its interesting that for the first time in many years this division doesn’t appear to have any real stand out teams. Previously there was Newcastle and then Wolves but that quality is not visible this season. Hence unlikely it’ll take anything like the points haul of last season to win the division
Spot on Eire, I honestly thought the 3 coming down would be stronger than they have shown, West Brom seem to have found their feet now though, as wide open as it's ever been, best chance we've had since the play offs under Blackwell.
If you were non Leeds and prior to yesterday you would have to say Leeds were looking like a stand out team and one poor game shouldn't take that away. I know last season we plumetted after hitting the top but it just feels different this time around. Roofe, Hernandez, Bamford and Berardi, they are pretty key players, when Roofe and Hernandez are back then we'll pick things up, admitted at times it has felt like we are limping ever so slightly but other times like V Derby, Preston and Soke we have looked like PL quality.
I really think the samall squad thing will come back to bite us, we're struggling without Pablo and Roofe, any more injuries would be a big problem.
Wolves lost their 2 of their first 9 games accumulating 20 points in their first 9 games We've lost 1 game with 18 points on the board without several key players as you rightly point out Richard Wolves did look special but we have looked outstanding in some games too!
We have to accept we have a lesser wage budget than a lot of the teams in this division, Bielsa would like 2 players for every position and he has just about achieved that but at this stage of his time with us, it would be unrealistic to expect players of equal ability to be willing to sit on the bench or in the reserves. Playing one striker up front, we’ve been pretty unlucky to get both Bamford and Roofe injured at the same time. The team that failed on Saturday was the same team that crushed Preston and could have scored 5 more goals, Brum did a spoiling job on us, we had an off day, I’m expecting Bielsa to correct that. The team will be in the briefing today, they’ll learn from this, on another day those two shots would never have went in and shouldn’t have, we could have come away with a 1-0 win quite easily.
What they have to do, and Bielsa can't help with this completely, is to show more mettle than last season. One defeat caused them to fold, TC and Heck were lesser coaches but some of the players hid behind that IMO.
Table does tend to support the OP this year. That would also say it’s likely that averaging 2.0 points a game over the whole season will give an auto slot. Some seasons it wouldn’t quite do that, you would have narrowly missed auto. I think it’s true that 2.1 average has always meant an auto slot. So our 1.9 leaves us close enough, at this stage of season the average can move quickly - win at Hull and we are back on 2.0, lose and we are only 1.7 (which is playoff places standard). I find tracking this stat gives a better indication than worrying about other individual clubs. If we keep with 2.0 we’ll go up, if we start to drift down, we will at best have the lottery of the playoffs.
Difference for me this season is when we have played “badly” it hasn’t been a patch on what last seasons bad was. Badly this season (and looking at the defeat to Birmingham) 72% possession and 17 shots, we are a different team this season with at least three good players missing who are nearing a return.
