The Premier League - 2021-2022

I watched this game whilst I was catching up on work admin and every time I took my eyes of the computer to see what was happening on the TV Liverpool had a chance it could have been a lot more if Liverpool had their shooting boots on or Mane and Salah were playing.

 

Arsenal lost to Villa in midweek in their penultimate game, which meant realistically the only way of our staying up was to draw at Arsenal and Villa to lose at West Ham. If Villa hadn't won and our results stayed the same, Bournemouth would've pipped us to 17th on goal difference after winning 3-1 at Everton.

 

If only we had kept our lead against Brentford. We'd be only 3 points shy of them with 2 games in hand.

 

Bowen is in a run of great form, but that is not good enough. The only defence is that he misjudged it. But to me he just tried a “show off “ finish.

 

Lol Norwich have only scored 10 goals in 21 games. Lmao.

Only 1 point behind us obvs.

 

We are already safe. Beating united secured it.

 

Yes, beating Norwich is now absolutely critical to get some daylight between us. I suspect most of us will be resigned to relegation (it not already) if that doesn't happen. At least if we go down, let's not have Newcastle relegated with us, else they will ruin the Championship next season.

 

That result and the boost it gave Brentford and the kick in the nuts it gave us had a massive impact on our and their fortunes.

 

West Ham must be one of the most unreliable teams in the history of the Premier League - no matter how good they are, you just can't trust them to take points off the teams at the bottom, even with home advantage - one point out of 12 against Palace, Brentford, Southampton and Leeds this season despite also beating Liverpool and Chelsea.

 

Can always rely on them to smash us though. Which they did and no doubt if they are still on a bad run of form in a few weeks, we’ll help them out

 

Fortunately they won’t have just had a morale boosting win followed a nice 6 days of rest and prep for perhaps their most important remaining fixture.

 

Yes Brentford have been unstoppable since, with their one win and five defeats.

 

He is right for the first part though. Even though we lost those matches as well we were better against Leicester(league) and Chelsea than against West Ham, Spurs, Leicester(cup) or Newcastle.

 

Our run of good form against them prior to the final match of 2018/19 and going back to the 1-0 away wins in 2006/07 disguised the fact they still had overwhelmingly the better record head-to-head. Of course, a lot of this is influenced by where the teams are in the league, for instance Ipswich during the late 80s to mid 00s were a bogey team for us before they went into decline and we completely overturned that.

 

I know you have a theory that that game is decisive even though there were still five months of the season to go when it was played, but the fact is our next two games were postponed by COVID and the loss to West Ham would largely seem to be attributable to that too. We then very nearly got a point from Spurs. So I’m not sure in what sense this “massive impact” on our fortunes is evident.

Except, possibly - it may have impacted on Ranieri’s subsequent tactical choices?

 

The sacking of Benitez is IMHO good news for our hopes of survival, if it leads to them improving their form and taking maximum points from the teams around us.

I personally could not see them falling behind us in the relegation battle, with the squad they have, the potential to still buy big in the transfer window and their relative advantage over the bottom three clubs in terms of points, wins and fixtures i could not see them falling into it all. More likely their contribution would have been to give points to ther teams around us, like they did yesterday at Carrow Road.

More likely Brentford than Everton to join the current bottom four at Easter to decide who stays and goes. So if we avoid defeat against Everton and they get 4 points from their home and away matches against Newcastle and repeat that against Brentford. The sacking of Benitez might be the best outcome for us.

 

If we'd beaten them we'd have moved to winning a point of them having inflicted a morale-sapping home defeat to a relegation rival. As it is the gap is nine points.

 

Yes. Ranieri, after our defeat on Friday.

 

Having played two games fewer. Which, if we were to win, the difference wound be three. So we would only be two points worse off anyway, in spite of your supposed “massive impact”.

As A19 says, their morale boost has hardly pushed them to brilliant performances after that result.

There’s still a long way to go.

 

Yes of course, I get the maths, but they’ve been absolutely awful since, so the morale boost hasn’t been at all reflected in their actual results.

 

Every team we have beaten this season has since sacked their manager. Farke, Smith, Benitez and Solskjaer.

 

Let’s hope we can get Smith sacked twice.

 

You think we will win those 2 games in hand ? 9 points is a huge gap to close. Agree the massive impact was more about the 6 point swing on that evening than theor single win since.

 

They’re winnable - but probably not both, no.

However, we’ve made up a point on Brentford this weekend. If we do the same for the next couple of months, we’ll be level.

 

To be fair they are games we could win as they are Palace at home and Burnley away.

 

Yes. If.

 

We COULD win any game. More likely we will lose than win though.

 

Well, some of us haven’t given up yet.

By Friday, maybe,,,

 

Really really wish we won at the weekend now lol

 

I haven’t given up yet ! But I don’t think the odds are good.

 

Better than they were after 86 minutes yesterday…

 

Well yes but some are more likely than others and Burnely who are on 11 points and Crystal Palace at home are two of the more likely games that we could win.

 

Indeed. But not much . A win would have been huge as would a win against Burnley. Think that will be unlikely too. Genuinely think it’s 3 of the bottom 4.