more worried about dippers as apart from the actual top teams not many clubs can stand up to them and get a result.
dippers lost points so far in these fixtures:
Chelsea away draw
Spurs away loss (infamous VAR communication blunder, somehow these audios never shared after City games)
Luton away draw
City away
rags home draw
Arsenal home draw
Arsenal away loss
all top teams except the Luton game, it means anyone outside top7 or so is beaten by the dippers so far
now they have 13 games left and only 9 of them are not against above tricky clubs. (I wont class their next Pool-Luton game tricky)
basically they have Pool-rags, Pool-City, Villa-Pool and maybe Everton-Pool, Pool-spurs at a stretch where there is a chance of them not winning(fully expect Dyche to lie down to Klopp and Emery too, Ten Hag the clown, Postecoglou and Pep gives him a game hopefully), but they also can also win 2-3 of these easily. other 8-9 games left is likely a win hard to see Forest, WHU, Fulham , Palace , Sheffield, Brighton etc to trouble them, much more like dippers on a 2 goal lead already at HT vs these...
we are really on a tight rope due to our points lost so far, and we aint blowing team away that much this season, we often couldnt kill off teams from a lead letting them equalize, we can make a real struggle to beat some ordinary team too or making their defence/keeper a hero, while Pool or Arsenal rips apart them at HT recently.
imo its unlikely 83-84 points would be enough, more like 85-87 very much needed imo.
for that we would need 32-34 from the available 42 maximum.
very hard with still to play:
Spurs away
Pool away
Villa home
rags home
Arsenal home
Palace away
Brighton away
etc.
we can afford potentially 4 more draws or 1 loss and 3 draws of 14 games left. any worse than that imo wont worth title win.
but also I can see dippers winning 10 more games, draw 3 or win 10, draw 2 and lose 1. thats 90 points or 89 points. near impossible for us to match that with above fixtures still left to play. of course even the likes of Palace went and lied down to everyone last few weeks except at Etihad and now they change manager and we face a much different Palace I bet,same as Chelsea beaten by rags, Castle, Pool comfortably only for them to find some form before the City game and ride out a draw...
lot depends on the dippers-City game early March. lose that and we give them incredible belief, added motivation, momentum that they can do it.
or win that and we can peg them back, self doubt can creep in for them etc.
draw aint helping us much (Arteta would be licking his lips tho), but of course hell of a lot better than a loss.
cant see us winning there given how many times we went there sometimes even in much better form that what we have these days and shit the bed, that Mahrez pen miss as the crux of it, last min pen to win finally there and he fires it above few years ago...
