I think it will too because whilst they've beaten the lesser teams consistently, they've got it all to do v the top sides. They have only played two of the top 7 away - and lost both (in Manchester). 6 conceded at City raises question marks about the defence against good players. I don't see them getting results against the other leading sides - especially away - and that could be the 6-8 point difference between them and City in the end.
I'm not so confident now having seen Liverpool demolish Everton and United sign Mata. 4th will be far harder this season than for at least 5 seasons past.
Forget the others, we can't score enough and concede too many. That will be enough to stop us from getting 4th, as we just don't help ourselves. Every season our goal difference is far worse than other teams at the top if the table. Until we sort it out, it'll be the same old story.
Sherwoods honeymoon period would always end in a thumping. We have rode our luck especially against Palace at home but now we will see just how good Sherwood is or if he's out of his depth. At the start of the season I thought we would finish 7th but 4th to 7th would be separated by 3 points and that's still possible considering how tight the race is. But don't be fooled by Liverpool thrashing teams as for all their great football, we're right behind them. It's man Utd who could take 4th leaving us and the scouse duo out in the cold but if we finished 7th and missed out on the Europa league then next year we stand a better chance of getting top four.
The frightening thing about the clash with £ity is not that we lost - who of us really expected us to win? - but the fact that £ity had 24 shots, with something like 9 on target. That they scored only 5 against us this time was a miracle. We played like a team fighting relegation, last night. I don't care how great a side £ity is, no way should we be getting so comprehensively shafted, especially on our own turf.
They got the rub of the green on their last 2 goals, one deflecting into the corner and one deflecting straight to another one of their players, plus the penalty should never have been given. Yes they had some good other chances and Lloris made some great saves but I think that pretty much evens it out when you look at the rest. We played half a game with 10 men against the best team in the league, 5-1 looks bad and is bad but I don't think there's another team in the country that wouldn't have conceded at least 3 in those conditions.
We looked thoroughly **** with 11 men, outplayed for pretty much 90mins, theres's no glass half full way to look at that game imo, architects of our own downfall. critcising luck in their goals, come on, it could have been a cricket score...an Ashes one at that! thank god Dzeko left his shooting boots at home.
We were still only one down,and the plusses are we have 4 players returning from injury,who are usual first teamers
I wasn't criticising the luck of their goals, I just don't really believe that they should have scored more. They could have scored more had Lloris not pulled off some great saves or had some of their shots flown into the top corner but they also could have scored less had they not wrongly been given a penalty and got some lucky deflections. When City play like they did yesterday you need the luck to go your way and it didn't. There were opportunities for the luck to go our way had Dawson's goal been allowed to stand and had Yaya Toure been sent off when he started shouting at the ref whilst already on a booking, that would have been equivalent to the damage done by the penalty decision. There was a bit of luck in our goal too, it landed nicely for Capoue when it could have gone to a City player but as I've said you need to be the side that gets the majority of the luck to beat a team playing as well as City did and we didn't have that.
I agree with YV. We weren't any worse in the first 30 minutes last night than we were against Swansea, and while lucky to be still in the game at that point we then did start to get going a bit. No-one will know what would have happened if they hadn't gotten that penalty and sending off, we may still have lost but it wouldn't have been 1-5 I'm sure.
