Goal difference could still count against us/Alas Bent and Jones

As Syd astutely points out it would take am outstanding set of results from those below us to relegate us. I feel the bottom two wont make our 41 points, but 3rd bottom could, just. I feel several teams including us could end on 41 points, and goal difference would count. I know we are 10 goals ahead but if we lost 3 matches and, say, West Ham won 3 the goals differences would almost equalise. Imagine we lost 2-0 to Bolton, 1-0 to Wolves, and say 3-0 to West Ham, all plausible results, with our season and squad in disarray. Imagine worse that West Ham knew they hard to score 4 to overtake us, they would probably do just that. Nightmare to spend all season out of the bottom 3 except the last few minutes.

I remember a post a few months ago saying how wonderful it will be to not bother about Wolves and West Ham on the closing days! Best to scrape a point vs Bolton or Wolves, and hope that like the weekend just gone the results go with us e.g. draws Blackburn vs West Ham and West Ham vs Wigan would be good.

How did it all come to this? Some key decisions. The club unwittingly decided not become a stable top ten team, rather to ensure bottom ten/yo yo status by selling two of EPLs best strikers when we didn't have to . For older readers its not a case of alias Smith and Jones but alas Bent and Jones. One post said it was about Bent s relationship with a manager's daughter (shades of Peter Reid and Michael Bridges, in more ways than one: you can never have too many quality strikers, as ironically Quinn himself now admits). And also the two January signings perhaps unluckily havn't worked out - we may not have another chance to entice players to a "sixth place club".

Syd muses on which players to retain and let go . At Xmas I would have said, keep most, now I'm not so sure. Its worrying for next season even if we do survive. We are in Mcarthy points total territory on present form. After two years is our squad actually better? Injuries have been unlucky and I do like the Short/Quinn/Bruce axis, but what I would say is this: the Bent/Injuries crisis has not been managed well in the fullest sense of the word "manage". Its been allowed to get out of hand (e.g. throwing Ned up front) and our season has a sense of disarray, of drift, of panic. Its so sad.

 

Mate nice article so I'm giving it a 5 star rating, as to where we will end up I'm just hoping and praying we are still there next year, as for Bruce the sooner he is gone the better, but only for better not worse, as some of our appointments over the years have been **** to say the least.

 

blackpool won't get anywhere near 41 pts, neither will the 3 w's imo. Wolves Wigan and Blackpool for me as i have a feeling W Ham will scrape it, sadly

 

West Ham would surely need to win all three games, or get seven pts at least, to stay up. Is that really going to happen? Well one is against us so that's three points out of the nine they need!

I will fear for us until the maths make it unnecessary but what an end to a season of so much promise. I'd be more confident if we could suddenly swap players we have for those who went to Stoke. See Birflatt Boy's depressing piece at Salut Sunderland

 

The post about buying Stoke s players back that we sold puts into words what I have been thinking - have actually Stoke ended up with a better team than us after all the wheeler dealing? Partly our fault with our moans about KJ, DC, DW etc when they were here but maybe its "better the devil you know" compared to the risks that the "unproven in EPL" South Americans turned out to be, Its a difficult one - Steve Bruce was rightly trying to move us to the next level but maybe Shopping at Harrods isnt always the right approach.

 

You know, the thing about shopping in Harrods isn't that you can buy better quality goods, it's that you can buy goods available elsewhere on the High Street, but pay more for them.

 

fekkin ace mate im telling our lass that next time she ****s off with me card

 

I did a worse case scenario on the Beeb predictor and 4 teams ended on 41pts - we were bottom.
Sooo, we just need one more point (I believe) ..

 

That's the easy part, saying we need one more point. The harder part is saying where it'll come from.