Who would have predicted these results? Three points each for City,Villa and Wigan casts QPR Reading and Southampton well adrift at the bottom.Also pulls Sunderland and Stoke into the melee.Makes tomorrows matches desperately important. A great run for us 7 points from three games.
Yup, nice to have some serious daylight between us and the bottom 3 and pile on some more pressure to those occupying those places. Puts us in 14th place on 10 points Never expected Wigan to get anything but perhaps not overly surprised with the Black Cats losing, they have been pretty poor recently.
A draw tomorrow is really not good enough for either Reading or QPR, going to be a really tense game. They've both got winnable games coming up though, our game at Reading is going to be important.
The first line of the BBC match report has a nice ring to it! Norwich City stretch their unbeaten run to four games!
We have both Reading and Southampton this month. Going to be two big games but with more pressure on them as they are at home and in desperate need of points as things stand
Pressure is definitely on them, that 5 point gap that suddenly opened up doesn't look good for the bottom 3, letting us get away further is the last thing they want. All the bottom 3 have some winnable games coming up, it's going to be an interesting month.
For the record, we are now just 3 points down on where we stood last season after 10 games, and have climbed just above the safety curve on the "36 Points for Safety" graph. Still below it though on the "40 Points for Safety" graph. I don't agree with Thai that there is "serious daylight" between us and 18th place. If this was the old days with only 2 points for a win, that might be more plausible. Fact is, if Reading and Southampton win their games, as is perfectly possible, both will be on 7 points, just 3 points behind. When we have 9 or 12 points between us and 18th place, that's the time to talk of "serious daylight", especially this early in the season.
It's more of a Psychological big gap than actual. Look at the QPR board now, they are starting to get really worried. I know it's not a huge 'actual' margin but it's enough to heap the pressure on and get the fans of those teams a bit more twitchy and getting on their teams backs
haha even then Im not sure. If we are in the league next season I will be happy we stayed up. But then the whole cycle of worry will start over
I'm very happy with that result because Stoke only had a few chances all game and we have kept another clean sheet. Hughton has done a great job sorting out the defence it seems!
Unfortunately (or fortunately in our case) the fans don't play the games! I am quite sure that Mark Hughes, Brian McDermott and Nigel Adkins will not be thinking they are now cut adrift, and nor will their players. Saints and Reading will be targeting us you can be sure.
The good news then, is we can cut Reading adrift again next weekend, even if they win tomorrow I know fans don't play the games but how many times have you experienced an 'edgy' crowd that does effect a teams performance? I have seen it plenty of times watching Norwich, I think it is then logical that fans of QPR, Reading & Southampton are getting twitchy and it can rub off on the team even before they kick the ball.
Some big games for QPR and reading coming up though. QPR have reading tomorrow Southampton next week then Man Utd Reading have QPR and then us. one of the pack could get cut off if results go badly
I'll give you an example then.... Today, Sunderland at home to Villa. Mackem fans not happy with their current performances, lot's of unrest up there. Quiet crowd with a low expectancy and worried about their current plight. What happened? 0 shots in 90 minutes and a loss to a very poor Villa side. I am so sure the crowd played a part in today's woeful effort (unfortunately)
After watching that game - my thoughts exactly!! As someone (might have been Supers) said on a thread earlier in the week, we can now win a game by just scoring one goal!!!!
