Three promoted sides.

Trying not to bite....really,really trying........

 

Go on Col,bare those gnashers!

 

Beppe there isn't a hoops supporter on here that wouldn't take 17th at the end of the season.Although i think DT would be disappointed if we don't finish 8th!

 

No...I can't go there again....it's a dark,dark place.........

 

I think we would all take 17th but just asking where,would we be satisfied given our performances that we have had so far. I would think norwich would like to be finishing above us with their performances especially against the biguns although the results could of been better,where we havent faired so well so far albeit all ours have been away,

 

Think thats why you're doing well,it might be fortunate for you that you haven't had any of the top teams at home yet!

 

no, we've had em all away(man city,liverpool,chelsea and arsenal) got utd home next though,(as keegan said) i'd love it if we beat them,love it.

 

Promoted trio impressing bookmakers

November 17, 2011 13:34:48 UK
bet365 are now 66/1 about the promoted trio of QPR, Norwich and Swansea all returning to the Championship at the end of the season after an impressive start to their Premier League campaigns.

bet365 spokesman Steve Freeth said: "We were offering 14/1 about all three going straight back down during pre-season and our 6/4 quote for QPR, Norwich and Swansea to all avoid the drop gives us an indication about how well the new boys have done so far this season."

Premier League Special

How many promoted teams will be relegated?

None 6/4
One 5/6
Two 13/2
Three 66/1

(QPR, Norwich & Swansea)

View all Soccer betting

iReader

http://www.bet365.com/news/en/betting/press-releases/promoted-trio-impressing-bookmakers

 

Are you're saying Norwich have faired better against the big teams because we played them at home?

Our home games so far have been Stoke, West Brom, Swansea, Sunderland and Blackburn. None of the really big 4 or 5 teams there. We have had Liverpool, Man U and Chelsea, but ALL away.

The first of the sides fancied to be front Runners at Carrow Road will be Arsenal this Saturday.

 

hope none go down 6/4 sounds like good odds

 

Let's face it, no-one expected us three to go up at the start of last season, three unfashionable clubs making the big-time and everyone expecting us to go straight back down. Once again we've shown the quality of last season was better than everyone thought.

The class of 2011, a very good year!...

 

66/1 for all 3 promoted sides to get relegated?! Crazy odds!

 

Norwich, Swansea and QPR Can All Stay Up – Arsene Wenger


Friday, 18th November, 2011


Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger believes that all the newly promoted sides could survive in the Premier League this season.

If all of Norwich, Swansea and Queens Park Rangers were able to avoid the drop, it would only be the second time such a feat has been accomplished since the dawning of the Premier League era.

But the new clubs have excelled to such an extent that Wenger, who takes his Arsenal side to Norwich tomorrow, believes it could well happen.


"It indicates what I have said many times – the quality of the Championship has improved", Wenger pointed out to Arsenal’s official site when discussing the Premier League’s new arrivals.

"When you speak about the likes of Swansea, Norwich and QPR, they have beaten good sides.

"All three teams play football.

"The quality of their intensity and desire the play football in the Premier League has gone up. We have seen Swansea have more possession than Liverpool. At Arsenal they also had good possession, so they have the desire to get the ball down and play. That’s why they adapt very quickly."

And this leads Wenger to think that all three clubs could be in the Premier League next season.

"It looks like they will", said the Frenchman. "You cannot just win games on desire and commitment. If you can master the ball, that can last."

iReader

http://www.insidefutbol.com/2011/11/18/norwich-swansea-and-qpr-can-all-stay-up-arsene-wenger/52914/

 

Time to respect EPL's promoted teams

Jamie McDonald/Getty ImagesNorwich and Swansea, which battled each other in October, are showing that the days of one-and-done for promoted sides appear to be over.
It's easy to get swept up in the slipstream of the Premier League's Fab Four or Big Six. They routinely dominate the league, spend the most time on your TV screen, and their players, by virtue of their grandiose wages, egos and incandescent skills, have a love affair with the spotlight. We actually appear to care about Carlito's whereabouts or what basic law of human nature John Terry chose to violate this week.

And yet, to waste all one's time fawning solely upon the top sides is misguided because the teams emerging from the Championship seem more and more Prem-worthy with every passing season. Look no further than this year's crop of Norwich City, Queens Park Rangers and Swansea City. With a combined 37 points through Halloween, this triumvirate had the best mark of promoted sides since the Premier League started. Though there are another 27 games to play and opportunities abound to regress to the Boltonian mean, it's obvious that the Hoops, Canaries and Swans have earned their league mates' attention, if not that of the viewing public.

Part of that is due to context. Before Sheikh Mansour's Mancunian cash-dump, promoted teams were typically viewed as fodder for the nouveau riche. In 2007-08, Derby County famously set an all-time record for EPL futility, managing just one win and eight draws over a 38-game stint to finish with 11 points, an average of 0.29 per game, and besting Sunderland's nightmarish one-and-done mark of 15 points two seasons prior.

Such record-low point hauls hardly served as inspiration for Championship sides looking to stake a comfy spot in England's top tier, but evidence to support the dream of EPL survival is compelling. Since 2001, 17 of the 30 uplifted teams were able to survive their first year amid the big boys, a crucial step that allows teams a summer to celebrate, reload and learn.

Their improvement is also rooted in economic Darwinism. Financial analyst Deloitte & Touche has estimated that the promotion kitty was worth $150 million apiece to Blackpool, Newcastle and West Brom in 2010-11, thanks to their increased shares of TV income, enhanced commercial revenue opportunities and the much-vaunted "parachute" payments (additional cash payments spread over several seasons should teams drop back down after just one year to ease the drop-off in income). These shots of fiscal adrenaline ensure that the Prem rookies are no longer just lower-tier fodder for the likes of Chelsea and Manchester City to bludgeon by five or six goals.

(Liverpool fans might disagree with the fodder remark: They won twice and lost four of their meetings with Blackpool, Newcastle and West Brom last season.)

So how have Norwich, Swansea and QPR managed to set their record pace?

[+] Enlarge
Ben Queenborough/Icon SMINorwich City manager Paul Lambert has relied on the players who got him to the Premier League.
At Carrow Road, the answer revolves around manager Paul Lambert, the mercurial Scot who won four SPL titles with Celtic and a Champions League medal (the first British player to win the honor) in 1996-97 as a combative component of Borussia Dortmund's midfield. Lambert's approach is simple: Use the players that got you promoted, and trust in them. Where ex-Canaries boss Glenn Roeder and, to a lesser extent, his successor Bryan Gunn faltered was in their reliance on expensive, disinterested players on loan who had no emotional stake in Norwich's success, so much so that the ensuing lack of fight dropped the club to the relative anonymity of England's third tier in 2009-10.

Lambert, after securing back-to-back promotions, scouted and signed the best of the lower leagues and melded them into an effective squad that won at Bolton, earned a 1-1 draw at Anfield, came within eight minutes of a draw at Stamford Bridge and held Manchester United scoreless at Old Trafford for nearly 70 minutes while mustering 14 shots of their own in a valiant 2-0 defeat. Players such as Steve Morison (15 goals for Millwall in 2010-11), ex-Leeds United maestro Bradley Johnson, and 2010-11 League 1 Team of the Year selections Elliott Bennett (Brighton & Hove Albion) and Anthony Pilkington (Huddersfield) have helped to catalyze and foment self-belief. They are young, vital, determined and currently good value for eighth in the Prem.

Swansea, the first Welsh club in the EPL's two-decade history, plays much like Ian Holloway's swashbuckling, rambunctious Blackpool side, unafraid to lose and unwilling to park the bus and pray for points. Instead, Brendan Rodgers keeps his club playing in the style that got it promoted: a dominant possession-based game normally reserved for the league's best sides. After all, it's much harder for the opponent to score if it's forever chasing the ball.

So far this season, only Chelsea (59.64 percent), Arsenal (58.04 percent) and Manchester City (56.95 percent) have enjoyed higher average per-game possession percentages than have the Swans at 56.14 percent, helping them to a comfortable 0-0 draw at Anfield and dominant wins over Bolton (3-1, with nearly 70 percent of the ball) and Stoke City.

[+] Enlarge
Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty ImagesQPR has enjoyed a good start to the season and currently sits 11th in the EPL table.
As for QPR, it's the most likely of the three to become a permanent Prem fixture. Thanks to the financial muscle of Tony Fernandes, the club's newly minted Malaysian owner, Rangers immediately signed several chip-on-their-shoulder or overlooked Prem players desperate to prove their worth: Joey Barton, so-long-forgotten-that-he's-dusty winger Shaun Wright-Phillips, Anton Ferdinand, ex-Arsenal defender/liability Armand Traore and Aston Villa's Luke Young.

Adding to the stability of a once-drama-attracting club has been the tenure of Neil Warnock, hired in March 2010 for his grace under pressure and to bring a sense of calm to a club that had changed managers at a hyper-Abramovichian rate of 10 times over the previous 2½ years. His sideline savvy and Fernandes' promises of further significant investment have helped Rangers to play worry-free football, as evidenced by their first win over Chelsea in 16 years and a battling 3-2 defeat to all-conquering Manchester City in their first 11 games this season.

Whether the good times for the Prem rookies continue is anyone's guess; after all, it was only three years ago that Hull City won six of its first nine EPL games, beating the likes of Arsenal and Spurs, before ending the season with seven defeats in nine and avoiding the drop by a point. Hull was relegated the following season.

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But with each of this season's debutantes at the EPL ball flirting more with a place in the Europa League than a return ticket to the nPower Championship, fans of Bolton, Wigan and Blackburn might want to plan trips to Leeds and Ipswich instead. The days of one-and-done appear to be well and truly over.

James Tyler is a freelance writer who has worked for ESPN The Magazine. He was the founder and editor of Unprofessional Foul and has written for Run of Play and Time magazine. He can be found on Twitter at @UFJamesT.

iReader

http://espn.go.com/sports/soccer/news/_/id/7245648/premier-league-time-respect-promoted-teams-soccer

 

I bloody hate the Blackpool comparison. It was Holloway that copied the Swansea style after he took a year out and was watching us as a pundit on ESPN. He has admitted it himself. Ah well, imitation is the best form of flattery and it's better to be talked about than .. yadder yadder yadder.

COME ON YO JACKS

 

Yeah he openly said that after watching the swans play that he copied the style , the difference is that they couldn't defend to save their lives, which would say that they played more like a Martinez team than Brendan's team.

Which means that Sousa had a huge part to play in our progression, love him or hate him, if he didn't come to our club we wouldn't be able to defend as effectively as now.

But the article is written I guess by a yank, and while it's a not bad read, I think there is more to the story for all 3 promoted sides than the few paragraphs here .

 

Swans outstanding, Canaries also excellent and us ..nearly a third done and we should all be proud and to anyone who said we didn't have the players for the premiership were very wrong. All three to stay up. Swans playing quality stuff I have to say

 

Losing to Arsenal and United is not a surprise, at least we gave them a game eh Swans?? Well done QPR