Will we win the league this season?

[Corky]

5/1 now.
Was 3/1 after Wolves, 100/30 before Wolves.

Carpet to Hand.

Clear most of the world thinks it significantly less likely after the result yesterday.

 

[Boris Yeltsin]

Im having a similar conversation with someone else. If you think removing someone who guarantees 30-50 goals a season across all competitions will make the team better then you are entitled to that opinion. I think we use him better as he's otherworldly.

When he scores goals the others don't. I much preferred the football we played before and we were more dominant. You see his goals, i see the wider imbalance.

 

[madloaf]

When he scores goals the others don't. I much preferred the football we played before and we were more dominant. You see his goals, i see the wider imbalance.

We were more dominant? Was he playing when we won it all or not? You can't remove 3PL and a treble because it suits.

 

[citymad]

It would be if we hadn't witnessed what we did last season. If pep doesn't sort by Xmas he'll be under immense pressure and not just from the press.

He’s facing a lot of problems with the balance of the team and the squad:

• Trying to make us solid defensively — stop messing around with short goal kicks when under pressure.
• Deciding whether to play Doku regularly.
• If Sav leaves, we’ll have no natural width on the right.
• Figuring out how to get the best out of Haaland, who once again had no real service yesterday.
• Deciding what role Marmoush should play.
• Sorting out Rico, since everyone knows he’s not a natural right-back.
• Buying an actual right-back.
• Instilling more fight and aggression into the side, especially in midfield.
• Getting Phil back into form.
• Safely guiding Rodri back into form
• Choosing a strong, consistent centre-back pairing and sticking with it (no coincidence Arsenal, Spurs, and Liverpool haven’t conceded yet).

Right now, that doesn’t look like a team ready to win major trophies. But if Pep can ride out the next few games without too much damage, we might build momentum and start competing again.

 

[Big Joe Corrigan]

He’s facing a lot of problems with the balance of the team and the squad:

• Trying to make us solid defensively — stop messing around with short goal kicks when under pressure.
• Deciding whether to play Doku regularly.
• If Sav leaves, we’ll have no natural width on the right.
• Figuring out how to get the best out of Haaland, who once again had no real service yesterday.
• Deciding what role Marmoush should play.
• Sorting out Rico, since everyone knows he’s not a natural right-back.
• Buying an actual right-back.
• Instilling more fight and aggression into the side, especially in midfield.
• Getting Phil back into form.
• Safely guiding Rodri back into form
• Choosing a strong, consistent centre-back pairing and sticking with it (no coincidence Arsenal, Spurs, and Liverpool haven’t conceded yet).

Right now, that doesn’t look like a team ready to win major trophies. But if Pep can ride out the next few games without too much damage, we might build momentum and start competing again.

Er, the dippers let two goals in against Bournemouth.

 

[citymad]

Er, the dippers let two goals in against Bournemouth.

oops apart from those haha! Still look more solid than us.

 

[thegoatsthegoat]

We were more dominant? Was he playing when we won it all or not? You can't remove 3PL and a treble because it suits.

2pl*

As a team we scored more goals without him overall. We are reliant on him now without anyone else really chipping in. I agree we need to use him a lot better. I’d rather Haaland but if we can’t play to his strengths then as a team we suffer

 

[madloaf]

2pl*

As a team we scored more goals without him overall. We are reliant on him now without anyone else really chipping in. I agree we need to use him a lot better. I’d rather Haaland but if we can’t play to his strengths then as a team we suffer

Apologies, 2PL - brain fart.

If the argument is we play better football without him, i'd argue that coincides with the peaks of our best players - kev, gundo, bernardo etc. not because of Haaland. In any case, domination and good football are not the same thing as argued by the other poster.

 

[thegoatsthegoat]

Apologies, 2PL - brain fart.

If the argument is we play better football without him, i'd argue that coincides with the peaks of our best players - kev, gundo, bernardo etc. not because of Haaland. In any case, domination and good football are not the same thing as argued by the other poster.

Last season when he was injured is when we hit our form. He came back and we drew at Southampton and lost a cup final where he shit it from a penalty. I said we scored more as a team which we did. Goals were spread a lot more. I’d take the treble over scoring more as a team all day it’s just factual we scored more.

 

[Prophet of Doom]

He’s facing a lot of problems with the balance of the team and the squad:

• Trying to make us solid defensively — stop messing around with short goal kicks when under pressure.
• Deciding whether to play Doku regularly.
• If Sav leaves, we’ll have no natural width on the right.
• Figuring out how to get the best out of Haaland, who once again had no real service yesterday.
• Deciding what role Marmoush should play.
• Sorting out Rico, since everyone knows he’s not a natural right-back.
• Buying an actual right-back.
• Instilling more fight and aggression into the side, especially in midfield.
• Getting Phil back into form.
• Safely guiding Rodri back into form
• Choosing a strong, consistent centre-back pairing and sticking with it (no coincidence Arsenal, Spurs, and Liverpool haven’t conceded yet).

Right now, that doesn’t look like a team ready to win major trophies. But if Pep can ride out the next few games without too much damage, we might build momentum and start competing again.

Good points there. Not a chance we are competing for the title this year.

There is no leadership, charisma or character in the team. Who in our squad would you want alongside you when the pressure gets turned up.

We no longer have the technical ability to control games, and are the weakest team physically in the whole premier league. Our recruitment is a shambles summed up by the decision to buy a championship level goalkeeper and then put him straight in when he looks physically sick whenever the ball is passed to him. We used to show international legend goalkeepers the door that couldnt play with their feet, now we give championship level keepers with the same issues 6 year contracts !

Still without a right back 8 months after Walker left is negligence.

Viana has a week to save his job in my opinion cause we are sat with a bloated unbalanced squad going backwards which he’s done fuck all to sort out.

We’ve tossed off the season already cause there is no quick fix for this mess.

 

[Roachy]

5/1 now.
Was 3/1 after Wolves, 100/30 before Wolves.

Carpet to Hand.

Clear most of the world thinks it significantly less likely after the result yesterday.

And it will be if that performance isn't put to bed as a bit of a one off.

 

[SCEtoAUX]

When he scores goals the others don't. I much preferred the football we played before and we were more dominant. You see his goals, i see the wider imbalance.

Couldn't agree more.

If we don't create the chances for him then he falls into the category of luxury player.

 

[GOULDYBOBS]

As fans, do we deserve it?

 

[balotellishaircut]

I think this is the year we finish outside the top 4, call me negative or knee jerk, I just don’t see playing style addressed against the better teams and there’s loads of mid table teams like next week who can beat us.

 

[coolcity]

Armchairs experts? Lol. Do you know me? I attend every home game and many away games, I am a football coach, I have studied football. Am I a professional elitesl coach? No, but I am not armchair fan.

If you are saying spurs were average then that makes our dire performance even more dire surely?

Regarding the Wolves game, yes we played well in parts, but Wolves are probably going to be whipping boys this season judging by their performance again yesterday, so that's no yardstick to measure us against. Plus, we were hardly amazing throughout that entire game.

Yesterday was worrying because, we looked like a side who didn't know each other, that didn't know what our own manager wanted. And I'm not talking about the new players, I'm talking about players we've had for years. Is that disastrous? probably not in terms of doing reasonably well in the season once we get sorted, but this league now with the improvements other teams have made, time is a luxury we don't have if we want to become champions again.

expertS (plural) means more than one, i.e. not specifically referring to your comment exclusively - lol - and yes, I would say that just 5 shots on target and 36% possession makes Spurs sound decidedly average. They showed that they re likely to get in amongst teams this season - assuming they play like that every match, but as a coach you know that won't happen anyway- but they don't look like they will challenge for much.

And yes, we were dire yesterday by our standards but the point is Spurs weren't much better. But for the two mistakes we would have probably been looking at a 0-0. In fact we were actually doing OK until Ait-Nouri went off.

The problem I have is everybody assesses our entire season based on one match, which is ludicrous. You should know better than anybody that every team can have an off day and we have often started badly. But on it's own it's meaningless. If we have three or four matches like this out of the next half dozen then you have a point, I just don't understand the meltdown from people every time we lose a match. It's going to take time for the team to gel, new players having to play in this league, this country for the first time, older players having to adapt to the style of the new players, new coaches and so on. You should appreciate that more than most.

Incidentally we've lost 4 matches in over 6 months by my reckoning and this is the only one by more than one goal, 1-0 at Forest on 8 March, 1-0 v Palace in the FAC final, 4-3 in the CWC and 2-0 yesterday. I just think it feels worse than it is based on the fact that we didn't win anything last season.

 

[JULES]

we have as much chance as any other team, more probably. nows yer time to back city for the title, wont see these odds again. I have every confidence!

 

[coolcity]

What Spurs did exceptionally well yesterday was press us hard for the whole 90 minutes. And one of the (few) positives of yesterday is that there are few teams in the league who have the technical ability to be really good when in possession but press the life out of you when they don’t.

More importantly, if your game depends upon maintaining a suffocating press for the whole game, it’s one thing to do that in the first three or four months of the season when everyone is fresh. It’s much more difficult to maintain that through the winter months and into the spring especially if there isn’t much depth in the squad and you arent able to rotate.

It’s one of the reasons we have done much better in the second half of the season over the past few years.

We haven’t seen enough so far to say who the title contenders will be come April. But I still don’t see Spurs maintaining that sort of challenge over 9 months

Absolutely spot on. What annoys me is everybody bases their opinions on the result, a Spurs "masterclass" in which they only had one shot more than we did and only had half the possession we had. Given the fact that their goals both came from mistakes it would probably have ended up 0-0 if it weren't for that, they were nothing special so while we were poor it's not like they were way ahead of us. In fact we did OK until Ait-Nouri had to go off.

We're in a situation where we have new players who have to get used to a new club, a new country, a new league, while existing players who need to get used to playing with new players, to the methods of new coaching staff, against teams that themselves have new players, coaches and managers and whatever the matchday plan may be it's not always going to work, especially in the early days until everybody is in tune with everybody else.

For me, I've seen enough from the CWC to tell me that once they get a few games under their belt we'll frighten the life out of most clubs in this league, and in Europe. They just need a little time and let's not forget we've only lost 4 matches since early March.

 

[Moss Side's Finest]

expertS (plural) means more than one, i.e. not specifically referring to your comment exclusively - lol - and yes, I would say that just 5 shots on target and 36% possession makes Spurs sound decidedly average. They showed that they re likely to get in amongst teams this season - assuming they play like that every match, but as a coach you know that won't happen anyway- but they don't look like they will challenge for much.

And yes, we were dire yesterday by our standards but the point is Spurs weren't much better. But for the two mistakes we would have probably been looking at a 0-0. In fact we were actually doing OK until Ait-Nouri went off.

The problem I have is everybody assesses our entire season based on one match, which is ludicrous. You should know better than anybody that every team can have an off day and we have often started badly. But on it's own it's meaningless. If we have three or four matches like this out of the next half dozen then you have a point, I just don't understand the meltdown from people every time we lose a match. It's going to take time for the team to gel, new players having to play in this league, this country for the first time, older players having to adapt to the style of the new players, new coaches and so on. You should appreciate that more than most.

Incidentally we've lost 4 matches in over 6 months by my reckoning and this is the only one by more than one goal, 1-0 at Forest on 8 March, 1-0 v Palace in the FAC final, 4-3 in the CWC and 2-0 yesterday. I just think it feels worse than it is based on the fact that we didn't win anything last season.

Appreciate the lengthy reply and I do actually agree on many of your points. I think we all just don't want a repeat of last season.

 

[Colin Bells Boots]

Good points there. Not a chance we are competing for the title this year.

There is no leadership, charisma or character in the team. Who in our squad would you want alongside you when the pressure gets turned up.

We no longer have the technical ability to control games, and are the weakest team physically in the whole premier league. Our recruitment is a shambles summed up by the decision to buy a championship level goalkeeper and then put him straight in when he looks physically sick whenever the ball is passed to him. We used to show international legend goalkeepers the door that couldnt play with their feet, now we give championship level keepers with the same issues 6 year contracts !

Still without a right back 8 months after Walker left is negligence.

Viana has a week to save his job in my opinion cause we are sat with a bloated unbalanced squad going backwards which he’s done fuck all to sort out.

We’ve tossed off the season already cause there is no quick fix for this mess.

Nobody was really expecting anything less from a poster with your username :)

 

[Bluewonder]

We aren't an outstanding team anymore, but I don't think there are any in the league right now.

If we can get to 85 points I think we'll have a good chance.