To repeat myself... the best thing we can do is pack out the stadium and channel the optimism. It's worthless on a forum.
People are upbeat about City because the team are playing consistently well. No-one knows how this season will turn out, but good confident football from a team in City's position is the most you can ask for at this point in the season. I bet Leicester, Boro and Sunderland fans wish their players were playing with the self-belief that ours are now.
I am not sure what I am, but I might be in the minority in thinking we will probably still go down. This isn't me having a go at Silva or the Allams that's just my opinion. I don't think we have enough goals in us, despite renewed performances I think we are still lacking that cutting edge and we will create chances and not take them. Secondly, our main source of goals, set pieces, looks a lot weaker now that we have let Snoddy go. We let him go for whatever reason, but our set pieces have decreased in quality since he went. I just don't think we will score enough to stay up. Our squad is still relatively small, Silva has done his best to try and re-balance it to suit his team, but he needed more than January to do that. If we stay up and he stays, I reckon next season we would have a very good squad. The staying up bit is the hard bit! I really hope I am wrong, but I think the points we dropped earlier in the season (Middlesborough away is a particularly annoying one!) might come back to haunt us.
Does anyone else think that Snoddy would have had difficulty fitting into what is now , under MS, a much more fluid style of play? We will hopefully tighten up the defence and play more attacking football than under Brucey/Phelan.
Same here. Some posters misread it as being miserable or trolling. I think it's just very premature to imagine we have the saviour of the universe in place and we are at risk of losing him to Arsenal! I think we have a better chance than we had a month ago and I'm as hopeful as the rest. One thing I'm sure of. Completely sure of. Unlike some... I want us to be premier league. I don't want the bullshit that is "the championship is so much better".
There are definitely three teams worse than we are. More key injuries are my only worry. If we can stay fit, we'll stay up.
I will watch my club whichever league we are in. I want us to stay in the ELP mainly because I fear if we go down, then there will be a fire sale and we could plummet further. Best chance of us getting sold is if we stay up.
Just got this feeling that after the Burnley match our attacking players are going to start to score regularly. No idea why, not been drinking or on drugs but there it is, just this feeling that all will be ok come the last match of the season.
It wouldn't surprise me if Silva is concentrating on attacking skills and tactics with the players in Portugal. We need to improve the final ball to the strikers, work on sustained attacks rather than just counter-attacking (for when teams park the bus) and round off a few thru'penny bit heads to get the occasional header on target.
The ball that was played across the six yard box to Niasse on Saturday was perfect, a natural goalscorer would have anticipated and gambled on it reaching him for a easy tap-in.
I think we depended on set pieces too much under Bruce. I think Silva realised from the start that there needs to be more to our game than a Snodgrass freekick to keep us up this season. Hopefully our main source of goals now will be from open play. I dont think we've seen the best from Silva's City this season, not by a long shot. He sets us up very specifically depending on the opposition and our last 4 games have been against really tough teams, so we were set up to defend and counter mostly. I think he's already come out and said we'll play attacking football against other teams and in Grosicki, Niasee & Markovic we've got a front 3 that will cause many teams problems. My only concern is pinning all our hopes on Niasee to score the goals. Im sure he'll grab a few more this season but we need goals from midfield too.
Judging by the attacking players Silva targeted in the last window (including Salibur) you get the feeling he could unearth a quality striker or two in the summer. Lets hope we're still in the PL and he's still here.