We are currently out of the bottom three and that is really all that matters this season. I reckon that both Hull and Cardiff will fall off a bit at some stage - it inevitably happens to the promoted clubs who lack the depth of squad that the bigger fish in the league have. We have had a pretty rough trot with injuries - our record signing has been out for a month and both our first choice wingers are out plus we have lost Tetty just when he was finding a bit of form. If we continue to lose players through injury then at least the club is in a financially strong position to invest further in January whereas others may not be. I think the rest of the season will be much of the same. Some decent results at home, poor results away and the odd thrashing at the hands of one of the big boys but probably enough to stay up and regroup next year. The reality is that we are still way ahead of the original 7 year plan and as long as CH can keep us afloat in the PL he is doing his job. If we stay up another year then we will have more cash on board to strengthen the squad further and we may even look to increase capacity at FCR. That is the immediate goal. Every season we stay up we put more distance between ourselves and the newly promoted sides. Next season we will already have RvW and Fer in place and we can look to spend money strengthening other areas. regardless of our current position we DO have a significantly stronger squad than last season or the season before and that should be sufficient to keep us up. Would anyone seriously swap our current squad with last years?
Bang on. I think this will be the case even if we change manager, though, so long as they are reasonably good. On that basis, I wonder whether it might be a good idea to switch managers if someone reasonable comes available, simply to provide a bit of support to the players and freshen the situation. A new manager would also have sufficient credit in the bank to give some fans a reality check - right now we are a 16th place team, playing at our level. We need to keep improving the squad, facilities and youth set-up to progress beyond that and therefore expectations and ambitions should be measured.
#The reality is that we are still way ahead of the original 7 year plan and as long as CH can keep us afloat in the PL he is doing his job# just wanted to pick up on 2 things norfolkbhoy. a lot of what you have written makes sense. the seven year plan has been subsequently re-written so i don't think it is a benchmark to compare us to now. Things have moved on a lot. secondly, CH keeping us afloat in the premier league, that is the debatable one at the moment. if we carry on as we have been going for the last 4 or 5 games, especially in terms of performance levels, this is at risk, and i think it's fair for those on the managers back to have this opinion. You can't do anything about injuries, it's just bad luck, but the lack of leadership and below-par performance of some players is a real concern. (this is probably regurgitation of other posts)
The last 4 or 5 games have included away trips to Newcastle, Man City and Man United/Arsenal, some of the most expensive/in form clubs in the country - hardly a representative sample of a full season is it? The other two games were against 'inferior' clubs at home when we won one and somehow conspired to only draw the other despite totally dominating the game. I know I'm wasting my breath because too many people happily shift the goalposts, and/or ignore the positives just so they can have a go at Hootun whatever he does. My favourite one at the moment is this rubbish about how "we only beat West Ham because of a lucky penalty/keeper error" without paying any credence to the âfactsâ that "we only lost against Hull because of a lucky penalty" or "we only failed to beat Cardiff because of some goalkeeping brilliance" or even "we only failed to get anything out of the Villa game because of a badly taken penalty and goalkeeping brilliance" People can twist statistics and facts to suit whatever agenda they like by ignoring the bits they don't like, I personally find that really sad but hey, perhaps that's just me
arsenal was a while ago. i take your point on the opposition, it's the performances that i am raising as a concern. remember we played well and lost vs chelsea and arsenal. i don't think we can say we reached those same levels in most of the recent away games. i guess it's the away games that are the concern for me. i take the positives too, as you say the last 2 home games. i'm not twisting anything, just offering my opinion. i think that is still allowed.
fair enough munky we'll beat palace, lose marginally to liverpool and draw at WBA and all will be rosy in the canary garden again
I do as well, however it's hardly blind optimism beyond the realms of possibility to be looking to pick up four points from those games is it? I'd personally take a 0-5 against Liverpool if we could pick up four points from the other two games, Palace is turning into a bit of a "must win" - if such a thing exists (which I'm sure Robbie will be along soon to tell me it doesn't ).
Of the big(ish) pack behind Arsenal, I think Saints, Newcastle, Everton and Spurs will fall away. Palace, Fulham and West Ham to go down in a London Apocalypse.
Of course must win games exist, but the phrase is meaningless unless you specify an "or else ......." If you have reached the final game of the season and will be relegated if, but only if, you fail to win, then that is a must win game "or else you'll be relegated". Saturday's game against Palace is not a must win game in any serious sense. It would be if e.g. the board have decided that they will terminate CH's contract if we fail to win that game, in which case it is a must win game or else CH will be gone. In those circumstances others might regard it as "a must lose or at most draw game". Since I don't for a moment believe the board have taken any such view, this is just by way of illustration. The worst "or else" I can think of as actually applying to Saturday's game is "must win or else we are going to have to put up with a whole new round of paranoid posts on this board" .........
I feel that if we can get through this in one piece there will be much brighter times ahead. Hughton is a long-term manager and hopefully there will be a time when it all just clicks and we never look back.
Whilst the table is settling down to a degree there is still some flux within the bottom half and a win on saturday will propel us back up the table and make us look better again. I am still behind CH but I have to admit that 89th minute substitutions are strange to say the least and seem to lack any logic. I would fear for him if we cannot beat Palace who will benefit from the new manager bounce. An unscientific but real phenomenum.
There is actually -- as I keep pointing out -- a "scientific" (i.e. properly researched and evidentially supported) perfectly real phenomenon, but it is not correctly described by "new manager bounce". It is the statistical phenomenon known as regression to the mean. The usual pattern is that managers are replaced after a run of poor performances and results which in reality do not represent the true quality of the team, i.e. the team have been performing below their mean level. That is a self-correcting situation, because over time performances tend to "regress to the mean", i.e. pick up and improve on the poor performances which led to the sacking. The research shows that this happens irrespective of whether the manager is sacked or retained, and indeed supports retention of the manager rather than replacement (i.e. in the longer term, teams which keep their manager in these circumstances prosper more than those which replace him).
Following on from my post above, the question we should ask is whether so far Palace have actually been performing below expectation given their squad; or do their perfomances to date under Holloway and Millen actually represent their true level. If their performances to date represent their true level, there will be no sustained improvement (at least until Pulis can strengthen in January). This doesn't mean that Palace are incapable of leaving Carrow Road on Saturday with a win or a draw (as at Hull), because as most of us realise (though apparently not drunky), the outcome of any particular match is so dependent on factors other than the ability of the respective teams that it pretty much represents a 50:50 call (i.e. coin toss).
