http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/...s-and-chelseas-roberto-di-matteo-8046752.html I'm quite amazed he has Newcastle to finish 4th given the fact they are in Europe and haven't really strengthened. Liverpool all of a sudden to leapfrog Everton when The Toffees have strengthened and Liverpool have stagnated in truth
How have Everton strengthened?? Everton will slip back down to their steady state as per usual. Newcastle will not get 4th what a laughable prediction and Arsenal will struggle to make top 4 without RVP netting them 30 goals+
Everton have lost Cahill and Rodwell and brought in Naismith (Peinnar too but he was there for 1/2 season). We have brought in Allen, may not strike fear into teams right now...but it does push Adam further away from the 1st team. To me that is strengthening.
I don't think that he's too far off except I see Chelsea struggling for 5th. Arsenal without RVP will struggle with vulnerable patches as last season and the two coaches,RDM and AVB are in very delicate positions,he's right there. It all depends what we do at Newcastle whether we finish mid table or not. If we get walloped then it's mid table but if we get a result then we won't be. All in all I see a fairly dull season all round with not too many surprises anywhere.
Stelling has never liked Southern clubs to be fair so I'm not surprised. He's usually well informed but I have no idea what these predictions are based on. Newcastle playing Thursday/Sunday certainly won't help them. Cabaye and Cisse carried them for the 2nd half of that season as well.
Stelling's got more interest in the lower leagues, as he supports Hartlepool. If you were sat opposite the likes of Phil Thompson, Paul Merson and Charlie Nicholas every week, then you'd probably struggle to retain a grip on reality, too. I think he's just stuck with the obvious for most of his predictions. Bar Newcastle, they're hardly wild, are they?
to add to a ****ter squad - and if you think Everton's current squad is better than ours then you're mad
It's the "Spurs will finish mid-table" crack that makes me believe that hack is a Gooner. It's a wum comment. Ok, so we only have two recognised strikers (so far), but we got 5th and 4th over the last two consecutive seasons without having a great strike-force, because most of our goals have come through midfield. Even losing Modric won't necessarily affect that statistic, because he's never been a goal-scoring machine. It really pisses me off that these so-called professional pundits write us off season after season. It's as though they can never forgive us for breaking up the old Sky "Top 4." Why are 'Pool likely to better than anyone else, when they couldn't improve under their legend "king" Kenny-boy? That hack is a joke.
They did finish above you last season, SR. I'd suggest that the signing of Allen's solved a number of problems for you, though. How the team will perform under Rodgers remains to be seen, of course. Same thing for us and our new manager.
Of course, but our squad was underperforming and theirs was overperforming. I have been very happy with our pre-season so far and with a signing or two more think we will make top 6 comfortably and push on from there the season after
He seems to like us. He always looks into things before giving opinions, unlike that fat **** Merson We haven't strengthen yet, but there's still time, and people have predicted that our lack of depth would let us down before, but we kept on going. Our fringe players just aren't rated as highly as they should be. The only positions we lack depth atm is CB. After that all we really could use is another fullback and maybe a striker.
Fair enough and I wouldn't expect anything else, but Moyes consistently gets Everton to overperform, they've made a couple of positive changes and they don't have Europe to drain their squad. They'll probably do what they normally do, which is to start off pretty mediocre and then push up the table towards the end of the season.
You think you need a striker! Try supporting Spurs. We've needed a striker for 4 years. Half of us would chew our left arms off to have Ba+Cisse!
It's not inconceivable that we could do a bit of a Liverpool this year if we don't sign any new strikers and get a replacement for Modric if he leaves. It seems unlikely that either of those things will happen though. If we get a couple of good players in I'd expect us to compete for a top 4 place again. As for the article, it's what you'd expect. The papers hire pundits and people in the game to say something controversial backed up with little substance, RDM has a two year deal, doesn't he? There was a journalist last year that predicted Stoke would finish fourth, Mark Notso Bright predicted Liverpool to win the league, even those that know a thing or two about football would be foolish to make such brash predictions so early.
If we perform like we did against the mighty Gomel or whatever they're called then I think we will do alright. But the PL is a different kettle of fish. I think whether or not we get Sahin we have a good back 7 in... Reina Johnson Skrtel Agger Enricky Lucas Allen Our defence was top 4 quality last season. The question is, can Rodgers keep that up? And can we put the ball in the onion bag to make the good defence actually matter? Scoring more goals will solve our problems from last season, but doesn't necessarily mean automatic success. We have to be better at it than our rivals if we wanted to push up the table. Which is why I predict that we will do better than last season, but where we will finish?? I think 4th to 8th is again...very unpredictable. Especially the changes at Spurs and Liverpool. We could end up 7th with a points tally that would have seen us 5th last season. Who knows.
Not if you repeat the away perform, you won't. Very fortunate to avoid a hiding, from what I saw of it. It's hard to judge anything from pre-season though, which we're still basically in. It's tricky normally, but with the added variations that the Euros and Olympics has thrown in, it's virtually impossible.
