[Archived] The Relegation Thread

[Blue blood]

I honestly think that without Kean we have a good shout at surviving.

Looking at the game on Saturday Swansea are a much worse team than us. They seem to have less depth, loads of fragility, and given that the momentum of last season will wear off, I don't think that they've enough points.

Bolton are really struggling, have had a horrific time with injuries and generally despite a decent squad nothing is going right. With us there are obvious answers (no. 1 being Kean out but also protect the full backs, teach the midfield to tackle etc.)

Wigan - they look terrible. They look a worse side than us, and even under Keans leadership and with us down to 10 men they couldn't finish us off.

So realistically it's a 4 horse race of which only 1 can survive. If we had a good manager I think despite the damage done, that given we have a better team than all three of those mentioned, and being in a better position(just!) than both of them, that there are grounds for optimism. Having said that Swansea's 4 point lead looks quite big at the moment, which is why it's vital that we replace Kean before this becomes insummountable.

Worryingly there are only 4 teams I think realistically who could drop, which means the Premiership will be even more unforgiving on mistakes. However, without Kean, I do feel that the situation isn't as bleak as it could be.

[malk]

OK, so we still have fans who believe this current position can still be easily turned around. Indeed, some suggest we can get to January before making any changes and still stay in this league.

We have 25 games to play.

We need another 33 points to reach 40 points for the season.

We are currently averaging pretty well half a point per game.

If you assume all the other fixtures are equally winnable, we need to move from half a point per game, to 1.3 points per game.

However, if you look at our remaining fixtures, these include these games:

Liverpool A

Man Utd A

Arsenal A

Manchester City A

Man Utd H

Liverpool H

Chelsea A

Tottenham A.

In all honesty, we could quite easily lose all of these games. If we were to win a couple of those games, we would most likely lose two more from somewhere else on the fixture list. Either way, we look very likely, in my opinion, to lose at least another 8 games this season and that makes a huge difference.

If we do lose 8 of our remaining games, then from the other 17 remaining games, we would need 33 points. Virtually 2 points per game, which can be shown as needing to win every home game and drawing every away game. Not just European qualification form, but virtually championship winning form.

Sunderland's remaining games include:

Tottenham A

Man City H

Chelsea A

Arsenal H

Liverpool H

Man City A

Tottenham H

Man Utd H

Fulhams's remaining games include:

Liverpool H

Man Utd H

Chelsea A

Arsenal H

Man City A

Man Utd A

Chelsea H

Liverpool A

Tottenham A

Wolves' remaining games include:

Man Utd A

Arsenal A

Chelsea H

Tottenham A

Liverpool H

Man Utd H

Arsenal H

Man City H

Bloody hell, it's almost as if teams at the bottom of the league still have lots of tough games left to play when only just over a third of the season has gone!

I'm quite happy that most of our toughest games left this season are away. I wouldn't expect much against these teams home or away so, looking at our current position, more of our home games are against teams we have a shout against. Compare this to Sunderland, of their remaining 12 home games they still have to play City, Arsenal, Liverpool, Spurs and United. We only have United and Liverpool to play at home and the other ten home games are against the more winnable portion of the league.

[AllRoverAsia]

8 Stoke 14 -9 18

9 Aston Villa 14 -2 16

10 Everton 13 -2 16

11 Norwich 14 -6 16

12 QPR 14 -10 16

13 Fulham 14 0 15

14 West Brom 14 -8 15

15 Swansea 14 -6 14

16 Wolves 14 -9 14

17 Sunderland 14 -1 11

18 Blackburn 14 -11 10

19 Bolton 14 -15 9

20 Wigan 14 -16 9

Big win by Fulham v Liverpool last night.

Rovers away to Sunderland is a massive game for the winners and will start to create a bottom 3 that may be cut adrift.

IMO Swansea and Norwich and maybe QPR will continue to slowly slip down the table, Sunderland will rise and Wolves and WBA will also be involved at the bottom. Wigan, Bolton and also Rovers currently look lost causes.

However it's still very tight at the bottom and Rovers with any decent manager in charge could get out of the current mess. With Kean we will IMHO go down.

[bobsterbrfc]

How about we have a poll on here where we predict our three teams to go down? It could be re-set on a periodic basis? I'd currently go for Wigan, Norwich and Rovers.

[alexanders]

Thinking about it. This game was incredibly important to win. Will never understand why anyone wanted us to lose.

Somehow Kean has it in his locker to win when we most need it.

We have had very tough fixtures at home this season:

Home: Wolves, Everton, Arsenal, City, Tottenham, Chelsea and Swanse. Only Wolves could and maybe a point against Everton could be excepted. Wolves stands out as the worst game where we had to play a very weak first xi. No yak or dann.

Away: Villa, Fulham, Newcastle, QPR, Norwich, Wigan, Stoke.

Away we should have done better against QPR, Wigan and Norwich. We all know that were very unfortunate against Norwich. We have always struggled away at Villa and Stoke and this season Newcastle have been a revelation and cant be compared to earlier seasons.

With this in hindsight and also the rise on form after Clement came in I am a tad more optimistic than earlier this week.

It is crucial that we win against Wba and Bolton + maybe a point against Sunderland (i think we will win).

In 2012 we have the following games to look forward to take points from:

Stoke, Fulham, Wigan, Norwich, Sunderland, were we can get 3 points. We can also sneak something away: Swansea , WBA, Wolves, Bolton.

I think this eason equal to last season will be very tight.

How about we have a poll on here where we predict our three teams to go down? It could be re-set on a periodic basis? I'd currently go for Wigan, Norwich and Rovers.

Seeing wolves coming fixtures Ill say they are in big trouble. Lucky win against Sunderland on Sunday.

[Clitherover]

How about we have a poll on here where we predict our three teams to go down? It could be re-set on a periodic basis? I'd currently go for Wigan, Norwich and Rovers.

Wolves

Rovers

Wigan

I think Swansea and Norwich will get dragged into the relegation battle soon enough too. I still think Coyle has enough about him to get Bolton out of the mess they've got themselves into and they need to stick with him or they really will be screwed.

[jim mk2]

Somehow Kean has it in his locker to win when we most need it.

[booth]

Thinking about it. This game was incredibly important to win. Will never understand why anyone wanted us to lose.

Somehow Kean has it in his locker to win when we most need it.

I can understand why people wanted us to lose, not that I did. The media would have backed Venkys firing him. Kean would probably be gone and we'd have a bit of hope. We'd be speculating on who was going to replace him. I wanted the 3 points as those three points may prove to be crucial at the end of the season. Although that said I fear we're down with Kean at the helm.

Kean having it in his locker to win will certainly be tested come the final third of the season. I predict a failure of epic proportions, more so than now. There's no basis on which to pin any hopes on him keeping us up.

[broadsword]

I think epic fail too.

A failure to even reach 20 points.

It will hopefully lead to open revolt and the departure of venky's and kean.

[eire3382]

Even if/when the great day comes and kean is no more it is too late. Any new manager has huge problems to fix and so we won't see improvement for at least a month I would guess. Don't kid yourselves kean has done one hell of a job, our players are not fit and the defence is a shambles.

We are already gone, wigan pretty much as well there will be four or five clubs trying to avoid the final place.

[malk]

8 Stoke 14 -9 18

9 Aston Villa 14 -2 16

10 Everton 13 -2 16

11 Norwich 14 -6 16

12 QPR 14 -10 16

13 Fulham 14 0 15

14 West Brom 14 -8 15

15 Swansea 14 -6 14

16 Wolves 14 -9 14

17 Sunderland 14 -1 11

18 Blackburn 14 -11 10

19 Bolton 14 -15 9

20 Wigan 14 -16 9

Big win by Fulham v Liverpool last night.

Rovers away to Sunderland is a massive game for the winners and will start to create a bottom 3 that may be cut adrift.

IMO Swansea and Norwich and maybe QPR will continue to slowly slip down the table, Sunderland will rise and Wolves and WBA will also be involved at the bottom. Wigan, Bolton and also Rovers currently look lost causes.

However it's still very tight at the bottom and Rovers with any decent manager in charge could get out of the current mess. With Kean we will IMHO go down.

Gutted about the Fulham win last night. Cheers Liverpool.

Still, Bolton and Wigan are in all kinds of trouble for me, in much worse shape than we are. Wigan have 12 goals in 14 games (if only we'd had some more fit defenders for that game) and have Di Santo as their top scorer. Bolton are on 19 goals from their 14 but that includes the first day hammering of QPR (0-4) and that really odd stoke game where they smashed them 5-0.

Going up through the table, Sunderland have only scored 15, Wolves 16, Swansea 14, West Brom 15, Fulham 16, QPR 15. All of these teams will be in the mix for relegation come the end of the year. We're actually the 6th highest scorers in the league this season, if we can shore up the defence we'll starting picking up points at a much higher clip. The key to this is getting a settled back four. We've already had to use 8 defenders so far this year (let's see how we can blame that on Kean) including 3 youth players. A run of games with Givet/Olsson, Dann, Samba and Lowe playing together will see us concede less and we're away.

Can't beat a spot of optimism!

[alexanders]

Gutted about the Fulham win last night. Cheers Liverpool.

They had a Friend in the ref.

[Ricky]

The Swansea win was huge. I also think Sunderland may be there for the taking. They do have the new manager bonus but I'm not sure that it will make this group of players any better. Usually a new manager comes in when a proven team has hit bad form, the proven players then have a lift and return to the form they showed before.

The Sunderland situation is very different, this is a completely new team with 9-10 new players in it. they will also be missing their midfield enforcer in cattermole so I expect a more open game. I think our attacking players are better than theirs. I can see there being goals in this but wouldn't be suprised if we got a point or even managed to sneak all 3.

[alexanders]

The Swansea win was huge. I also think Sunderland may be there for the taking. They do have the new manager bonus but I'm not sure that it will make this group of players any better. Usually a new manager comes in when a proven team has hit bad form, the proven players then have a lift and return to the form they showed before.

The Sunderland situation is very different, this is a completely new team with 9-10 new players in it. they will also be missing their midfield enforcer in cattermole so I expect a more open game. I think our attacking players are better than theirs. I can see there being goals in this but wouldn't be suprised if we got a point or even managed to sneak all 3.

Just look at Sunderlands fixtures after they lost Darren Bent.

4 wins (bolton, west ham who was already relegated, wigan, blackpool)

1 draw

10 losses.

Hardly very good. They are now without Wellbeck, Bent, Gyan and Cattermole. They have a weak squad and Bendtner who I actually wanted to Rovers have been a flop and only has 2 goals so far.

[malk]

The Swansea win was huge. I also think Sunderland may be there for the taking. They do have the new manager bonus but I'm not sure that it will make this group of players any better. Usually a new manager comes in when a proven team has hit bad form, the proven players then have a lift and return to the form they showed before.

The Sunderland situation is very different, this is a completely new team with 9-10 new players in it. they will also be missing their midfield enforcer in cattermole so I expect a more open game. I think our attacking players are better than theirs. I can see there being goals in this but wouldn't be suprised if we got a point or even managed to sneak all 3.

Spot on. I'm hoping for the back four to settle down as well plus I think we match up quite well with their attack. Samba and Dann to snuff out Bendtner, Larsson doesn't have outright pace which helps Givet, Lowe has a bit of pace to match Richardson...

[booth]

Samba and Dann to snuff out Bendtner,

Shouldn't be too difficult, Bendtner's been absolutely gash.

[Audax]

I'm not projecting this on any club but worthy of thought, Newcastle:

Last 3 games:

Man City 3-1 Newcastle (a)

Man Utd. 1-1 Newcastle (a)

Chelsea 3-0 Newcastle (h)

So that's opposition 7, Newcastle 2 and some folks call the goal vs. MUFC a weak pen.

But before that, they put together a streak where they were not defeated for 11 games: http://www.soccerway.com/teams/england/newcastle-united-football-club/matches/

4 Draws, Arsenal, QPR, Villa, Spurs

7 Wins vs. Sunderland, Fulham, Blackburn, Wolves, Wigan, Stoke, Everton

So, apparently Newcastle does have some quality though that loss at home to Chelsea is pretty bad. But it goes to show that a club can break out, you see it plenty where all of a sudden a club is playing well. Not projecting it on any club, I think Stoke got out of the doldrums last year as well in their climb towards that FA Cup final in the first 4 months of this year. Before that, they weren't racking up a lot of points though not in dire straits by any means.

[Audax]

Just look at Sunderlands fixtures after they lost Darren Bent.

4 wins (bolton, west ham who was already relegated, wigan, blackpool)

1 draw

10 losses.

Hardly very good. They are now without Wellbeck, Bent, Gyan and Cattermole. They have a weak squad and Bendtner who I actually wanted to Rovers have been a flop and only has 2 goals so far.

You mention that Sunderland match from last year for Wigan, I remember, I was in relegation discussions last year and that was a game the Latics really needed but they got played off the pitch, if not for the total collapse by Brum, Wigan would have gone down as well. Wigan won there last week and I'm sure that played into things.

Bent surely should have been picked to play for England at the World Cup, that's all done and over with but I think it was nonsensical to leave him in England. Beyond belief and we saw how England did without him.

[Audax]

MON's a great manager but I would have thought he might have got some input to Sunderland in that last match vs. Wolves, Sunderland were playing well for most of the game, in the funny game o' football, Wolves took it. So, I think there is some hope in this game. The wild card, the unknown will be if there are such changes to Sunderland's game-plan that it might be something that the Rovers can prepare for. I think that is a possibility as well though in Villa's last games with MON, they certainly were not world beaters.

[rickard]

What I fear is that once we are relegated (which looks likely even after the win against Swansea), Venky's will cut any losses, walk away with the profits from any sales. Kean will receive some fee when fired and walk away a rich man for destroying our club. There is probably a hefty chunk of money in there for Jerome Anderson as well.

The sad feeling is that we're f**ked either way, even if we somehow manage to stay up this year, what is there to indicate that things will be better next season?

[jim mk2]

Good wins for Wigan, Swansea and Norwich but Bolton, Wolves and West Brom all lose. We need at least a point tomorrow.

Very surprised at Bolton's troubles - who has the worse Scottish manager, us or them ?

[Waggy76]

Good wins for Wigan, Swansea and Norwich but Bolton, Wolves and West Brom all lose. We need at least a point tomorrow.

Very surprised at Bolton's troubles - who has the worse Scottish manager, us or them ?

Us there is no comparison ,Coyle overall record is very good ....Keans; is atrocious

[den]

Games up to the new year:

Sunderland Away

WBA Home

Bolton Home

Liverpool Away

Man Utd Away

The next three games are absolutely crucial. 6 points from those 5 games [which would be very reasonable for our form] would leave us exactly half way in the fixture list, with a 16 points total. Nowhere near enough.

[Audax]

Wow, even Bolton still have 3 wins, just no draws.

Rovers and Sunderland 2 wins apiece but after tomorrow, maybe one will have 3 wins, might be a draw too.

Coyle is a good guy, Bolton can't seem to get on track for anything.

[glen9mullan]

Well another bad day in terms of results imo

Bolton losing is of no consequence cos three teams go down, and with many stopping behind Coyle may be next out, and tbh he deserves to go too, he got off to a good start as Bolton Manager but his record overall is not great, Just hope if he does get the hook, Bolton don't take a boss who could be doing a job for us like Sunderland have.

Wigan beating WBA is actually a good result, as I can't see Wigan stopping up this season, and if we can pull WBA closer to the trap door thats good news.

However Swansea and Norwich both picking wins up has put a lot of points between us and them, come May those are two teams you would be expecting to be fighting to stay up, however thats a lot of points for us to claw back especially as the last 12 months has seen us play relegation football. There is no stat to point to , to suggest we are capable of going on a 7-10 game run and are down there cos we have not been good enough.

Fulham are a funny side but their home form has always been what they have built survival on.

Everton is another team who I think may be drawn in as they have no money to spend and are thin on the ground in terms of numbers

January is going to be make or break for every team, Last season we had an awful window with only 1 of the 4 we brought in making an impact in the season run in, Kean has showed through the summer window that he can get the odd one in to hit the ground running but most signings are taking far too much time to bed in,

Sunderland will buy, Bolton will buy, WBA will buy, QPR will buy, Stoke will buy,

I think come the end of the season Wigan, Rovers, Everton and WBA will be fighting it out to stay up...

We need three points tomorrow, a defeat would be disasterous, a draw would suit Sunderland more than us,

whilst the 2 home games coming up we need 6 points, nothing less will do, especially with the three fixtures will follow those games