The Title Race - 2024/25

[Indaparkside]

Cheers pal but I'm not shitting myself.

Do you always smell that bad then

 

[Inca Roads Bert]

Scoring last minute is luck mate, on another day VAR rob us of victory. We did nothing that deserved us the win. A keeper is paid to make saves. We got away with another one today.

We currently look absolutely nowhere near a team that's going to win the title. We've played Brentford, Fulham and fucking Wolves and scraped through all 3.

Early days and City are known to be slow starters and like I said Arsenal & Liverpool don't look good enough either. All to play for.

No it is not.
You get the luck you've worked for.
Phil's precise delivery plus Stonesy power header from the eighteenth corner ain't no fucking luck for fuck's sake. It is hard work, skills and talent.

 

[citytill1die84]

No it is not.
You get the luck you've worked for.
Phil's precise delivery plus Stonesy power header from the eighteenth corner ain't no fucking luck for fuck's sake. It is hard work, skills and talent.

You say no it's not then literally say you get the luck you work for....

Lol

 

[Inca Roads Bert]

You say no it's not then literally say you get the luck you work for....

Lol

Reading comprehension is bad luck, el oh el
Must be the flapping. Let's get an ouija board. el oh el.

 

[Psychedelic Casual]

Not impressed with any team I’ve seen so far this season. Title could go anywhere. Loooong way to go yet n’all.

 

[waspish]

At moment Liverpool looked the best team in premier don't let many in makes plenty of chances! One thing though they rely on Salah so much

 

[Tb1981]

Looks like it’s gonna back same as last season
We don’t look great but are getting the points
Liverpool higher now than maybe they will end
Arsenal getting points but also dropped some in games you would expect
Next weekend is huge for us, Get three points then site back and watch arsenal or Liverpool drop points

 

[Heath Park]

Sounds like the start of a Beatles song.

They didn't realised that their kit had changed...

 

[Psychedelic Casual]

Scoring last minute is luck mate, on another day VAR rob us of victory. We did nothing that deserved us the win. A keeper is paid to make saves. We got away with another one today.

We currently look absolutely nowhere near a team that's going to win the title. We've played Brentford, Fulham and fucking Wolves and scraped through all 3.

Early days and City are known to be slow starters and like I said Arsenal & Liverpool don't look good enough either. All to play for.

There’s no such thing as luck.

Much like karma, omens, signs, destiny, fate, jinxes, hoodoos, curses and magic… luck doesn’t exist.

What people describe as ‘luck’ is just preparation meeting opportunity. If you never give up and work hard until the end of the game to score the winner, there is a possibility it will happen.

I do agree though, there’s nothing about us outside that work ethic that makes us look like a team that would usually win the league. We look so far behind the quality of our football we used to have in either the 2017-18 Centurions season or the 2018-19 Fourmidables season, and we look nowhere near the goal threat we did then.

It is understandable when our ideal starting midfield of Rodri, Foden and de Bruyne aren’t starting games and looking back to then our starting midfield was Fernandinho, DSilva and de Bruyne. Due to players being out it’s currently Kovačić, Gündoğan and BSilva who - despite being similar in age to Fernandinho and DSilva from 2017 to 2019 - are all looking like their best years are well behind them.

But there’s something else that feels like it’s missing and that’s an abundance of creators and goal scorers. Our biggest goal threats outside Haaland are currently Kovačić, Gvardiol and Stones (none of which are even attacking players). When we used to have Agüero, Jesus, Sterling, Mahrez, Sané, de Bruyne, DSilva and a younger Gündoğan… who all contributed to goal threats.

Doku, Savinho, Lewis and current Gündoğan simply aren’t doing enough. Grealish is looking like a bigger goal creating and scoring threat in cameos at the end of games (Arsenal at home, yesterday) than those three combined from starting games.

A number of windows where we’ve brought in players no better or not as good as our challengers have, has seen us level out with them now.

However, de Bruyne and Foden will be back playing soon and we have one thing over all the other teams in Pep that still sets us apart, so there’s still a chance that it’ll click when they are back in the team in good form.

To answer the OP’s question, I feel like this will be a close and lower points achieving season at the top than we’ve seen for many of the seasons under Pep. Say, 85 points for the winner, because I just don’t think there are any special teams at the moment and I think all the top sides will drop points against more teams than we usually would.

 

[Lovebitesandeveryfing]

Well, I know this much.
We may not be playing particularly well, but we're certainly not playing worse than we were at this stage last year. People forget. Think on this…
We really struggled to beat Sheffield United, then got a fairly comfortable series of victories. But it's noticeable that we kept shipping goals. Clean sheets were rare. We were put out of the League Cup towards the end of September by Newcastle, then beaten in short order by Wolves and Arsenal. By early October we'd been beaten twice. Furthermore, not very convincing performances which involved the shipping of goals continued until late into the autumn, because we drew against Spurs at our place, Chelsea at theirs, Liverpool and Palace at our place (in all cases, shipping goals), and were defeated for the third time before Christmas at Villa in early December. Really not a particularly scintillating autumn.
There are problems, most obviously the screening of the defence by two fine footballers who are neither of them in the first flush of youth, to put it mildly. But we are towards the end of October, and unbeaten. I think our two rivals have both got weaknesses, but the media get giddy about Arsenal, then get giddy about Liverpool, on alternate weeks, simply because they just want to see anyone beat City to the title. The headlines this morning are instructive: ‘Liverpool can go all the way’ because Micah Richards says so (yeah, thanks for that insight, Micah), but, grudgingly, there was ‘drama’ at Molineux (sub-text: City stole it). There was no drama whatsoever at Molineux, and if Chelsea had anyone apart from Palmer who can finish properly that would have been a draw at Anfield. One becomes weary of the way the media constantly puts its thumb in the pan to weigh down the scales. But it will continue… sigh.
I think this guy from Catalonia will find the solution to the defensive midfield. I also think he'll renew. And hearts will sink in Liverpool and north London when he does.