I tend to agree. QSF has forgotten more about football than I'll ever know, but I'll venture that he's seen more than a few "route 1" teams. In my inexpert opinion, the best way to deal with them is to press their back line. Hoofball teams tend to get panicky if they have to pass the ball in their own half and the absolute dumbest thing that you can do is give them time back there to pick out a target for the hoof. Make them dribble and/or hit their longball early and you get more than your share of counterattack opportunities. Sit back with a binch of large blokes and you're asking for fouls and set pieces in your area.
You are cloggers though. Surely no-one can enjoy that style of play year after year, watching the ball sail over the midfield's head and constant time wasting. Yes, it's crudely effective but you are a terrible team to watch, it's not entertainment. We had to put up with a season of Burnley-lite style football when we first got promoted and it made our eyes bleed, coming just after the champagne football that got us promoted.
If we win the next two, we'll probably still be in the bottom three. At best 17th. Nowhere near mid-table.
I reckon the beauty of passing it around the back four is overrated. Yes, we play a lot more long, direct passes. A large part of the reason for that is that our defenders don't specialise in perfect ball control and receiving the ball under pressure; defending is their priority. The reason Ben Mee hasn't played for England is that nowadays defending isn't seen as a first priority for defenders. But on the rare occasions that you see stats about possession in the opposition half, or passes in the opposition third, we're usually well up there - certainly against teams at about our own level. Football is best played in the opposition penalty area; and while there is a place for the series of 20 passes that ends up back with your own goalkeeper, it loses it's entertainment value quite quickly. Long ball football played well is a lot more entertaining than tippy-tappy football played badly.
The Sky marketing team are apparently billing this highly anticipated clash as "the unstoppable boredom vs the immovable regret of going to the game to watch it".
Sadly not, and we lose 1/2 a point to Villa on goal difference But if we were to get 4 points, we would be 1 point above Villa’s current points total. I wouldn’t say there is no chance they won’t pick up less than 2 points. It would be very possible for us to be on 12, and 5 teams on 13 or less. i.e. having caught the pack. 4 points would mean we’d have got 7 points from 3 games, or 10 from 7 games. We just need to focus on regularly getting points on the table, and the rest will take of itself.
Seriously.....have you even looked at the table? We are 18th on 8 points. 17th are Villa on 11 points, 16th are West Ham on 13 points. The rest are on 14 points and above. How the hell can 5 teams be on 13 points or less in 2 games from now? Do you know something I don't? Which three teams are going to have a points deduction over the next couple of weeks? Here is the league table, for those that need a reality check as to where we actually are. https://www.google.co.uk/search?sou...QhU#sie=lg;/g/11fj6snmjm;2;/m/02_tc;st;fp;1;;
I'm going to this. Wish I wasn't. Watching a freshly laid dog turd steam for 90 minutes in the crisp, cold morning air would be more entertaining than a visit from Burnley.
I'm not sure the penny has dropped with some fans as how precarious our position actually is. If we win the next two matches, then the gap will close, but we'll still be in the bottom three, or 17th at best. To get back into the chasing pack we need to pick up 9 points from our next 4 games, making it 12 from the last 5. It's the only way to close the gap and get in amongst the pack of teams looking to avoid relegation. Right now we look cut adrift, along with Norwich and Southampton. Only a sustained run of wins will fix it. There is no other way. We can't carry on picking up draws in the hope that everyone around us continually lose. I would say we HAVE TO win the next two and also beat Palace in order to get close to that cluster of clubs who are currently on the 15 point mark....and that's looking at it optimistically. If we pick up 9 points from the next 4 games, that's 17 points from 16 games. It's still a rubbish total and that's with 4 wins from 5 behind us. Right now the teams above us are Villa 11, West Ham 13, Everton 14, Spurs 14. In all likelihood, those teams are all capable of putting a good run of results together...IMO. The teams we are really chasing are the next group. This comprises of Newcastle 15, Palace 15, Brighton 15, Burnley 15, Bournemouth 16. I would say these are the teams we need to chase down and they are all a long way ahead of us.
West ham are ****, as they are every year. More chance of a pig learning to cook bacon than west ham doing anything other then languishing at the arse end of the table
On goal difference perhaps and probably only 3 points behind 13th/14th Situation isn't good but you do tend to go over the top, similar to the Mazzarri season. https://www.leaguetablecalculator.com/
That's the point, even if we win our next two games our position is only just about within reach of catching the teams above us. Fall short of those wins and we're in big trouble. It's not going over the top as I think many fans, or rather fans that post on here, seem to be unaware of how precarious our position actually is. Just because the Mazzarri season worked out in the end, because of Hull's inability to beat Palace away and already relegated Sunderland at home, doesn't mean the word of caution was wrong. At the end of that season, we lost the last 6, which I predicted we'd do, even though you, and others, said that could not possibly happen. Well it did. We got lucky that year because other teams could not make up the gap. Had Hull got the results many thought they would, we'd have been powerless to have done anything about it. That year we finished 17th, one place above the drop. Basically the win we got against Hull at home, when Dawson scored an own goal in a 1-0 win where we had no shots on target, was the difference between Premier League football and relegation. Fine margins, and we got away with it that year.
You’re beginning to sound like the highly criticised and successful Watford playing style of the 80’s. Luckily we’ve moved on 30+ years from there
I'm not saying it will happen, but that your statement that it is not at all possible is also clearly not true. Team 1 - Norwich - lets assume they beat Everton and draw with Arsenal. That puts them on 11 points Team 2 Southampton - lets assume they beat Arsenal and draw with us. That puts them on 12 points Team 3 Watford- assuming 4 points puts us on 12 points. Team 4 Aston Villa. If they pick up 2 points from Newcastle & Man Utd that puts them on 13 points. Team 5 West Ham. Lets assume they lose to Spurs and Chelsea. That puts them on 13 points. I would suggest all of these are eminently possible outcomes. And no points deductions in sight. Sure maybe come Saturday Villa will beat Newcastle, but that still wouldn't cut as adrift. I'm not sure why you are getting so excited. We all know we've had a bad start to the season. But surely even you can see if we are able to have moved from 5 points from 11 games, to 12 points from 14 games that puts us back in the hunt for survival?
I seem to recall the point that season was that it was clear that even if we lost the last 6 games the chance of enough teams catching us was so small it was not a real risk at all. It was not due to luck - it was because it required too many teams at the bottom to suddenly become world beaters. I think most here understand how precarious our position is, not just with the points we have but the make up of the squad. I don't hear many people shouting from the rooftops that all is fine.
I think every fan is aware of the position we are in but just have different views on how precarious it is. Before we played Norwich I think we all knew that the next 3 games would be very important but having not won since April, expecting 9 points was probably unlikely and not actually as do or die as you make out. It was important to get the win to get that monkey off our back and we obviously need to build on this but 4 points or even 3 from the next two games will still mean we are moving in the right direction. There is plenty of the season left for us to catch up and I don't think it's desperate that we do that in the next two games. Little steps in the right direction are fine. That's not to say it wouldn't be lovely to win the next two or even 3 out of the next 4 but as long as we are still making inroads in to the gap then I'm fine. I wouldn't write the Leicester game off either. The press are all over them about how well they are doing but that adds pressure when you are playing a side you are expected to beat. We are playing catch up but we are by no means at the "if we don't win the next two it's all over" stage.
But why are you reducing our points total? Why can't 6 points be the outcome? All this 4 points from 2 games nonsense is bonkers. Why place limits on expectation? We need wins, and these wins need to be in blocks. This is because of the start we've made. This is not a poor start, it's not a bad start, it's the worst start to a season in our entire history!! ….and we've had some dreadful seasons in the past, but this one has started as the worst of the lot. Over 4 games, the teams above us will pick up, on average, 3-5 points themselves. Over 2 games they will pick up 2 or 3 points. This is what you have to expect. Therefore it's imperative to maximise our points revenue in games, where on paper at least, we are able to win. We've thrown away so many games already. Brighton, Bournemouth, West Ham, Sheffield United at home and Newcastle away. Yielding just a pathetic 3 points. These are games which should have provided at least 9 or 10 points. This is why we're playing catch up and we just cannot afford to lose or draw games that we clearly have a chance of winning. For arguments sake, if we pick up 9 points from the next 4 games, I would say we'd probably make an inroad to those above us by about 4 points. Which is healthy and will give us a good platform for the rest of the season. You have to understand the fixture list as well. In the Premier League, it's so tough to get a run of games where you think you've got a good chance of picking up points. We've got to take it. It can't just be ignored and pretend 4 points or less will be ok from the next two games. It won't. Put it this way, we were one game from virtual relegation prior to Norwich. Had we lost that, no one would give us a prayer for staying up. It was that close for us. It's so important to pick up these victories now, for confidence and belief. Without that, things drift and once belief goes that's it. It's all over.
I disagree. We were lucky to stay up that season because we were incapable of doing anything about it. You cannot control the form of other sides. Hull were on a great run, only to inexplicably implode in the final three games. Our predicament was precarious that season, but you're comfortable in the denial that everything was ok, because we stayed up. Everything was not ok, and Mazzarri quickly lost his job. With three games to go, Hull were just 6 points behind us, with Palace away, Sunderland home and Spurs home to play. They had picked up 18 points from their previous 13 matches, which was very good form. Snake had turned them around and they had us in their sights, yet no one could see the danger, and are still denying it even now.
You’d better face the truth, David. HB1 will be telling us we’re doomed right up to the point we’re either mathematically safe or mathematically relegated.
As you say, Norwich was our first win since April. So if we don't take advantage of some reasonable looking games, on the back of an apparent upturn in form, when is it going to happen? It has to be now, or else it will all drift away very quickly. Had we lost to Norwich, that would have been that. Flores almost certainly would have been sacked and Watford so far adrift, we'd need a telescope to spot the team in 19th place. Beating sides you're trying to catch up with is imperative. It's something we must do. We cannot afford baby steps anymore. That was ok for the first few games of the season, but we're well beyond that now. We've got to take huge strides to catch up and the only way we can do that is by winning matches. Also this season, we HAVE TO be safe by the 36th game. We cannot afford to have something riding on our last two games of the season. City at home and Arsenal away.
We're not doomed, but we need to start winning right now. Had the Norwich result gone against us, our task of fighting our way out of this mess would be over. We've already got that close to disaster and a few on here need to look at the league table. We'll only be ok if we start winning games. 0-0 draws are not enough.
