Off the back of the match day discussions (in which I think we’re pretty much unanimous that survival is a very long shot), I was just looking at our fixtures to see how the miracle of survival might happen... The rule of thumb of 40 points for safety remains a sensible one for our season. I actually think survival will be around the 37/38 mark, but better to be conservative. So with our current tally of 14, we need 26 more points from our remaining 17 games. The possible combos are 9 wins, 8 wins and 2 draws, 7 wins and 5 draws, 6 wins and 8 draws or 5 wins and 11 draws. For the latter we would need to only lose one more match though... Best target is 8 wins as that leaves us head room and a couple of draws are likely. I have drawn up below our target results to achieve that, with the following categories: must wins (MWs) for matches I think we have to win for survival, target wins (TWs) for matches where some of them we need to win and bonus matches (BMs) where a win would obviously be great but not critical for survival. Man U Away - BM Bournemouth Home - MW Tottenham Away - BM Newcastle Away - TW Liverpool Home - BM Wolves Away - TW Leicester Home - TW Sheffield U Away - TW Southampton Home - MW Everton Home - MW Arsenal Away - BM Brighton Home - MW Watford Away - MW West Ham Home - MW Chelsea Away - BM Burnley Home - MW Man City Away - BM
Funnily enough this gives me a little bit of comfort - of our must wins (basically against other relegation candidates) we have seven still out there. Only one of which is an away match (Watford). That really suggests that the first half of our season was a lot tougher, playing most of our competitors away from home. The only issue with that analysis is we have been hammered by both Watford and Villa in our two home matches against competitors... It does show, as if there was any doubt, that we have barely any room for slip ups from here. We will need to nick an unlikely win or three (as we did against Man City) to stand any chance.
It is as you say a little reassuring that at least on paper we have some of our easier fixtures to come. But the breakdown of those matches is interesting too. If we were to win all our EW/MW matches but little else, can the fans hold it together until 14th March and Southampton with maybe only 3-5 pts from the next 8 games? How bleak might the table look at that point? Of course Leicester escaped relegation on the strength of very strong finish before kicking on to the title. Maybe the fixture computer threw up a similar oportunity? Thanks CR, If nothing else I think your thread will keep me in the fat lady hasn't sung yet camp at least until that Southampton game is done. Bah!
One last comment, wouldn't it be fantastic to beat West ham to leapfrog them leaving them in the relegation places and us luxuriating in 17th. Bah!
Can't see better than 5 wins and 5 draws myself leaving us on 35. I think it may be Bournemouth Villa and us going down. Quite optimistic about next season though and our finances should be ok.
I saw a league table split on Twitter this morning showing the points we would have if games finished at half time at home - we would have 22 points from home games but instead only have 9. 22 points was second only behind Liverpool. If we can find a way to either continue the same level of performance for shut up shop in the second half we will be ok. Its strange as the second half was always our strength last year
If my maths is correct, that's: 6 Bonus Matches 4 Target Wins 7 Must Wins I think 5/7 must wins is as much as I dare hope for, then 1 target win, 1 draw, and a couple of points from bonus matches. That would give us 21 points and a total of 35. Like SC says, the potential is there, we just need something to click, a bit of fortune...something! It's such fine margins at the moment, which we unfortunately keep coming out on the wrong end of. A freak red card early on, flukey penalty - when was the last time we scored a late winner/equaliser?? - whatever, we just need a game where we find ourselves two goals ahead and manage to get 3 points and some much-needed confidence. We're competing, it just needs to translate into points.
I recently saw a stat, probably already posted on here, that of the last 20 penalties awarded in Premier League games involving Norwich, 19 have been to the opposition.
It’s an excellent point - though I think even armed with that knowledge I will be pretty resigned if we are more than three points off safety at that stage. it bodes well for Godfrey’s return
I thought we had one at the beginning of this season, but I remember in our Alec Neil season we had barely any so this stat must go back that far.
Nope none this season, just checked. The last one in the PL was Hoolahan against Liverpool. Interesting detail here: https://www.pinkun.com/norwich-city/ncfc-long-wait-premier-league-away-penalty-1-6327702
It would be great if we could take at least a point at ManUtd to extend our unbeaten run to 4 games. That could be a big boost to confidence for upcoming games.
Just a quick reminder that yesterday’s result changes nothing much for our survival prospects though it would have been nicer not to have hurt the goal difference so much.