This time last year we'd played 22 with 26 points. This season we've played 23 games and have 25 points. Our form is a concern but on a like for like basis we're not that far behind last season. The remaining 16 fixtures last season produced 8 wins, 2 draws and 6 losses. We played both Manchester clubs, liverpool, everton, chelsea and Spurs in that time. We made our games against wolves, qpr, norwich, wigan, stoke and sunderland count though. This season we have the following games: Home West Ham Man U Stoke Chelsea QPR Arsenal Reading Liverpool Away Norwich Sunderland Spurs Newcastle Villa Everton Swansea - last game of season. I can see 5 wins there and a couple od draws. We'll be alright come the end of April. COYW
Interesting but there are differences - for example out of the teams we beat last year we will only play Norwich, QPR, stoke & Sunderland this year. Norwich are a better team this year than last and we are not, stoke and sunderland possibly the same, however, sunderland & Norwich are away games so forget any points there. Stoke is a possible, but given our poor home form a draw is most likely. West Ham is a bogey team, Liverpool, Man Utd, Chelsea and Arsenal are all top teams and very difficult to beat so we can't take any points from them as given and it is quite feasible that we come away from those 5 games with zero points. So it is possible that we get zero points from over half the remaining home matches QPR may fall to Sod's law and we become the only team they do the double over, Reading should be a home banker. That's 4 - 8 points from the home matches, which is in line with our form since November. Out of the away games only villa are what could be termed a poor side and where we have a better than average chance, all the others are good or very good (swansea, everton & spurs) and given our away form is so poor to expect a sudden turnaround is not realistic. That's 3 - 6 points. This could mean a max of 14 points, which leaves us short of safety by a point (supposing that none of the bottom three don't go on a great run all of a sudden, unlikely but sometimes happens - look at Wigan last year) in which case the total looks even more threadbare. The really annoying thing in all this regardless of whatever happens is that we have gone backwards over the past season after a few seasons of slow progress. At the start of the season, when Berbatov was signed and we were scoring goals for fun, no one was thinking we would be in a relegation fight and we were considered a solid middle table club, that will now change and as far as the media are concerned we will be back in the same group of clubs as Wigan and Southampton being tipped for relegation each year. Not sure whose fault that is, either. Is it Jol or is it the Board or is it the players? Personally i like Jol and think he is a good manager but I am not sure he is being backed fully by the board, although I have no idea why.
Fulhaman that's too pessimistic even for me. Sunderland's form was dire till they played us and continued some time after till they sort of clicked. I can see us getting 15 points from the remaining games. Even though spam is bogey team they will be the first of our come back!
Points wise we are not far apart - you have 15 and I have a max of 14. I think we'll probably have more draws than losses, especially away, but I do look at the worst possible so I can be pleasantly surprised. I don't think we'll go down, but it may be tighter than we would like, or indeed, should be - given the players we have.
There's certainly 15 points to be had there on paper, but if continue our current form then 15 could look a long shot.
