Our away form is terrible and there is no way we will finish anywhere near the top 4 this season because of it. Last season we finished with 75 points, a point of Liverpool in 4th with 76. We have 45 points and would need to win 10 out of the 11 games left to match last season's tally. Virtually impossible.
That is very depressing.Originally Posted by AFC Leveller
with our away form i'm not sure 3 wins out of 5 is realistic - remember Brighton, Newcastle and Huddersfield will be desperate for the points - they will all see us as a possible result and throw a lot into it
We will finish 6th, that is as good as done unless Chelsea, Liverpool or Spurs collapse which isn’t likely. I couldn’t care less about the league anymore.
The Europa League is the only thing we need to be focusing on.
Again I could be guilty of trying to transpose what happened in 05/06 with what happened now
But had only won three games by this stage then and then beat Fulham, Sunderland and Man City
Bloody hell that's optimistic! I agree on the home games though the City game could potentially be a loss.
The away games, nah....we are abysmal away from home this season, I think we'd be lucky to win more than 2 of those games out of the remaining 5.
Aye, we aren't going to finish above 2 of those 3 teams, it's pretty much impossible IMO.
Europa League is the last throw of the dice and that will be extremely difficult to win IMO, it's as much as a challenge as finishing top 4 due to the quality of teams in it this year.
It’s more knowing Arsenal, i think when the pressure is off this team they will perform. I think with two of these games we will be out of the Europa league by then, we will probably make it past Ostersunds but probably go out in the next round.
Plus we haven’t won less than six games away from home since 2000/2001 season
I could of course be wrong, but that’s why it’s a prediction.
Brighton are quite an open team, Newcastle we’ve won our last four league matches there and Huddersfield will as I say either be relegated or safe I think.
The difference between our home form and away form is pretty baffling.
Home we are 3rd in the table behind City (obvs) but we're only behind Utd on goal difference, we've been good enough at home for a title challenge (if you ignore City but they're doing crazy things this year).
Away from home though...13 points in 14 games
It's 9th best and it all adds up to us being rock bottom of the "top 6".
I don’t think it’s that surprising. When you score away from home it’s far more likely to come from counter attacking movements. Our problem is that the creative and attacking players are not getting the ball released to them quickly enough by the likes of Xhaka and Ramsey and then the home side has players back to defend by that time.
We are far more likely to be pressed on the ball by the home side, which again with players like Xhaka and Ramsey leads to giving away possession in silly areas.
It’s more Xhaka than Ramsey in fairness, but actually I think you can attribute most of our dropped points to him. This awful 26 match run began when he started playing in the side more consistently.
Of our 14 defeats in 26, Xhaka played in 13 of them. Now I’m not going to say he was the difference between winning and losing because that’s overly simplistic. But when you’ve got a player on the pitch who is not protecting the defence and not really doing much with the ball going forward it doesn’t help
But it’s definitely a problem in midfield, it’s not to say defence is without its problems but when the midfield is not creating enough for attacking players and is leaving the defence exposed, it’s the reason we have scored 15 goals (which even then is an outlier as a third of those goals were scored in one game) and conceded 22 away from home
Case in point, we had a better defence in 05/06 but still lost 9 on the road because it was our first season without Vieira and we lost that link between defence and attack, and failed to score in 9 out of 19 games.
Last edited by HCZ; 13-02-2018 at 10:22 AM.
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