tomsky_11

Not with that attitude!!!

More than half the season to go. 6 points off 6th. Nah, still plenty to play for.

Lol surely not.

Racists and homophobes should not be welcome. The club would agree. A group highlighting anti-racist/homophobic messaging really shouldn't be an issue.

Didn't realise that had been an issue. Any idea what actually happened and caused them to seemingly stop overnight? About the only thing I seem to remember around the time was some issue from the club with them standing in that section, at a time when less of the Lower Holte was standing for 90. Which I think had followed some mixed messages from club about a singing section.

Majority of comments on the first post look supportive actually. Even the "dOn'T mAkE iT pOLiTiCaL" stuff from Trump/Farage retweeters is at least on board with the general idea lol. Definitely need something like this and is a shame the Brigada lot before seemed to get shut down. I think having the safe standing in at the time would have given them a chance. Which amongst other things unfortunately makes me think the new North Stand might not be the best place for this new group. As far as I can tell they plans to introduce safe standing at VP are for other areas of the ground, not the new North. I'm guessing that it's a group in the current North Lower behind this. I'd assume this group sprung up in part because of the incredibly cheap season tickets originally offered in this section. I get the impression the new North will be the opposite, probably one of the more "premium" areas of the stadium, and if so doesn't feel like the best place to try and locate such a group. Hope I'm wrong as would be good to see something like this take off.

On the subject of ultras/fan groups, looks like maybe someone is trying to do something...

Felt to me like a lot of regulars had moved in the ground or not turned up. Barely anyone in usual seats by me (a positive in some cases as per previous post!), lots of empty seats, lots of really young kids who couldn't see half the game. If it was like this elsewhere in the stadium then not suprising chants barely got off the ground.

My god some of the people by me in the Holte are the worst. Never positive even when its going well, eg. spent most of the time Grealish was here taking the piss out of him or that fact that fans were excited by him. No patience for anything other than lumping the ball forward. Borderline racist/homophobic shit at times as well.

Lol has f all to do with "health and safety".

Huh?! Surely that's only cringey if you think that was being sung seriously. I'd have thought it was not.

This and this. A long way to go in this country to even get close to other places though. From the pricing, not just games but public transport as well, to policing and many other things. Not to say more couldn't be done here, despite the restrictive culture. That Palace ultra group seem to do a decent job. And the more these groups appear and are successful, the more I think fan pressure can be applied to improve things for fans.

I'm sure we would, I go further to say top 6 would have been likely right now given where the point are. But that assumes we'd have gotten Unai then, which I don't think is neccessarily guaranteed. Also would have required sacking Gerrard in the summer which, easy to say in hindsight, would have been a tough call after being 9th on form in PL, 7th best scorers and 8th best defence since his arrival. IMO Gerrard went at the most reasonable time and we got a major upgrade, one that certainly still gives us a chance of top 7 this season. I don't think it's teams dropping points that is the issue. Fully expect Brentford, Brighton, Fulham to drop to between 50 and 55 points by end of season. Chelsea is a bigger question mark because of the squad they have and what Potter has shown at Brighton, but things aren't turning around there yet. Bigger issue might be whether 7th or 6th even gets you into Europe. Only 3 of 8 sides left in EFL Cup are likely to finish in top 6 and at most 4 of the last 16 in the FA Cup. 10 points from 15 is pretty good so are, especially given opposition. Not sure we've had enough of these under Emery to judge yet. Wolves maybe the only one at a push, but then local derby, against a new manager for them, and one who knows Emery having already faced him this season. Even with that I'd still expected a win given where they were in the league, but I don't think a point was a disaster, especially when we probably should have won it at the end. We will definitely find out soon though. 8 of our next 11 fixtures (and possibly 9 of 12 depending on reschedule of Leicester game) are against current bottom half sides.

I think where Coutinho comes into play is in games or periods of games where we expect or are pushing to be higher up the pitch with lots of possession. Basically like the Wolves second half, where we switched from 442 to 4231 and Coutinho took the wide left of the three, with Buendia coming central and Bailey wide right.

2nd best points return from first 5 games of tenure for a Villa manager in the PL (of 12) Needs 6 points from next 5 games to at least be tied for 2nd after 10 games. Needs to win all of next 5 games to go 1st.

I don't think the win at Brighton was undeserved, and it wasn't luck that got us back into the game last night, it was tactical changes that swung the game back our way, and we probably should have won in the end. Lol not this again.

If we can somehow maintain 2ppg we'd finish on 62 points. I think 7th would be nailed on and 6th highly likely. 8th place has never been more that 61 points, 62 is the average for 6th, and has got as high as 4th (though not since 2005 not going to happen this season)

Ha! Was expecting this from someone.

Brighton are where they are now more because of Potter. They've only taken 1 more point in 11 games than Potter picked up in 6. Don't expect them, Fulham or Brentford to be anywhere other than the 50-55 point mark by end of season, which is about where I'd expect us to be as well: Hopefully that black line can stay above the green one a bit longer. We aren't and won't solely be a counter attacking side under Emery. I expect we'll be more adaptable game-to-game and also within games than we've seen for a long time, if ever. I think we've already seen that in the few games he's been here.

Overplaying the lost points under Gerrard. Those points would have helped but plenty of teams around us have and will drop similar games. Chelsea did only yesterday. We've still got plenty of games more favourable than those you've mentioned, and now we've an elite manager to take us through them. 11 home games remaining include 6 bottom half sides plus Fulham and Brighton. The other are Spurs who we've just convincingly beat, Newcastle which will like Spurs be tough but winnable, and Arsenal. Away games look a bit trickier, but we've still 5 left against teams currently below us in the table.

Yep, although I'd suggest we aren't facing anyone with close to the quality of Liverpool, against whom we created plenty of chances ourselves. Will definitely give us a better idea of how we might approach and perform in the more winnable games the remainder of this season.

Not sure it's expecting miracles. Just an expectation of our coach to perform at a level similar to that he's done before with reasonably similar level of squad. Top 10 at this point is more likely than not IMO. 39-40 point in 25 games then. Takes us to 51-52. More than enough most seasons for top half. Looking at the remaining games, I had us down for a 53 point season following the Brentford game and Emery's announcement, of which 40 would come from Emery's 25 games. We're already 3-4 points ahead of schedule for this, with much more favourable fixtures to come.

Should have a pretty good chance of doing so with those games. 10-11 points is good enough to keep us on course for 60 points IMO. 8 wouldn't be a disaster.

I had us down for 18-19 points following Spurs to be on course for 60 point season. So 2-3 ahead of that right now. My expected points for the remaining fixtures (which would have originally got us a 53 point season) get us a 56-57 point season, which on average in PL in last 20 or so seasons is just shy of 7th but comfortably good enough for 8th. Equaling Emery's worst 21 game points haul for remainder of season gets us to 44 points. Which on average is a 13th place finish.

11 points from next 6 games to stay on course for 60 point season.