This forum is not the only place who seem to think playing actual matches is irrelevant I guess.
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I honestly think we’ve fucked it up in the last 3 matches.
I thought the league would be difficult, even when we were a couple of points ahead, but always was confident about Europe. It seemed to be written in the stars that we’d be in the final in Dublin v Leverkusen.
Somehow in the last couple of games we have completely lost energy, momentum and self belief. No idea why. Maybe the strain of playing through that injury phase has exhausted the team, maybe we’ve just been found out. Whatever it is, it’s a bitter pill to swallow knowing that Jürgen’s final season will end with disappointment.
I’m sad and this weather isn’t helping.
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6 games to go and I don’t think any of the 3 in the race will pick up maximum points.
We really need to get ruthless and make sure we drop minimal points from now on.
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Completely agree, but how are the boys going to turn their miserable current form around? Time will tell, starting with Atalanta on Thursday. First thing is to become rock solid at the back again, as we have been really fragile lately. Then, it would be nice if our forwards could find their scoring boots and start banging them in again.
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Agreed. I think in time to come people will realise that 2017-20 might simply have been an anomaly.
Apart from those seasons, the league winners have mostly ended up with 90±3 points.
I’ve felt for the longest time that this feels to me personally like 2018-19, with unexpected progress, and now with the Atalanta situation, it’s ever closer.
We might not win the league in the end, but considering most people were concerned about top 4 at the start of the season, I’d say it’s been great.
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You have to keep fighting and see what happens, but there does seem to be a sense of inevitability around Man City winning the league again.
We can only hope that we hear a lot more talk about the 115 charges over them, up to 2018. Ian Wright spoke out recently and pitched it perfectly. More like that would be welcome.
It is quite wrong that they keep on winning without the obvious cloud over them being lifted.
On our end, despite the cheating, and despite some dodgy refereeing, and VAR calls - I can list it all out, BUT going beyond all of that, we still had it in our hands. Better finishing against Man Utd and we win that one, comfortably, 4-1 on the xG. I haven’t seen the xG for Palace, but again, had we played to anything like our potential, we would have won it.
Over just the last week that is five more points we spewed, and it was nothing to do with cheating, or refs, or anything else. Yes, I do think they are all issues, and my head is not in the sand, but we easily could have a commanding lead in the Prem with six games to go, had we done our job in the last two games.
Where do we go from here?
We have to find a way to regroup, and fight on. There does seem an inevitability about it, but if we fail to do our job we hand it to them, and that would seem a poor effort for Jurgen’s last hurrah.
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I dont think anyone arguing for City’s inevitably are doing so as a result of watching them and seeing it play out. Of course, they have history, but this isnt that side. At least not yet. Even on Saturday with a big win on the scoreboard by the end, they were largely ineffective until a tired massively over matched side collapsed late on. In terms of points on the board, that is great for them. But in terms of seeing form to put a wager on, it is not there and they aren’t going to face another game like for the rest of the season.
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I agree that they are not quite what they were. To be fair, neither are we, much as there is a sense that we are ahead of schedule as we rebuild the side. Put it this way, our great strike force of peak Mane, Firmino and Salah would likely not be firing so many blanks.
Still, they have every chance of dropping points somewhere, especially as they have to dig deep to fight in the CL. Arsenal too for that matter, and they also have some very tough league games.
I think if we can win our last six games we have a great chance to be Premier League Champions. Can we find a way to do that? You never know, but the evidence of the last week or so is concerning.
If our games had been referred properly, we’d already almost be Premier League Champions.
And, to save @GermanRed the hassle:
I have some sympathy with that, but you can only move forward. We can’t go back and redo those games, but we can go forward and play our final six Premier League games.
If we do our job to the best of our ability, we might yet win the bugger, even in spite of the legitimate shouts about a corrupt system.
It also needs remembering, if we had picked up the points owed to us from poor refereeing mistakes… Mentally, The Arse and The Cheaters would probably have given up a while back from giving it their all -
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Careful… @GermanRed might accuse you of being a crybaby
Called this one well
Imagine if the roles are completely reversed, and Villa beat City too while losing to us.
I think the nightmare scenario for the Premier League is City winning again and then maybe having to take it off them. Pretty sure they would much prefer us to win it outright given our worldwide support. Also makes far more commercial sense in terms of marketing potential.
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If the charges against Man City only apply up to 2018, (if I’m wrong on that I’m happy to be corrected) can anything they ‘win’ after 2018 be taken away?
If they are not cooperating with opening their books to scrutiny, does the Premier League have within its power to exclude them from the competition?
Part of the updated regulations the PL brought in (and the PL = the clubs themselves) in large part because of lessons learned with city was that good faith cooperation was a requirement of compliance. It was one of the funny defenses from Everton that they tried to fudge the books “because that’s what accountants do for their clients, innit.”
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