Premier League season, 2021 / 2022

I was just trying to point out that Palace should be our last game in the first half of the season, as you say Rob (when we've played all 19 of the other teams once). Arsenal should be the first game of the second half as we've already played them. When judging where we are at the halfway point, we should thus include Palace but treat Arsenal part of the second half. Having said that though, we'll probably beat Arsenal and lose to Palace.

 

Ah sorry, I see! Yes, we can sort of flip around Palace and Arsenal

 

Anybody know if any of the Spurs players/ staff who have testing positive for Covid had already contracted it when they played us?

 

Our next 6 matches compared to the teams around us:

Norwich
Dec 11 – Manchester United (H)
Dec 14 – Aston Villa (H)
Dec 18 – West Ham United (A)
Dec 26 – Arsenal (H)
Dec 28 – Crystal Palace (A)
Jan 1 – Leicester City (A)

Newcastle
Dec 12 – Leicester City (A)
Dec 16 – Liverpool (A)
Dec 19 – Manchester City (H)
Dec 27 – Manchester United (H)
Dec 30 – Everton (A)
Jan 2 – Southampton (A)

Burnley
Dec 12 – West Ham United (H)
Dec 15 – Watford (H)
Dec 18 – Aston Villa (A)
Dec 26 – Everton (H)
Dec 30 – Manchester United (A)
Jan 2 – Leeds United (A)

Watford
Dec 10 – Brentford (A)
Dec 15 – Burnley (A)
Dec 18 – Crystal Palace (H)
Dec 26 – Wolverhampton Wanderers (A)
Dec 28 – West Ham United (H)
Jan 1 – Tottenham Hotspur (H)

 

This looks worrying. Watford's fixtures look much easier than ours. If we are still only three points behind them at the end of this six-match run, I would be satisfied.

 

Newcastle fixtures look daunting and they can’t bolster their squad until January 1st. Realistic points from AV at home and Crystal Palace away which is on Amazon Prime Video

 

Yep - Burnley’s look slightly easier too.

Aim is to stay in touch with Burnley and Watford over the next six.

 

My hope is based on our improvement after we lost the first 6 games as the 9 new players adjusted to our squad and the PL. In the last 9 games we've had 2 wins, 4 draws and 3 losses earning 10 points. That's an average of 1.1 points and if we can manage that rate over our remaining games we would be on 35-36 points with a decent chance of survival.

We are currently 6th in the form table with 4 of the last 5 games under Smith. Our last 5 games have produced 8 points and an average 1.6 points per game. If we maintained that over our remaining games we'd end up with 47 points but the 35-36 points is a more likely target. Watford, by comparison, are currently 20th in the form table having taken only 3 points from the last 5 games.

Smith strikes me as having a pragmatic approach to the PL derived from his experience gained at Villa and the players seem to be responding to that. The formation and tactics against Spurs were good and might have produced a better result if our finishing had lived up to the rest of the performance. I suspect that's something S&S have been working on this week and let's hope that produces results.

 

The problem is that everyone above Southampton in 16th have so far averaged in excess of a point a game. Effectively this means that we have to do better than all three of the teams immediately above us. I think that is fairly unlikely. In my opinion we are down. It's nobody's fault as such, not Smith or Farke, it's just a function of the big gap between the top two flights. Watford are in the mix and Brentford might get sucked into the fight yet.

 

We could survive by edging out Burnley and Newcastle and overtaking Watford, who are 3 points ahead of us. The key thing for me is what the impact of Smith and Shakespeare will be over the rest of the season. Ranieri hasn't produced the new manager bounce at Watford as they have slid down the table. Brentford's early promotion adrenalin is also ebbing as they slide as well. We've caught up with Burnley and Newcastle over recent weeks and those 5 teams are likely to be in the relegation dogfight and Newcastle have a brutal next 4 games.

Watford have ManUtd and ManCity in their next 4 and go to Brentford on Friday. Southampton, Leeds and Palace all have some breathing space but only Leeds and Southampton have met the point a game target over the last 5 games, though we have picked up 2 points on Leeds over the last 5, 3 points over Southampton and 4 over Palace. With 23 games left we do have a chance if Smith can keep the momentum going and we move out of the bottom 3 and close the gap on the others.

Here's the current form table where we are 6th with 8 points from the last 5:

 

There is a gap, but some promoted teams manage to bridge it where others don't. We widen the gap for ourselves by the choices we make -- e.g. opting for a self-sustaining financial model and committing to a style of football more suited to a Champions League team than relegation battlers. This isn't meant as a complaint; just saying how it is (or at least has been).

 

?

 

That's a pretty good reason for not be scrolling through Twitter.

 

So with this weekend's loss we slip further behind our 11/12 and 12/13 season because both those season's we had some sensational results against the "big" teams at home (and referees were not quite so effective at keeping us at bay)


2021/22 running total after 16 games: 10 points

2011/12 equivalent running total after 16 games: 16 points

2012/13 equivalent running total after 16 games: 20 points

 

Somewhat interesting info:

Despite not winning in our last four games, over the last five games we're still 13th in the form table, tied on points with Leeds and Newcastle and ahead of everyone else in the bottom half but Villa.

 

Man Utd's game s Brentford is off due to covid cases

 

I couldn't find how many players they have out. Is it more than other teams, or are the PL granting them special dispensation? No surprise at all if they are.

 

The Daily Mail report that the spike in Premier League cases has raised fears that the league may have to shut down while the Omicron variant spreads.

"The clubs' worries have been exacerbated by the slow pace of their vaccination programmes, which has left the majority of players facing a wait to receive the booster jab required to provide protection against Omicron, after studies showed that two jabs offer little immunity," writes Matt Hughes in the paper.

 

It's going to be a shutdown isn't it? On Newsnight they were talking about potentially a million infections a day. Cue Private Fraser....

 

There's no summer international tournament to worry about in 2022, pausing the league for a month or so shouldn't be too problematic?