The Great Escape

Villa 1 down, pushing us out of the relegation zone again

New signing Drinkwater also turned inside out by Mahrez for the goal

 

Drinkwater - Legend. Great assist for Mahrez's second.

 

2-0 now

Another defence disasterclass from Drinkwater

 

Villa fans heading to the exits after 28 minutes... Embarrassing.

 

3-0

Villa now have a worse goal difference than us

Heres hoping City can score a few more

 

Not just yet I make it -13 we are -14



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Now 4 points ahead of where we need to be and we could easily get something next weekend too. COYH!

 

6 goal swing on the goal difference today. Beautiful.


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You were right, I read it the wrong way round

Luckily they are now -15

 

Make that EIGHT.....

 

Well today couldn't have gone better! Better GD than 3 clubs below us and out of the drop zone.

 

Great day, great weekend couldn’t of asked for much more.

The way muff and villa are playing doesn’t look to good for them spiralling out of control.

Psychologically massive for us. Better goal differential out the relegation zone

Effing get in there mahoosive 3 points. The Orn’s are staying up.


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Still twists and turns but is anyone else squinting due to the sudden light at the end of the tunnel. Things looked so dark the morning we played man united

 

This is what the table looked like the day before we faced a very tough opponent (yes they're no Fergie team, but they'd beaten City at their place recently and you still have to put in a proper shift and be spot on defensively to get anything against them):

https://www.11v11.com/league-tables/premier-league/21-december-2019/

I'd love to know just what was said to our players that gave them the belief and confidence that we could beat them, while not worrying at all about how the league table looked back then.

 

To have any chance of staying up, and I still believe it will be hard, the front 3 will need to remain healthy. If we were to lose even 1 we've had it for sure.

 

12pt swing against Bournemouth in 5 games. Crazy.

 

If youre at the bottom, 4 wins in 5 is massive because everyone else is ****.

 

I recall how sick I felt when we conceded two late goals against Southampton, but it was the catalyst to the move for Pearson which kick started our massive improvement. Had we held out against the Saints, we could still be bottom! It’s a strange world.

 

Away at Villa will be a huge test as well. Win there and we have a few nice looking home fixtures to get across the line.

I think we need a couple of recruits just in case of more injuries but we're far beyond where anyone could have envisaged. Out of the zone just 22 days after sitting bottom on 9 points.

 

17 games 9 points
22 games 22 points.

It's remarkable when you see it written down, but we needed that just to catch up. I've not checked this, but 4 wins and a draw must be the best run of form the club has ever had in the top flight. We needed something extraordinary and now we have it. We've followed in Southampton's footsteps.

Now we're in the position where a couple of wins will see us storing up the league. We've done the hard part to catch up, now we need to cash in and move as far away from the drop zone as possible.

 

It is the joint best (twice achieved before)! Once with GT, and once in our current Pozzo era.

 

Let’s make it the best against spuds


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I’m now annoyed that we haven’t played like this all season!

 

Think we have a decent chance tbh.

 

I guess you could say not a bad time to play Spurs, if ever there was one.

 

Yes I thought we may have done it under GT.

 

We won 4 games in a row under QSF first spell but not sure what results were either side of that. Longest winning run under NP is currently 3 as the Sheffield United result separates the Man U and Villa wins

 

It was part of, as QSF would put it, an amazing run during which we won six games and drew one of nine, the draw being at Chelsea following the run of four straight wins. During that run we convincingly beat West Ham who were flying and had only dropped two points in their away games, winning at Arsenal, Liverpool and Man City in three straight games - a brilliant and dominant performance which I thought was even better than the Liverpool one. Strange to think all this was under the same manager who was such a disaster second time round, but the Pozzos should have seen that coming after the way 2015/16 finished and Flores' spotty record since.

 

Didn't we win our first four games of last season too?

 

Yes, followed by a loss to Man Utd

 

Ordinarily, if I were a neutral, I'd like Norwich to stick around, they play some nice stuff, just a bit toothless and susceptible at the back. Don't see much chance for them. Not gonna get ahead of myself and predict anyone else's final position, but Burnley will be in a right royal scrap, in a way I hope they do well enough not to be tempted to sack Dyche, but not well enough to finish above us if you get what I mean. Brighton are a pretty average side players wise, but have a very bright coach (they'd have been ****ed under Hughton), I think they'll be safe, but it'll be close. Newcastle are bang average with a bang average manager, but built up a bit of a cushion which could prove vital when all is said and done (plus they have all those players to come back). West Ham *should* have the personnel to steer clear of the pack, but you never know with them, put them under pressure and their fans get on their back. Villa look in danger with their goalkeeper (I know they have Reina in, but how will he be in his advanced years, being away from England for so long?) and main striker out, surely they can't splurge again? Also, fingers crossed they get the usual League Cup hangover! Bournemouth looked dreadful today, a kind of end of cycle type game where they were bereft of ideas (not to take away from us, we were bloody marvellous!), I do wonder if the owner's fingers are getting twitchy? Their one saving grace at the moment is that they have loads of players to come back, though they (like us not so long ago) have been on a horrendous run for a long time. Unlike post-Soton, I'm excited about this relegation scrap!

 

My guess/ hope is that it's Burnley and Bournemouth that join Norwich in the relegation spots fine the end of the season.

Bournemouth looked absolutely dreadful and bereft of confidence yesterday, like we did a couple of months ago. But they don't have the luxury of more time, or a Nigel Pearson waiting in the wings to turn it around like we did.

Norwich already look to far adrift.

And Burnley are dropping like a stone which is worrying for them as I think they are the opposite to us. We had been underachieving considering our players, so our "natural" level is more mid table. I think Burnley have been overachieving in recent years, so if that ends and they revert to standard or substandard performances, they're really going to struggle to turn things around. I hope this happens as I really hate their style, team ethos and approach to the game.

Villa are obviously there or thereabouts, but just seen to have a little bit of fight in them, which might see them *just* get enough points.

The job is by no means done for us, and we are still in a precarious position. Nigel needs to ensure we never take the foot off the gas, react to any losses positively and hope for no serious injuries to our big players. If Sarr got crocked I'd be panicking.

 

We still need a signing or two really.

And points in the bag to keep us up before our last few games.

 

Yep - got to remember that our last two games are City and Arsenal so we don't want to be needing anything from them ideally!

Next four games - Spurs (H), Villa (A), Everton (H), Brighton (A). I don't want to extrapolate our recent form too wildly but... there are wins available there. None of those teams will be looking forward to playing us in this form.