True, though it is worth pointing out that if we'd turned 4 results on their had, one being v Arsenal we'd have qualified. Given everything, that is not such a massive gap. Granted the top sides underperformed last season and we can't be depending on that again this season. BR has also to get to grips with European football if and when we do qualify
Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. I understand that over the past few years you can easily point to certain results, home form, away form, beating the small teams and not the big teams ( and vice versa) but it has to come to a head at some point. Someone ( BR, new coach, team, new signings, whatever it may be) will have to find the balance to get us there again.
Four results represent 10.5% of the season, that's a lot! IMO, you may as well as said "if we'd won all thirty-eight games we'd have been champions and all time legends", in the words of Van Diesel: "it doesn't matter if you win by an inch or a mile, winning is winning"
I thought you wrote it? I know the CL can't wait to get us back in so we can flaunt warriors beautiful kit around the world!!
You can finish seventh and still be seen as a "top-four team" that's maybe had a bad year for whatever reason. When you consecutively finish seventh, sixth, eighth and seventh, however, you really can't lay claim to that anymore. You're an also-ran, and that's what Liverpool currently are until they can prove otherwise. That's the one for me. IT sucks and it hurts to say it, hopefully we are making strides to rectify it ( hopefully this season) but in terms of the league and on getting into the elite tournaments, this is us atm.
It certainly hurts but its reality, we are not what we are hence there being a possibility of us losing a player to a rival!
4 games won instead of lost, given that some were close is not a lot. it may come down to 4 individual mistakes, you have to look at the games in question, %s and other things like that are useless when discussing such things.
I don't doubt that, just saying that placing an 'if' on four games is a lot. you could list the four errors though, someone will still say its all ifs and buts
You could equally point out four times we've been lucky to win. It evens out and the table doesn't lie. Unless it's Arsenal, we're better than them, look at the pots!
of couse its ifs and buts, my point is that had we had some fortune things "could" have been different. v the mancs we were unlucky, the city gift, thats 5 points from two unlucky scenarios. We gifted another result I am sure cant remember who? That's just three games. Am sure we sucked in a couple of draws, all I am saying is that the difference in actual football terms between where we are and where was possible was literally a few mistakes and small amounts of bad luck. I understand we should want to be good enough to allow for those things cos they always happen, and still qualify, that is where we want to be at, of course
No point, we already had those points in the bag when we won them, I'm talking of what we fell short by. If you put like 10% it looks a lot but when you look at how we fell short in individual games it looks different again Spuds can easily make the same claim of course, but let them talk about that
Magic made a good point about us getting lucky in some games too. There is no doubt that teams battle out games to earn points when they don't deserve any. that is what BR was referring to when questioning the players mentalities, there was a time (not too long ago either) where we would fight until the dying seconds of a game, how many times did we concede after going ahead? Or in the last minutes?
anyways, back to the OP, I don't want this to be a back and forth thing about what could have been, look to the future gentlemen
When we are discussing what we fell short by, it doesn't make sense to look at how we won games and points.
The thing that I wonder about, is why it is so important for a player to be playing Champion's LEague football? I mean to them, one week they are playing Stoke, the next they are playing Cluj or Braga. So what? it's not as if they will be playing PSG or Real Madrid every week. It just seems like a stupid demand for a player to make. Does it give the player any more exposure? Suarez wasn't in the Champion's League last season, yet he appears to be in demand. So is it for being seen, so that they can move to another club? Is it the money they get for playing in it? Very few of these players who go around demanding to play in it, will actually win it. So it all seems totally pointless to me.
