Why is defeat only a disappointment in the EPL? Last season any defeat against any team would have ruined my weekend and the start of the following week, but against a decent team in the Prem. it's like being drugged. All the talk of mini-leagues being all that matter and any hopes of a decent result being minimised before a ball is kicked leave you regarding defeats philosophically instead of passionately. When we got promoted the thought of dealing with regular defeat made me fear manic-depression, but instead I find myself strangely happy that we only lost by a small margin or one or two of our lads had good performances. I know this is the reality of a multi-tier league, but somehow it doesn't feel as much like football as last season.
I get what you mean, I think it'll soon start to change back once the games start coming thick and fast after this international break. With the games we have coming up against bigger sides, it could feel like a bigger blow as with the likes of Norwich and Sunderland picking up points this weekend, a string of games against big teams could see us dragged into the relegation places by Christmas. Not losing will then start to feel a lot more important.
Point a game lads, a point a game. Still ahead of the curve with a good opportunity to pick up 3 points coming up. Would like to see us pick up a point or 3 away from home soon, mind - 5 losses in six games ain't great and we are scraping wins at home by the odd goal, sometimes through soft decisions or own goals. It feels like a long season already, what with all the international breaks, but 7 games in December, including Arsenal, Utd and Liverpool but also 3 winnable ones should give us a better feel of where we are at the mid point of the season. Expecting a tonking or 2, but also expecting 7-10 points, which should keep us ahead of the curve. We just need a point a game and I don't really care how,or from whom, they are accumulated this season.
I think it helps that we generally are level headed fans, no delusions even after a good start. If we went into every game expecting a result (like last season, when we were one of the best teams in the league) we would feel that depression at a defeat.
It will start to hit home for me once we get dragged back down to the bottom of the league, which looking at our next run of games, could quite easily happen. For me, Saturday's game was very much like our home game against Leeds last season. We just have to hold our hands up and admit this time we were on the receiving end of a battering. Not many teams would have kept up with Southampton this weekend.
I know reports have been raving about Southampton but I'm still not convinced. We gave them a huge helping hand with some woeful defending. They play at Arsenal after the break so that might give a better pointer as to how good they are or how bad we were.... On the point per game policy, I wouldn't rely on that to stay up. It's panning out to be a season whereby the table is very compact which could mean 40pts + might be necessary to avoid that third relegation slot.
