soylee22

Glass half full: 3 points from Liverpool away, Chelsea away, Tottenham at home. Win against Wigan and we've got 6 from a run it would have been good to get 4. Glass half empty: Liverpool result seems a million miles away, a game which we were lucky to win given the Liverpool dominance and could have been a different game with a Liverpool early goal. Chelsea and Tottenham results equal the record for most goals conceded in 2 consecutive games (12). Failure to win the 6 pointer against Wigan and relegation is more of a threat. A note of depression - **** shocking that a Wigan game is 6 pointer. Used to be the Everton games!

Another quick comment on topic: Tonight really showed the difference between ourselves and Stoke. At the Britannia, Stoke give away a penalty and go 1-0 down a minute into the game. What happens? Stoke battle really hard, take the game to Liverpool, and end 2-1 up 15 minutes into the game. The reason for worry is that if that was us, we would have capitulated before we'd had time to find our seats!

Woeful first half, could have easily have been another 8-0 capitulation if they would have scored early. Beginning of second half looked promising, then a few defensive errors and the game is over by the hour interval. There have been comments here about investment being needed. The worrying thing about this is that according to a survey by Deloitte, since the transfer window period began in 2003, we've had the 7th highest spend on players with £201 million, after: Chelsea, Man City, Liverpool, Man Utd, Tottenham and Arsenal. Of course this is not net spend, and I fear that this figure would be worse! We do hark back to the O'Neil era, and we convinced ourselves that we had to cleanse the "fat lump" brigade he had brought in on far too high wages. Not sure how much I agree with this, although it severely damaged our wage structure. My point is this. What a difference a week makes. From beating Liverpool away 3-1 (a feat that looks less impressive having seen Stoke do the same thing tonight, albeit at Brittania) and getting the best possible semi-final draw for the cup, to a deep and thorough self-excavation. It is indeed the nature of these results that is what worries fans. We have completely capitulated like a team of under 9's after we realised that we aren't taking any points home. If the unthinkable happened and we actually won the Capital One Cup, then I do fear for our Premier League survival - the League Cup hangover is a real phenomenon and has taken hold of many other teams. If we did win that, then do you think the players would still keep playing for the league itself? Seems more likely to me, given our recent inability to overturn a losing situation in it seeming "pointless", and the league cup hangover effect, that we would plummet down the table.