Relegation

[Daveysgingerlovechild]

we need to all pray of a night

but i don’t know who to lol

The devil matty

 

[diggerdestroyer]

Except we get nine more go's after this one.

Yes but it's the biggest since. Above cup final in my opinion

 

[Saint Domingo]

What’s most annoying is that I don’t think Brentford Leeds or Newcastle are any better than us. We are probably somewhere in that lot, all ahead of the bottom three just about.

We’ve been dragged in by injuries, countless individual errors, some corrupt refereeing and at times some bad luck. We should have those three or four points more which would make the gap look untenable for the teams below probably from better decisions in the Brentford, Southampton and City games. Instead we’re looking the most likely target for the teams below whilst Leeds have been airlifted to safety by that ridiculous red card decision for Wolves.

 

[davek]

Luckily Watford still got likes of Man. City and Chelsea away. Closer than Burnley but much tougher run in and really it's all on their last five home games. Win three of them and they'll have a chance going into final day you'd think.

Shows the scale of the task though. Go into the final day of the season three points clear of Burnley (let's say the GDs are same as now) and they could easily scramble a 1-0 home win off Newcastle. Lose at Arsenal and that would be relegation regardless of what Watford do (they're away to Chelsea so 1998 vibes right there).

They still have a real chance of points at home against poor teams like Burnley and Leeds. That would be my fear regarding them. And Hodgson has experience of all this.

 

[MikeH72]

Do people genuinely believe we’d have less points than this if Benitez was still here ?

I like Lampard but I’m struggling to argue he wouldn’t have done a better job at this stage.

We concede more, score less, and he’s had players back in the side that Benitez was without for months.

Benitez should never have walked through the Finch Farm doors so it’s all academic really.

 

[PhilEFC]

Gray just let’s people run past him and gets crosses in. He’s just completely stopped working from how he started the season.

We never stop anyone from crossing. In fact we seem to encourage it.

 

[steven]

Newcastle getting tonked as well. Beat Burnley and we are right on their coat tails too

 

[Toff33Blues99]

I believe we are tantalisingly close. 2 wins and the odd point maybe will be enough. I just have that much confidence they will get them 2 wins

 

[HeltSkelt]

All not lost. Newcastle doing their best to undo their good work of the last few weeks and join us in the relegation fray.

 

[Zatara]

The downside is hes the only one of our centre halves who can win a header

Branthwaite

Beat Burnley and were safe as houses. Simple as that

Beat Burnley and were 2pts off Leeds + 2 games in hand and 3 pts off Newcastle with 1 game in hand.

It may drag them back down mentally to see us on their heels.

Likewise we would be 6 above watford + 1 game in hand and a better goal difference.

7 ahead of Burnley which means we would need to do equal or better than them over 7 of the last nine games.

You know my view that I think the manager is irrelevant at this point.

The players just aren’t good enough not to make individual errors. No manager can protect against that (as Ancelotti, Benitez, and now Lampard) are finding

At least under Lampard the players don’t have an immediate excuse to hide behind. We’ve seen better work rate in some games but the errors are still there. Under Benitez the players wouldn’t work and were making errors.

Our only chance to stay up now is a United Goodison for our home form and increased work rate getting us anything away from home. As soon as we made the decision to get rid of Benitez that was always going to be the case, we put off the immediate short term pain to try and get a new manager bounce. What’s become apparent is that the players are so bad that it wasn’t the tactics or mood of the manager holding them back, it was their own application and quality.

You could see an improvement today as heads didnt go down...

Gray doesnt track back at all though and of course Keane, Iwobi and Kenny are concerns defensively.

 

[Hickson9]

It is all coming down to Wednesday.

Beat Burnley and in all likelihood we will be OK.

Lose and we are probably going down.

 

[dutchblue54]

Beat Burnley and we are 6 points clear of Watford…7 points clear of Burnley:..with games in hand.

Be a good time for a few of our players to pull their fingers out…

Be a tough game though…and one which I can’t help but think our weakness in defending set pieces will come back to bite us.

Pickford
Coleman Godfrey Branthwaite mykolenko
Docoure holgate Iwobi
Richarlison DCL grey

spot on about the set piece defending. The ones who say on here Burnley are poor should realise they are bound to score at least one from a set piece against us. And with our goalscoring form having disappeared of late i dread Wednesday.

 

[Ghost Rider]

Do people genuinely believe we’d have less points than this if Benitez was still here ?

I like Lampard but I’m struggling to argue he wouldn’t have done a better job at this stage.

We concede more, score less, and he’s had players back in the side that Benitez was without for months.

The other side to that would be the damage done by benitez was never recoverable and once the players hit the poor run of results , that was it.

We know these aren't a squad of players better than where we are in the bigger picture. Maybe not 17th but lightyears from teams comfortable.

In hindsight I believe benitez managed a 2 year decline in 6 months. The worst qualities of our players, the reason for us being average to begin with were exposed all at once. You can see it in our defence, they truely do struggle with being a defender, either by ball watching , switching off or just not reacting.

If we went down , there are 3 points that condemed us you could look to. The first was selling James , no justification for that. Second was selling digne, removed all creativity and sacking the manager a week later , made no sense. The third was signing the Ukrainian lad and Patterson. Because it wasted what money we did have on players who weren't here to keep us up.

 

[LouReedwalkonthewildside]

We have to come away from Burnley with 3 pts to give us a bit of a buffer because of the run of 4 tough games on the bounce games we have after we play them compared to theirs, we have Man U, Leicester, the RS and Chelsea, they have Norwich, West Ham, Southampton and Wolves.

 

[knowing your history]

I believe we are tantalisingly close. 2 wins and the odd point maybe will be enough. I just have that much confidence they will get them 2 wins

I honestly don't think 32-33 points will be enough. Certainly not if people want a peaceful final day at Arsenal just to protest against Moshiri or whatever.

As seen many times before final day can throw up all sorts of odd combinations of results.

My gut feeling is it's not settled before Arsenal and relegation will happen as used up endless final day luck in the 90s.