If we win 4 & lose 7, we get 12 points. If we draw 11, that’s 11 points. We’ve been poor at beating the lesser lights at home. Interesting to see how Gracia sets up.
David, excellent as ever. Have you factored in the ongoing decimation of our squad by injury? By Easter, Gracia unable to field 8 fit men so all subsequent games forfeited. Mind you, if Pep continues to ‘make a point’ & field ever reducing match day squads, Citeh will forfeit their last 2 games & suffer a L***! style points implosion. Uncertain times await.
Absolutely, I’m not proud. If we’re the only club in for him it might tell us even more about his character though. West Brom will very likely want him off the wage bill, will we match what he’s on though? If we don’t, will he come for PL football? Or will he sit in the championship on a higher wage? Either way that’s WBA down though, isn’t it?
They are home to Huddersfield next. Fail to win that and they are as good as down. I would happily take Gibbs and their keeper is pretty decent too !
Is he really that good? I had an admittedly quick look on their forum tonight and he's copping a fair bit of flak on there for his performances last night and in general recently.
The WBA game will be a MASSIVE game as we all know how hard teams fight when they are scrapping to survive! We will need to put in a top performance if we are going to get the 3 points we need from that game, it won't be easy
Still think it's too early to write off West Brom, they need an average of 2 points a game to get to 40 but they haven't lost that many. They aren't no hopers
I think all our early home games will be massive, starting with Everton. If we win that one, then we go on to West Brom, win that too, then the pressure is off when we go to Liverpool and Arsenal. We need at least 4 points from those two home games, if not 6. The flop at West Ham ranks up the pressure in the next game. I'm really surprised to see how poorly West Brom and Southampton are fairing. West Brom look virtually doomed now, so they will see Watford as their last chance, which could make them very dangerous. They have a lot of decent players in their side. Foster, Rondon, Gibbs, Sturridge, Evans, Dawson. Ok that's not a great side, but I wouldn't have predicted they would be bottom on just 20 points.
They need to double their points total. It's taken them 27 games to get 20 points. They need to get 20 more in the final 11 games. They are down.
the bottom three all have much better squads than us, I'm baffled by their league position. Palace and west ham do too. Our squad should finish 14th/15th.
If we get 3 or 4 points from Everton and WBA we are virtually safe in my opinion. Should do it as well. Everton rancid away form and WBA are rancid in general.
I have a friend whom I occasionally drink with who is an Arsenal supporter, and he does not rate him too highly. His comment was "If I was Watford, I would be looking for someone better than Gibbs".
West Brom were in a similar position in 2004/5 and managed to get 16 points in their last 11 games which wouldn't be quite enough this time. https://www.sportsmole.co.uk/football/west-brom-albion/2004-05/fixtures-and-results.html?no-amp=1
No they aren't. Leicester had 18 points after 27 matches and ended on 41. For what it's worth, Hull went down on 35 having had 26 points after 27 matches. I'm sure there are other examples as well. Personally, I think we should be just about ok (again) but considering West Brom's next few matches they are far from down. There is a difference from being close to us, and being close to those around them. 2 wins in a row changes everything.
Of course nothing is impossible, but Leicester's run was exceptional. It's not the norm. They went on the continue that run the following season and won the league. Their form was that of Champions in the run in. West Brom would have to win at least 6 of their final 11 games. They've only won 3 of their first 27!! Not impossible but not likely either.
Consequences of appointing Pardew which has lead to worse results than what got Pulis the sack. Oh and possibly signing Sturridge on loan without spotting he was in a wheelchair
I have sympathy for WBA, it’s fair to say Pullis wouldn’t be bottom and it’s not a stretch to say they probably would’ve be bottoms three. You can’t blame them for sacking Pullis, how long can anybody put up with paying to see that every week? But the alternative looks to be certain relegation. The mistake wasn’t sacking Pullis, but rather not having a suitable replacement lined up that wasn’t Pardew.
Any team achieving 17 points on more from the last 11 games would be an exceptional run of form. To get 23 would be remarkeable. On the basis that three of the bottom four cannot achieve an extra 14 points, 41 will be safe. We should hope for at least one more away point and 10 from our remaining six home games. The Chelsea result means that failing to get three points from the away games against Stoke and West Ham was not a disaster. The fact that everyone starts to play teams around them dramatically impacts the outcome. If WBA beat Huddersfield its a better result for us than them losing to Huddersfield and then us beating WBA. We can afford WBA making up ground, but need to put as much distance as we can between ourselves and Southampton, Stoke, Huddersfield, Swansea and Crystal Palace. We want Bournemouth to beat Newcastle and West Ham to beat Swansea
I still feel as though we will finish pretty much in the same position as we are now. There is no doubt the next 2 home games our vital and 2 wins will pretty much guarantee our survival so that probably won’t happen!!
Another question lots of us are asking is will 38 points or 40 points be enough, and the answer is it depends how cautious you want to be. I therefore ran the prediction model for 1,000 seasons to check the potential outcomes. Indeed you could argue even 40 points isn’t enough, There is a 1% chance we will need more than 40 points to survive - with a 1 in a thousand chance that we would need 43 points (eek!). If we get 40 points that will be enough to survive in 95.1% of outcomes - so that is a very safe target. If we get 38 points there is a 73% chance that we would survive. 37 points is the most likely number of points required, but there is 53% chance it wouldn’t be enough so don’t bank on that outcome. And if we are very lucky there is a 3/1000 chance that 31 points will be enough. Can we garner a draw from any of our remaining games?!? Here is a spread of the outcomes:
As a maths graduate I always groan at football fans attempting to do 'statistics'... But this... is excellent and mathematically rigorous. Thank you, sir.
Thanks! I need to do a bit more work on the underlying odds, but it isn’t too far off based on comparing to other sources I’m using.
In those 1000 seasons, how many times do we win the Prem? Within the next, erm, 25 years? (Otherwise not bothered.)
You just keeping putting your bets on whoever we are playing and we won't need to worry about other team's results !!