Beausejour loss was a massive blow for the game against Swansea specifically, just that Wigan have very few fit defenders now and that cannot be a good thing in their situation. FWIW I think that Wigan will get 6 points from their final 3 games which means we need a draw from the final 2 to be safe with our superior GD. The (other) big games for us are Norwich v WBA and QPR v Newcastle, if either Norwich or Newcastle fail to win those then we wont go down.
Another question is which West Brom turn up at Norwich next week. They would not want to be going to City still splitting Wigan+Villa. Bottom line is, if we play as well as we did for 80 mins yesterday in the last two games, we'll get the point(s) we need.
It will be interesting to see what the side is made out of if it comes down to the final day, I just re-read an interview of le tissier where he says on the last time we were relegated: "the players at the time have to take some responsibility because despite everything that happened that season, we still had a chance to stay up by beating Man United at home on the last day of the season. United had nothing to play for and we went one-nil up, yet we still lost. The Southampton sides that I played in would not have rolled over like that. We would have won that game, no question, because we had the right mental attitude and the right desire. But the players out there that day didn't have that. I was commentating on the game and I hardly said anything in the last 20 minutes. It was just horrible." I think our players would be able to cope with the pressure and would get it done, I certainly can't see them rolling over if it came down to the last day. It's slightly worrying that we haven't scored lately but we have defended very well under pochettino which gives me every confidence that we would be able to atleast draw with stoke on the last day.
To be fair though, those three sides who we have failed to score against all currently reside in the top nine. And two of those games, we were away. Sunderland and Stoke *should* be easier to score against, although I would urge MP to use Puncheon more in these two games. Wide players can really help you counter attack, and just look at how hard Villa hit both of those two recently with their counter-attacking.
If it comes to final day and ourselves and Stoke both need a point, I'm not opposed to both sides sitting down for a cup of tea in the centre circle.
Just so long as all we need is one point. I thought what Barnsley did yesterday was taking a massive risk (whilst the FL show showed the Barnsley keeper basically ball juggling for 10 seconds, with the other 21 players up the other end of the pitch, there's a clip on youtube which shows he was actually doing it for a good 45+ seconds). Had Pboro scored vs Palace, Barnsley would have gone down. Of the two of them, it was only Huddersfield who were 100% safe with a point from that game.
But as I say, all it would have needed was one Posh goal, and Barnsley would have gone down with egg on their faces. A guess slightly similar to when we survived ahead of man City on the 90s. That was a risky game for Barnsley to play.
Not from what I was watching on Final Score. They went to FT at the Barnsley game, before the Posh game. And the Championship twitter feed is showing the Barnsley FT score before the Posh FT score.
And Tom, who was basically our live reporter on here, posted the Barnsley FT score at 2.40, but didn't then say that Posh were relegated until 2.42.
I wasn't actually watching it so you are probably right, was just told that by somebody in the pub last night when I heard about the Barnsley keeper and was saying similar to you about a P'boro goal.
Yeah I would consider starting puncheon, I've liked him this year. However Lallana was quite close to scoring on saturday, he had two shots on target and was borderline onside but was called offside when he was through on goal, all the same I would be very tempted drop him for puncheon as he has been lacking in potency this whole season. We should definitely involve him earlier as he can be dangerous, he had been up all friday night for the birth of his child so that might have been why he didn't have much involvement. I hope we can get a few indirect setpieces right over the next 2 games as we have been pretty poor from them recently.
If Wigan beat Swansea and Sundrland beat Stoke, both 1-0, the table (with 2 games to go) will look like this: 11..Fulham ..... -11 ... 40 12..Sunderland. -11 ... 40 13..Stoke........ -11 ... 40 14..Aston Villa.. -21 ... 40 15..SAINTS...... -11 ... 39 16..Wigan........ -21 ... 38 17..Norwich...... -22 ... 38 -------------------------- 18..Newcastle... -23 ... 38 A great time to be a neutral, but squeaky bum time for you poor wretched fans!
After doing the predictor I got 11) Sunderland 43 12) fulham 41 13) stoke 41 14) newcastle 41 15) wigan 41 16) saints 40 17) villa 40 18) norwich 39
