Fulham (A) - Sat 11th May, 12:30 | PL | Pre-Match Thread

[blue b4 the moon]

Is there a number any of you have thought about to make catching Arsenal on goal difference a possibility?
One would assume we need to win by at the least (4) on Saturday.
Fulham have given up (55) on the season. Far from a stout defense on top of having nothing to play for.

That would get us down to a difference of (2)
We draw with Spurs, and Arsenal beats United by (1)
We then have a realistic chance of catching thier (3) on the final Sunday.
We would just have to tie thier amount, because in this scenario we would certainly overtake them on goals scored for the season.
My understanding is total goals scored is still the third tiebreaker over head to head results.

It would of course take a Herculean effort from Everton when they have nothing to play for, but on current form Everton are a much more competitive then West Ham with a lame duck manager.
We would likely need to put 5 or 6 past West Ham to be safe, but that is certainly a possibility.
What drama that would be.

Regardless, I hope Pep is still thinking we have a realistic chance to catch Arsenal and not to take the foot off the pedal if we show up looking good on Saturday morning.

We need and will ignore goal difference, the dips tried pushing to close that in us at Palace.....the rest is history.

Win probably by a couple/three of goals and ideally kill the game before the spurs cup final midweek.

 

[SSL2]

I've been telling people on here for years that Kavanagh is a liverpool fan. And people at City know too.

I know him personally from being involved in Manchester FA over recent years - he is definitely a Liverpool fan despite growing up in Droylsden

 

[Stiff Little Wingers]

I agree it would be tough to relay on Everton on the final day with nothing to play for, but I certainly trust Everton’s defense right now over United’s.
We just have to hope United scores a few goals vs Arsenal on Sunday to not make GD completely out of the realm of possibility.

Let’s get one early on Saturday, and see if we can open the floodgates vs a Fulham team that may already be on the beach.

Forget about goal difference - there’s no chance. We’re away from home against a decent team and need to respect that. So winning the game is the be all and end all

 

[its a Barm]

Forget about goal difference - there’s no chance. We’re away from home against a decent team and need to respect that. So winning the game is the be all and end all

Correct no chance now of catching up that goal difference

 

[bridgeno1]

Correct no chance now of catching up that goal difference

Agreed, you guys have the points difference advantage! Doesn't matter if we score 10 at the Swamp if you win all 3 of your matches!

 

[supercity88]

It's too late for goal difference to come into play for us. We've closed the gap but it's still too much to overturn at this stage, particularly as Arsenal play the rags who have conceded more shots on their goal than any other team in the league this calendar year.

Ultimately, when Arsenal came to our place and got a point we were 3pts behind the dippers and 1pt behind Arsenal with 9 to play. We've won 6 in a row and their loss to Villa has opened the door for us. This is our joint best run of the season.

Beat Fulham and it does apply pressure to Arsenal for about 24hrs. It's our last chance to do so, and we've got to take it.

I'll worry about Spurs when we've beaten Fulham and when the final whistle blows at the swamp with an Arsenal victory. It's very rare for title races to go down to the final game so I'm not getting ahead of myself.

 

[Xhavenjoe]

Is there a number any of you have thought about to make catching Arsenal on goal difference a possibility?

Forget about GD.
It would only do your head in.
Carol Vorderman may be interested in it but we can only take it one game at a time

 

[Plain Speaking]

If you're looking for an issue you'll find one. Oliver looks like a blatant City fan based on those stats!

Your stats on Kavanagh aren't correct either. We've won 6 out of 10 (6 out of 9 in the league).

If a ref does the bigger games our record isn't going to be as good.

As I said those figures were correct in January, the matches played between now and then has given slightly different percentages.

City's win % with Taylor has actually go down further to 52.9%, while Utd have still the highest win % in the PL under Taylor with 56.1%.

Since the City sample size was smaller with Kavanagh, (10 matches), our win % has increased to 60% because of one win since then, but Kavanagh has only been officiating in the PL since 2017, entirely in the Pep era, and our win % in this time is 72.6%.

Kavanagh's win % for Liverpool is 72.2% (18 matches) although Klopp's overall win % is only 60.9% with Liverpool in the PL.

The stats certainly back up the assertions that Kavanagh is indeed a Liverpool fan and Taylor a United fan, whether subconscious or not? both have the lowest and significantly abnormal win % for City.

Oliver's win % are the closest to the overall win % of the club's involved, it clearly indicates of those 3 he is the fairest. (Although from his body language I have always considered he didn’t like us).

The stats are over the referee's entire PL history, all seasons, and they haven't had 'bigger games' throughout this time.

 

[Plain Speaking]

Are there any refs that we have a lower win percentage than these 2?

I have not come across any!

 

[supercity88]

As I said those figures were correct in January, the matches played between now and then has given slightly different percentages.

City's win % with Taylor has actually go down further to 52.9%, while Utd have still the highest win % in the PL with 56.1%.

Since the sample size was smaller with Kavanagh only 10 matches our win % has increased to 60% because of one win since then but Kavanagh has only been officiating in the PL since 2017, entirely in the Pep era, and our win % in this time is 72.6%.

Kavanagh's win % for Liverpool is 72.2% (18 matches) although Klopp's overall win % is only 60.9% with Liverpool in the PL.

The stats certainly back up the assertions that Kavanagh is indeed a Liverpool fan and Taylor a United fan, whether subconscious or not? both have the lowest and significantly abnormal win % for City.

Oliver's win % are the closest to the overall win % of the club's involved, it clearly indicates of those 3 he is the fairest. (Although from his body language I have always considered he didn’t like us).

The stats are over the referee's entire PL history and they haven't had 'bigger games' throughout this time.

Fair enough, and apologies for digging you out as I appreciate some evidence at least rather than the usual "he's corrupt" without anything backing it up.

Obviously Pep's win rate isn't as high against the top teams in the division. So the referees in charge of those games will have lower statistics too. But I'm sure on some marginal calls they can't help but go with their allegiance.

I'm firmly of the opinion you make your own luck though, and we just can't give them the chance to get involved! We've won the title three years in a row so whatever they're doing doesn't make much difference. Maybe they've been saving it up for these final games?!

Taking the games we haven't won with Kavanagh in charge - a 2-2 at St James, a 0-0 at the swamp and the 1-1 at home with the dippers this season. The disallowed goal for Akanji stands out. But VAR didn't step in, and frankly we've seen a lot of inconsistency around those this year. We got the goal at Spurs, Arsenal's whole set piece routine is to hassle the keeper, and we saw the rags have one ruled out for fuck all frankly against Palace.