Interesting.Quote:
Originally Posted by LDG
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Interesting.Quote:
Originally Posted by LDG
*sigh*Quote:
Originally Posted by Niall Quinn
Think I'll leave WUM and WUMer to it :good:
So many years of making the bare minimum the pinnacle of our ambition. So let's do the same thing and see if we get a different result.Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters
What makes you assume the away form is the anomaly, rather than the home form?
We are fucking fortunate Wenger didn't get the extra year.
I've noticed, everyone is a WUM except you.Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters
Interesting. OK, that's a fairly good point.Quote:
Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn
I guess it's the quality of our squad. I think we're better than our away form suggests.
Well, we definitely are. Our away form is pretty much relegation form, we're clearly not a squad which should be anywhere near the relegation zone.
And in the last two seasons our away form has been significantly better than this year.
https://www.11v11.com/league-tables/...une-2017/away/
https://www.11v11.com/league-tables/...une-2016/away/
Where our home form has been consistently good in other years:
https://www.11v11.com/league-tables/...une-2017/home/
https://www.11v11.com/league-tables/...une-2016/home/
So our home form is a bit better than usual, but there's not a huge gap. Our away form has dropped off a cliff this year, so I see that as the anomaly.
Home and away point split over the last 3 seasons:
40 - 31
45 - 30
47 - 13
It's clearly the 13 which is the significant difference from other seasons.
(Careful, this could just develop into a sensible conversation)
If we had a similar set of results at home as we did away. Where would that leave us?Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters
And had Wenger stayed on, what would be more likely? Our away form improving to match our home form and the resulting glory?
Or would it likely go the other way?
The 13 points is anomalous in reference to prior years. But it's future years we are speculating about. Certainly, we have a squad that should be doing much better than this. But they aren't. 7 away losses in a row is almost unbelievable. It represents a complete collapse on the road. Complete. And the manger has done nothing notable to turn the tide. He's pretty much stuck to the same policy of randomly rotating the line-up, playing players out of position, the slow tempo possession game and the catastrophically flawed zonal defensive "system" that has failed like clockwork. We already have a decent theory on why there might be such a divergence in results home and away. On the road our opponents come after us. At home they show us too much respect, probably because they remember what sort of team we used to be rather than see us for what we are now. Weak. With a negative mentality.Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters
I've said it in the past and the evidence strongly favours the idea we win when the opposition suits us. When they mass behind the ball and let us tip and tap it around we generally find a way through against the weaker defences. But when the opposition presses or plays an effective counter attacking game we are almost sure to lose.
The question is, having seen this awful away form and given a summer to analyse the games (if so inclined) what's to say most of the managers in the PL would not reach the easy conclusion it is better to pressure us rather than let us play - home or away?
It's all moot anyway because Wenger is leaving. But, if he was staying and I had to bet, I'd put money on our home form getting worse with the away form improving (because it can't possibly get worse). I'd predict an 8th, 9th maybe 10th place finish with a handful of wins both home and away against the weaker teams. That seems more realistic than suggesting we'd hold up the home form and then significantly improve the away form too. And it all fits in with the evidence of steady decline.
2nd, which is a damn site better than where we are now.Quote:
Originally Posted by Niall Quinn
As I've said above I think it's our away form this year which is the real outlier.Quote:
And had Wenger stayed on, what would be more likely? Our away form improving to match our home form and the resulting glory?
Or would it likely go the other way?
Our home form this year is actually better than the last 2 years, our away form is a complete car crash and by a distance the worst we've ever done under Wenger.
I doubt that would be repeated. So I think had he stayed we'd probably be less bad away from home next year, perhaps not quite as good at home and overall we wouldn't be title contenders.
But I've long since been in the Wenger Out camp, I think the Wenger In camp is pretty much one tent with Ty in it these days.
I'm hoping a new manager will push us in the right direction, we've got the squad to compete much better than we have been.
Huddersfield will easily do us, they 've drawn against Citeh and Chelski away in their last two gamesQuote:
Originally Posted by Marc Overmars
Arsenal at their ground will be a walk in the park for them
Wenger really couldn't be leaving soon enough
I think Huddersfield will be fucked from those two games. They worked unbelievably hard in both ties with little of the ball and having to cover a lot of ground, chasing, organising and defending.
Both of their points were achieved through heart and hard work. They then cancelled their flight and went back by coach so they could drink beer.
Lots and lots of beer.