An interesting set of results from this week's games with the "mini league" effect being very noticeable.Of those involved in the scrum to pick up three points all were taken against fellow strugglers.Sunderland v Stoke,Palace v Hull, Swansea v Fulham and Villa v WBA all saw wins against bottom half sides,and,significantly all had home advantage. Equally creditable were West Ham's top hatted,pork chop whiskered and tailcoated defenders getting a point at The Bridge.Sam obviously said "No way through Jose!" Our point to The Toon was the other bright spot for teams in the mix. Of the current bottom six teams only four points were taken.My view is that Villa have now broken away from the pack.With an eight point buffer over Fulham the league now genuinely is top half safe,bottom half not.
Pretty much agree with your summary CT. HOW important is Saturday's game against Cardiff?? Some other MASSIVE '6 pointers' - none more so than on the last day of the season - Fulham v Palace and WBA v Stoke!!!
Yep, although I would say it is definitely not a "must win" game for us. It's more a "if we win, we are making a big leap towards safety". A draw will be a good result, a loss would be extremely disappointing, but far from disastrous. It's a "must win" for Cardiff, though.
Thinking about it, you're right. The operative word being "both". In my book, losing to one of them will be extremely frustrating, but bearable, whereas losing to both will put us, at best, two points clear of relegation and potentially in real trouble.
City have 2 points less than they did at this time last season. A win against Cardiff would put us even and could make a huge difference by creating a decent 'comfort zone'. The key IMO is to not fall back into a pattern of draws and losses like last season. Could be a week when other results go our way. This Saturday's matches: Cardiff City v Norwich City Everton v Aston Villa Fulham v Southampton Hull City v Tottenham Hotspur Newcastle United v Sunderland Stoke City v Manchester United West Ham United v Swansea City Arsenal v Crystal Palace West Brom v Liverpool
Good point. With a bit of luck, Swansea and Southampton will at least draw and Newcastle will finally win the derby (just occurred to me Johnson has done us no favours there! ). All the others I really can't see beyond going OK for us, but you never know in this league!
Ha, I just saw the 'Match Forecast' section of the WhoScored? Cardiff-Norwich preview. The only comment they've made is that it is "very likely" that "Norwich will score as a result of individual skill". Made me chuckle.
But don't forget Pardew had the foresight to bring Luuk de Jong to the club - in the nick of time, as it turns out. If we can somehow hi-jack Liam Bridcutt's move to Sunderland, then 'Mad' Brad will have done us a similar favour
"Mad" Brad (love it) doesn't have anything better to do for the next week or so, so let's send him up to guard the city gates and ban Bridcutt getting in...
However, it's fair to say that most of our goals are made by an individual - i.e. Snodgrass free kick or Redmond from range, rather than good team work, because we don't work as a team very well at the moment...
Can't see us scoring more than one goal at Cardiff. If we win by 1 - 0 then this will please all concerned, but as we have scored only one goal in the past two games and that was scored by a CB, then even this score seems unlikely. We are in a dog-fight all the way to the last matches of the season. RvW should not be given any further chances to fail. Probably start 4-5-1 with Hooper the lone striker. Slightly reassuring to read that Cardiff are selling an £8.5m? striker back to the Danish club (for £3.0m) from where he came from. Another expensive mistake.
No guarantees (that we've seen yet) that RvW won't end up going elsewhere with us taking a similar hit. Just saying.
I think it's too early to be saying anything like that, even if we do win on Saturday. OGS has had a horrible run of games to start his Cardiff career and they have a much easier/more winnable set of games coming up. Obviously they could really do with three points on Saturday, but if they don't with the nature of the bottom half this season they won't be cut adrift for some winless weeks yet.
I'll settle for the fact that if City win, Cardiff would be pretty well cut off from us. That'll do for now!
