Quote Originally Posted by Letters View Post
You always miss out the key part. It wasn't when CL football was secured we took our foot off the gas, it was when the title had gone.

We lost on the first day of the year vs Southampton, the 18 games I posted the stats for above were the games after that (I didn't deliberately leave out that loss to skew the stats by the way, I just thought the start of the year was a decent place to start)


The 14 results after that were P14 W12 D1 L1. You can't really argue with those results. The last of those games was the win at Hull, after that Chelsea played and their result wrapped up the title for them. It was only after that we 'collapsed', if that's really what you want to call it, failing to win the next 3 games.


Now, you could argue we collapsed because top 4 was assured but if we were only interested in top 4 we really didn't need to push quite as hard as we did in those 14 games. We could have coasted way before then and still got into the top 4 fairly comfortably.

There is clearly a massive difference between 1st and 2nd. Because of the CL Qualification there's a big difference between 4th and 5th.
But 2nd to 4th? There's some difference, obviously, but I think you're over-stating it to make a point which doesn't really stack up.
So in effect the gypos were just showing off by winning their last 5 and securing the runners-up spot when it made no difference where they finished because the chavs had won the title? Or was it their money that made them value finishing as highly as possible? Or did their money prevent them taking their foot off the gas? Just goes to prove your point. Dopers. We can't compete with them because we were forced to take our foot off the gas when the chavs secured the title. I bet the gypos bribed somebody using their money so they could carry on with the pedal firmly pressed down. We can't compete against that. In a way, we were top last year if you discount the dopers who we can't compete against because it's "understandable" for us not to try.