tomsky_11

Nah I think we've got an easier run of 11 games second half of the season. eve CRY whu BOU che NFO NEW bre FUL mnu wol Differences to first 11 are NEW bre mnu wol instead of ars MNC SOU lee and the other fixtures reverse ties.

The lowest points total he's ever achieved in his entire managerial career from a 26 league game run is 31 (23/02-02/11/2013 at Sevilla), so if he equals this in our remaining games we still finish on 43 points. Lock. It. Up.

Nope. Posted in the Emery thread as well, even equalling the ppg from his worst season by that measure from now to end of this season, we'd still finish on 48 points.

If we equal his ppg from his first season at Arsenal from now to the end of this season we will finish on 60 points If we equal the ppg from the worst league seasons of his entire career (Almeria after promotion to LaLiga 07-08, Sevilla 15/16 in year he won third consecutive Europa League) from now til the end of this season, we'll finish on... 48 points.

Given the number of goals his teams seem to score (and sometimes concede) why do you think he's too defensive? Genuine question btw as I've not seen anywhere near enough of his teams play to have an opinion. Just going off the stats. I mean all 4 of them worked pretty well together yesterday. Wouldn't be so quick to write of playing both Watkins and Ings, especially when we were more successful under Gerrard when starting both together as well (20 points from 15 games, [1.33ppg] vs 24 points from 23 games [1.04ppg] when only starting one of them)

His 442/4141 looks like its only been used in the majority at Villareal. Arsenal was predominantly 4231 first season but got messy second season, looks like he also tried 433, 442, 442 diamond, 4312 and 3412 in the 13 games he had before the sack. PSG 433 nearly all the time. Sevilla looks like 4231 about 80% of the time. Feels like maybe he finds a system for the players at his disposal, uses that most of the time, but can mix it up depending on the opposition.

Is the notion of him being defensive from his time at Arsenal or elsewhere? Because in his full season there, they were 3rd top scorers after City and Liverpool, but only 9th for fewest goals conceded. When he was sacked by Arsenal they'd scored 18 and conceded 19 in 13 games. Doesn't sound very defensive to me. In two full seasons at Villareal he's finished 7th but had 4th highest scoring team both times. Defensively they were 8th and 4th in these two seasons.

This one I've not tried, in part because reviews seemed poor. Assume you are a fan?

Tbf that Emery tweet of his was three days ago.

Never played it tbh, thought think I may have picked it up on steam sale at some point, so will maybe have to go back to it. How easy is Viccy 2 to get into compared to other Paradox stuff? Most of my hours have been CK2/3. Bit of Stellaris and HOI4, only recently started properly with EU4 since picked it up on Humble Bundle. Found Stellaris and CK the easiest to get into. HOI took a bit longer, think I'm at the point where I know what I'm doing but well off being any good at it. EU4 I'm still learning the ropes.

Hyped for it but bit annoying they promoted as being game pass day one then pulled it.

Yeah, especially when handed a difficult job replacing Anthony late before the game. That quarter where he just went off from deep was awesome. Hopefully more of that to go with solid defence, and less need to cover at point.

Nah, defensively we should be sound once players return from injury. Martinez, Cash, Carlos, Mings/Konsa, Digne and Kamara should be easily good enough to for any decent manager to get us on track for top half. The key for any new manager is going to be getting a tune out of the midfield/forwards, which again I think on paper there's enough for our short term aims, though they've shown less than the defensive end under the last two managers, so should probably be more at risk of replacement.

All those things listed still speculation, media talk, and things that might never be confirmed definitively even once we've made an appointment. Not that I particularly buy any of these twitter ITKs, but wasn't there another guy that was literally naming players we'd sign before even any talk of them in the press, like Chambers.

Gerrard was the "wrong" appointment and he kept us up from an almost identical position. Wouldn't worry about relegation too much yet.

Have to disagree. Not sure we should confuse the issues this season with last season, because there were absolutely signs of progress last season and clear differences in approach on the pitch and in underlying statistics. 10 game average npxG (Green) and npxGA (Orange) for Beale's tenure. Reached 10 games on 22/01/22 so anything before that includes games under Smith. Fairly quick drop in chances conceded, pretty much maintained at good level until late in season. Longer to improve chances created but did so, to point where, with the improvements defensively as well, the npxGD was +0.52 at peak end of April/early May (was -0.4 in Smith's last 10 games), again with small drop off. On the drop off at the end, take just the games against City and Liverpool where they were chasing the title out the equation and the drop of doesn't happen, npxGA barely goes above 1, and npxGD would still be around +0.25. First 10 games of this season the same numbers look like this: avg npxG 0.9, npxGA 1.07, npxGD -0.17. So less of a difference defensively, but big drop of in chances created from a peak 10 game average of 1.41npxG from a run ending early May. Either way, given the noise around club being willing to spend big, plus the fact there is an associating with the man we've just sacked, plus Beale's own recent comments on the Wolves approach, I highly doubt he'll be realistically considered, even if he's probably not a bad economical option.

Critchley was never staying. If his role and influence was anything like Beale's was meant to be, then if Gerrard went he'd have to as well.

Nope. No short term fixes. If Gerrard got us out of a similar situation last season, we don't need to panic yet.

Yeah was impressed with both of them too. Was a decent game. Both teams building something good. We just need fewer injuries/illness so we can actually have a decent PG.

This was in response to question about Potter and what his expectations would be from their fans, etc. If anything its about putting more pressure on them than us, because I doubt Gerrard was saying the same to our players. They didn't. They were lucky to get a result in the end and our performance was very good. Non issue. He's right in the specific terms he mentioned. We are 6 points from last 5 games, and were unlucky it wasn't more. That is better than 0 points from 5 games and having deserved that return from them. Wider context sure that's less the case. Longer term form compared to where Smith is about the same in terms of points return. We are absolutely better defensively than Smith's team and consistely have been under Gerrard. We are cleary worse in forward areas than under Smith (at least when we had Grealish. Without him, less so.) though until this season we were on the whole trending upwards in this area. But clearly Gerrard is going to try and back himself and try and highlight what positives he can. Be weird if he didn't Same kinda shite most manager's come out with at most press conferences. "Opposition are better than you might think so we need to be prepared, can't expect anything to come easy." Keeps own players focused. Puts more expectation on opposition. Non issue.

Maybe. Maybe not. If he does, we've probably got a 50/50 chance of being top half though. And if we do have 15 points from 12 he's probably close enough to being on target for a top half finish that he'll still be here until the winter break at least (though I'd imagine if we were still on 15 at that point he'd be gone)

47.5 points over a season. If you consider the points required to be top half as the minimum the team finishing 10th could have got and still finished there, then 47 points would be enough in more than half of the last 20 seasons. If we are talking enough to overtake the team finishing 10th, it's still enough in about 30-40% of those seasons.

Decent debut for Banchero.

Coulibaly was a straight swap for Cucarella at left centre back. They took off Havertz for Cesar, put Cesar at right wing back instead of Sterling and moved Sterling forward.

There wasn't even a change in shape from Chelsea, just having more competent defenders in the back 3 and wing back positions. Given this and the first half performance there was nothing for us to do. And we were still I thought the better team until the second goal went in.