Admittedly only from what I seen of the extended highlights it looked like Bournemouth got lucky with 3 break away goals. Brighton played all of the football and had 66% possession and 21 shots overall but Ramsdale made some great stops.
I would be very disappointing if we didn't get a few points from these 5 games. Apart from Liverpool they have all been exceptionally erratic (or just more so than normal for Man City).
If Bournemouth don't win atleast one of their next games I think they will be gone? that's not an easy run I up until too end of the season. Norwich's run in looks horrible especially when you consider they are already 6 points adrift. Playing City and Arsenal last two games when they probably won't have anything to play for is a good thing for us, rather than playing them midway through the season.
See Newcastle vs Spurs in 15/16. 5-1 to ten man Newcastle. Newcastle were still relegated (not a great example maybe!).
Yes the keeper did look unbeatable for a while. Brighton could be the one's to crumble. Nice flowing football at times but a weak underbelly.
Out of our games against the 'big 6', we have Arsenal, Chelsea and United away, Liverpool and Citeh at home. Would be minorly surprised if we won any of those (although we are due a ******* result against Citeh, that's got to count for something, right?), though I do think we'll definitely ********* multiple draws
Potter has done a good job with them, they were ***** last year, under Hughton they'd be like us under QSF
I hate getting knocked out of the Cup, I really do, but the silver lining is that we've got a very timely weekend off now. We went through that busy Christmas period and beyond making few changes, unfortunately it took its toll against Villa. Just got to hope Sarr is back before too long, he's gonna be so so crucial to our hopes
Arsenal, Chelsea and United have all looked rubbish. Nothing to fear in any of those three sides. We could easily win all three just as easily as we could lose all three. City have been meh all season. The only one nailed on to lose is Liverpool. Between arsenal, chelsea, United and City, I actually think we will pick up 4-7 points.
I don't even think Liverpool is a nailed on loss, we played well up there, could have got something but for some absolutely comical finishing, and we're certainly not the only ones who can say that against them this season. Yes, they are a bloody fantastic team, but I don't think they're as good as they were last year, 100% we can get something against them
Villa and Tranmere have been pretty diabolical all season, yet we've lost to both in the past 3 days. We can lose to absolutely anyone....you should have learnt that lesson by now.
I did say that we could easily win all 3, just as easily as we could lose all 3. So I did acknowledge the lesson. Thanks for checking though.
I’m not so sure about that. I was pretty surprised when reading after the match that he just said we were a bit unlucky and we lacked the energy levels of previous games. He was actually more critical after Sheffield United after we got a point against a much better team. It could be that Nigel is protecting his players, but GT slagged off our team in public plenty of times after a poor performance, including when we were attempting in vain to avoid relegation from the old Division 1. Perhaps he feels a confidence-boosting talk is better than a rocket up their backsides, because maybe the players are just as gutted about the result and the manner of it as us?
Who knows. No one has said what happened or was said. although we do know at least one player had a rocket up his arse at 1-0 down vs Liverpool (quote from foster). I would expect he just doesn’t publicly belittle his players, maybe the whole team - but not picking players out. he needs to do what he thinks is right to motivate the players, and that will be different at different times. I would tend to suspect now is the time to keep on building up their confidence.
I don’t recall GT doing that either to be fair, but my point was he did it plenty of times with the whole team. Maybe he believed the players were on board with that, because it was usually after games when the players had far from given it their all (which is different from being crap) and they deserved any kind of bollocking, including the public kind? Whereas I’m not sure the problem at Villa was lack of effort, more lack of focus as the match seemed too easy at times (apart from their two goals, Villa never seriously looked like scoring and the players might have thought it was going to be a repeat of the reverse game or Bournemouth). Hopefully this will have served as a warning that unless you’re Liverpool and to a lesser extent Man City there are no easy games at this level!
None of that matters now. We lost the last two games, so we will now lose every game that follows. Until we don’t lose. At which point we’ll be 100% staying up again. It’s currently 0.000000%.
Basically we need to focus on ourselves and try to get the best result possible against the next team in front of us. Get the most points possible by the end of the season and hope it's enough. We cant really 2nd guess the form of other teams. Most likely some teams at the bottom will go on runs like we just did and 1 or 2 of the teams on 30 points will have bad runs. I think 43 points guarantees safety. Anything less depends on other results.
Not sure if this has been posted before - https://www.premierleague.com/news/1258633 - Fixture Difficulty Ratings I know this is for the fantasy league, but interesting ratings on the difficulty of fixtures for each team.
Not sure ethere's any point in looking at run ins as Burnely have shown. 2 weeks ago we were expecting them dropping like a stone due to complex fixtures and they beat MU & leicester and are now effectively safe. We've just got to win another 5-6 games and it's impossible to say where they will come from. I think we are just as likely to beat Arsenal as we are to beat Norwich.
We need 4 points from the Everton and Brighton games. We have a rest this weekend which is good. Time to ship out Gray, Success, Mariappa (won't happen), Pereyra, Bachmann. In the summer, release most of the deadwood that played last night at Tranmere. They are not going to make it in the Premier league or Championship. Failure to gain at least 4 points from our next two games will see the drop becoming ever more certain. NP has done a good job so far, losing to Villa was poor, but now let's see if he can lift them and help them regain their confidence.
Probably a good time to update this, now we're in the boredom of the winter break and I've removed Burnley and put Palace in their place. Palace 30 points - 12 to play Newcastle h, Brighton a, Watford h, Bournemouth a, Liverpool a, Burnley h, Leicester a, Chelsea h, Villa a, United h, Wolves a, Spurs h. Brighton 27 points - 12 to play Sheff Utd a, Palace h, Wolves a, Arsenal h, Leicester a, United h, Norwich a, Liverpool h, Man City h, Southampton h, Newcastle h, Burnley a Aston Villa 25 points - 13 to play Spurs h, Southampton a, Sheff Utd h, Leicester a, Chelsea h, Newcastle a, Wolves h, Liverpool a, United h, Palace h, Everton a, Arsenal h, West Ham a Bournemouth 26 points - 12 to play Burnley a, Chelsea h, Liverpool a, Palace h, Wolves a , Newcastle h, United a, Spurs h, Leicester h, Man City a, Southampton h, Everton a West Ham 24 points - 13 to play Man City a, Liverpool a, Southampton h, Arsenal a, Wolves h, Spurs a, Chelsea h, Newcastle a, Burnley h, Norwich a, Watford h, Man Utd a, Villa h Watford 24 points - 12 to play United a, Liverpool h, Palace a, Leicester h, Burnley a, Southampton h, Chelsea a, Norwich h, Newcastle h, West Ham a, Man City h, Arsenal a Norwich - 18 points - 13 to play Liverpool h, Wolves a, Leicester h, Sheff Utd a, Southampton h, Everton h, Arsenal a, Brighton h, Watford a, West Ham h, Chelsea a, Burnley h, Man City a So in our final 12 games we've got to try beat TWO of the following by getting 1 more point than West Ham, at least 2 more than Bournemouth, 2 more than Villa, 4 more than Brighton, 8 more than Palace. Obviously our best bet is to overtake West Ham and Bournemouth and/or Villa in the final run in. Brighton and Palace are a little more fanciful in chasing those two clubs down. Brighton's GD is so good, that we'd have to outpoint them.
West Ham's run of games looks difficult but apart from that most teams have similar opportunities. I think Palace are too far in front of us currently so not looking at them and would definitely want them to beat Brighton. I think it's very difficult to predict. Our next two games are very tough although you never know with United and I worried we might get cut adrift but nobody has anything easy.
The way I see it is that we need to get an unexpected win from somewhere, and that will dramatically change everything. We need to go to Old Trafford and win. This has done the trick for Burnley. They won back-to-back at Leicester and United, now they're out of the relegation picture completely. Getting 3 bonus points from a fixture everyone thinks is already lost would give everyone a huge boost. But I think it's going to have to be something spectacular like winning one of the next two games in order to achieve the momentum swing we so desperately need.
It's all going to come down to which of us can get a freak result or 2 against a top 6 team. edit damn beaten by hb1 by a millisecond...
Yup, this is the same conclusion I've come to. We're clearly not going to / be able to win all the games against our fellow strugglers, so I reckon we need 4pts from the top 4. Man Utd probably represent the best chance of a win. Liverpool a write off so need to get something at Arsenal or Chelsea too.
It would be very Watford like to get something against United and conjure up a miracle win against Liverpool and then get stuffed by Palace and Leicester. The trouble is, the more squeaky bum time it gets the more I think we're going to blow it, as evidenced by the last 3 games. We don't have the minerals; however, I hope I am proved wrong of course.
What sticks out to me is that we have a chance to go on a good run, whereas all the others have Liverpool or City breaking up their fixture lists. But then again... Liverpool have won the league already and they may both prioritise the CL.
I know there is no logic in this bit I actually think we are going to be the team that stops Liverpool going the whole season unbeaten, it would be very watfordy
