Results Comparison

Red Alert wrote:

"Pessimistic" Red Alert called it.

We've improved, but the teams around us having new managers, and having poor starts to the season until managers adapted to their new jobs are the reason we've looked so good under this new current style of play we've adopted this season...

I wonder where we'd be if we played death by football. I assume right next to Arsenal or thereabouts.

HEIL MEIN REDS wrote:
I dont agree with you, we cant play 'death by football' everytime, we won the game against Everton because we played on the counter and the tactics were spot on to exploit the space behind their full backs. The second part of the last season also, I rememeber the 6-0 thrashing of Newcastle, we scored almost all the goals on the counter. This season's Stoke game is another example. But I slightly agree with what you say on one thing which is we should be able to control the game 'with the ball' against lower sides (even away from home). But we can not blindly follow any one strategy.

I think a lot of the happy clappers are very reactive, as opposed to proactive, and interestingly, this approach by Brendan cost us the 2 points today.

People point out to Mancs and Spurs dropping points and use it to claim today's result wasn't an issue. That's the wrong *bleep* mentality.
We are "STILL" ahead of them, so we can afford to draw one of the most out of form teams in the league in a game they barely had any kind of threat. We'll never be back up there with the very top with this attitude. A lot of people hate the term "Must win", but I reckon it's the best thing that has ever happened to football. Every single player and manager should approach every single game as "must win". You gain by winning, and you miss a chance by not winning. We could have been approaching next week's early kick off 1 point off 3rd place and with the chance to put a distance between us and the 3 behind us, and exert ourselves to the highest level of the league with the top 3. We *bleep* it. No excuses. We were flat, reactionary, and not determined and mentally strong enough to move up a level. We were playing at a ground where the home side has won 3 games all season. Against Holloway managed Palace, Di Canio managed Sunderland and 10 men Newcastle. A draw was a woeful result. We rightly mocked the blues for dropping points there a fortnight ago.

More often than not...when such opportunities come across our way, instead of sharpening up, getting into higher gears to grab it by scruff and not let it go , we seem to redeem the mentality of some of the so called super fans and say hey ! if we take advantage nice, if we don't..well no love lost. The 24 year wait will go well past quarter of century of this mentality remains like this among the team and the fan base.

At the beginning of the season, we had a pattern of beating the shite home and away. I hope we remain consistent with that. 2 draws against Villa and WBA in the last 3 games bring back terrible memories of the season we lost the league title because of drawing games (But at least we didn't get beat). We'll have a few other visits to relegation threatened teams this season (West Ham, Palace, Fulham, Cardiff, Norwich), and we need to *bleep* turn up, show initiative and be motivated to take 3 points there. We can't afford to draw many of those teams there. We need to be aggressive and proactive, but today we weren't.

No matter the fixtures, we've won only 4 games on the road this season from 12. This ratio doesn't improve by miracles in our next 7 away games. We need to up our game on the road. Our approach has often been sloppy and confused (interestingly, our best away performances have been against tougher opponents away from home). We seem to play to level of our opposition away from home, and more so than not, we're playing lower level teams away for rest of the season. It's time to play to our level on the road and start picking up those valuable points, so we can *bleep* this thread off and start looking up the table and thinking of catching up to teams above us. and Not being relieved that people still haven't caught us yet.

HEIL MEIN REDS wrote:

I think Arsenal will be surely in the race till the end
ManUtd :shock:Moyes

Btw, if I calculate with the above stats, Liverpool will be able to manage get 72 points
So to sum it up:
Arsenal-25.87+55      = 80.87 points
ManCity-23.4+54       =77.4 points
Chelsea-26.52+56     =82.52 pts
Liverpool-22.62+50    =72.62 points
Everton- 24.18+45    =69.18 pts
Tottenham- 23.27+47=70.27 pts
ManUtd- 28.99+        = 69.99 pts

So even considering the stats, it seems conditions are in favour to us, where as if with some SAF miracle Utd manages to regain their form to the highest notch, they will just finish above Everton and below Spurs. I am sure we will manage more than 1.74 points/game.
fffs so good to come out with that

Red Alert wrote:

HEIL MEIN REDS wrote:
I dont agree with you, we cant play 'death by football' everytime, we won the game against Everton because we played on the counter and the tactics were spot on to exploit the space behind their full backs. The second part of the last season also, I rememeber the 6-0 thrashing of Newcastle, we scored almost all the goals on the counter. This season's Stoke game is another example. But I slightly agree with what you say on one thing which is we should be able to control the game 'with the ball' against lower sides (even away from home). But we can not blindly follow any one strategy.

We can't play death by football without Lucas.

We'll continue to play this counter-attacking thingy until Lucas comes back.

Also, we could of played 'death by football' against Everton too. The reason it was so easy to counter them was because of the high line. We played 'death by football' against Spuds high line at WHL and won 5-0 so I wouldn't say we only beat Everton because we played on the counter-attack.

Spoiler:

Red Alert wrote:

I think a lot of the happy clappers are very reactive, as opposed to proactive, and interestingly, this approach by Brendan cost us the 2 points today.

People point out to Mancs and Spurs dropping points and use it to claim today's result wasn't an issue. That's the wrong *bleep* mentality.
We are "STILL" ahead of them, so we can afford to draw one of the most out of form teams in the league in a game they barely had any kind of threat. We'll never be back up there with the very top with this attitude. A lot of people hate the term "Must win", but I reckon it's the best thing that has ever happened to football. Every single player and manager should approach every single game as "must win". You gain by winning, and you miss a chance by not winning. We could have been approaching next week's early kick off 1 point off 3rd place and with the chance to put a distance between us and the 3 behind us, and exert ourselves to the highest level of the league with the top 3. We *bleep* it. No excuses. We were flat, reactionary, and not determined and mentally strong enough to move up a level. We were playing at a ground where the home side has won 3 games all season. Against Holloway managed Palace, Di Canio managed Sunderland and 10 men Newcastle. A draw was a woeful result. We rightly mocked the blues for dropping points there a fortnight ago.

More often than not...when such opportunities come across our way, instead of sharpening up, getting into higher gears to grab it by scruff and not let it go , we seem to redeem the mentality of some of the so called super fans and say hey ! if we take advantage nice, if we don't..well no love lost. The 24 year wait will go well past quarter of century of this mentality remains like this among the team and the fan base.

At the beginning of the season, we had a pattern of beating the shite home and away. I hope we remain consistent with that. 2 draws against Villa and WBA in the last 3 games bring back terrible memories of the season we lost the league title because of drawing games (But at least we didn't get beat). We'll have a few other visits to relegation threatened teams this season (West Ham, Palace, Fulham, Cardiff, Norwich), and we need to *bleep* turn up, show initiative and be motivated to take 3 points there. We can't afford to draw many of those teams there. We need to be aggressive and proactive, but today we weren't.

No matter the fixtures, we've won only 4 games on the road this season from 12. This ratio doesn't improve by miracles in our next 7 away games. We need to up our game on the road. Our approach has often been sloppy and confused (interestingly, our best away performances have been against tougher opponents away from home). We seem to play to level of our opposition away from home, and more so than not, we're playing lower level teams away for rest of the season. It's time to play to our level on the road and start picking up those valuable points, so we can *bleep* this thread off and start looking up the table and thinking of catching up to teams above us. and Not being relieved that people still haven't caught us yet.

Quality post on RAWK that brought tears to my eyes. :proud:Thought it should be posted here.

Note: Missed Swansea away, Soton / Aston Villa at home, too.

Great post Sepi. =D

stevieg8 wrote:I stand by everything I said earlier.  That post is nice and dandy if you're not going to treat it like the end of the season every time we do drop points, but of course, that's your reaction every time.  I much prefer moving on after about a day, rather than dwelling on dropped 3 points 5 months after the fact - for instance, you and Sepi are still ruing the Hull loss, both here and in the general section.  THAT'S the issue I have with the idea of "must-win", not the expectation of fans.  I spelled that out quite clearly above, and your post responds not at all to what I had to say.

You keep telling all of us how certain problems are going to catch up with us sooner or later, without giving any credence to the fact that they haven't yet.  You're going to be talking over the summer about how BR's tactical experimentation cost us top 4, even if we already made CL.

It's not even that I want optimism from you, I just want something new.  Every post you make touches on the same couple of points, regardless of the topic at hand, the thread you're posting in or the person you're responding to.  It's getting boring.

stevieg8 wrote:
You keep telling all of us how certain problems are going to catch up with us sooner or later, without giving any credence to the fact that they haven't yet.  You're going to be talking over the summer about how BR's tactical experimentation cost us top 4, even if we already made CL.

It's not even that I want optimism from you, I just want something new.  Every post you make touches on the same couple of points, regardless of the topic at hand, the thread you're posting in or the person you're responding to.  It's getting boring.

Red Alert wrote:

stevieg8 wrote:
You keep telling all of us how certain problems are going to catch up with us sooner or later, without giving any credence to the fact that they haven't yet.  You're going to be talking over the summer about how BR's tactical experimentation cost us top 4, even if we already made CL.

It's not even that I want optimism from you, I just want something new.  Every post you make touches on the same couple of points, regardless of the topic at hand, the thread you're posting in or the person you're responding to.  It's getting boring.

Firstly, they did catch up.

We went from 1st to 4th which brought United, Everton and Spurs into contention for the top 4. United's out of it now, but Spurs and Everton can still finish top 4 if we slip off the pace. Luckily, we've found some form and now can push on for a top 3 finish, let's hope we don't bottle it again and bring them back into contention...

Secondly, I couldn't care less if it's become "boring". Our away form IS A HUGE issue, and it's something we haven't fixed at all this season. It's actually our biggest problem the squad has. And my main concern isn't even the results; it's the attitude on match days on the road. I'm sick and tired of players not turning up on the road and I'm certain half of that is because they have to play a certain way they've never played before. The attitude has been worse than disgraceful ffs. We get complacent for beating Everton and Arsenal 4-0 and 5-1 respectively, and than expect to use the same tactics/results against teams like West Brom... the only reason we beat both of the teams above is because we got an early lead and Everton/Arsenal LOOK to play football so it's easy to counter them. West Brom are a defensive side. You can't counter-attack a team that plays defensive. Hence we looked clueless and stupid just last week. Wouldn't be surprised if we set the same way up for Fulham...

Lastly, if we can't beat the likes of Hull, Swansea, Arsenal and co, how are we going to come up against Juventus, Bayern and/or Barcelona etc? Or are we going to try and rescue it at home just like we did at Zenit in the Europa last season? How'd that work out again?