OK guys - 7 home games left and they should be the key. 21 Points up for grabs. so let's have a look. Leaving out the two games against the top 6 clubs, Liverpool and Chelsea, that leaves the following: - Aston Villa, Hull, Fulham, Palace and Stoke. Must all be regarded as 3 point games ("6 pointers" if you like the analogy). If we can get some sort of result like Brom did today from Liverpool, we might not need anything from our last game against Chelsea. The away games are a different matter, but from the 7 of them I think we can look optomistically for half a dozen points - hopefully at least one on Saturday. Given the rat race that's developed in the bottom half, what will we need to stay up and where will it come from?
Home Villa Hull Fulham Liverpool Palace Stoke Chelsea Looking for 16 points Away Swans Spurs Everton WBA Southampton Sunderland Newcastle I'm sure that we can get points from at least 5 of these looking for 9/10 points Lots of "6 pointers" both home & away I'm sure we will get enough points from these to keep us safe.
2 ways of looking at it, one is how many points can we / do we need? The other is the head to head aspect or 6 pointer. We could beat Liverpool and Chelsea but if we lose to palace and Fulham those wins might not end up making a difference. The price of not beating Sunderland and losing 6 points to west ham is already very evident in the table. There are a number of matches we absolutely must not lose. I think we'll struggle to get many more than 12-14 points at home and we'll need a couple of bits of away day magic to get a total that might be good enough. What I'm saying in a very long winded way is that I think we'll scrap 38-41 points who we take those points off will decide if its good enough as much as the eventual total. Off topic has anyone seen norwichs last 4 fixtures? They want to hope they've got 40 odd before them!
The way it's going I'm thinking that it's going to take a very low total this year to stay up, 37 points could well be plenty.
The Fixtures for others in our mini league need to be considered as well, all we can hopefully do is win our home games against those around us. The question is who in our mini league do we need to help us ? Villa who seem to be putting some form together can seriously help us by beating nearly all the other teams around us (not saying they will) other than us of course
We still have our destiny in our hands, but a little help will go a long way to enable us to stay up. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Nice summary. 37-38 points may well do it this year. Our goal difference means we need to make sure we are clear of the bottom 3 before the Chelsea game. Will we get enough. I don't think so. We are just not good enough right now. We got three against Norwich by fortune, and we will need to see far better performances to get the 16-17 points we need. Home, I think we will get close to 10 points, Away, about 4 points. This will leave us a couple of points shy. The Swansea game is huge because if we did get back to back wins, the confidence gained may induce a roll. Get beaten and we go back into panic mode.
As if we needed this game to be any bigger, but I agree 100%. The players know how lucky we were to hang on against Norwich, a defeat on Saturday could put confidence back to zero. However back to back wins, with Villa and Hull to come at home and there'd be some significant light at the end of that tunnel....
