tomsky_11

2 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

in reality what's worse.

....the monarchy. JFC.

1 hour ago, Adam2003 said:

Exactly how comfortable should we be in games against top-half PL teams having their best seasons in living memory?

We should be conceding fewer than 0 shots on target, obviously!

6 hours ago, BOF said:

As I said, I'm genuinely not sure. As for spending money. I don't doubt that for a second. They will spend what they can spend, but it will also be within the confines of FFP.  So instead of spending let's say £100m on 4 players and concentrating on the league, we spend that £100m on 7 players instead, and concentrate on 2 fronts. You're now spending the same amount of money across more players, reducing the individual quality despite now fighting on more fronts. We might be fine. It might work. I'm not against Europe. I just think there's merit in walking before we can run. I'm not against it. Just, unsure.

Qualifying for the Conference with the additional associated revenue potential may well give us a bit more room to spend from an FFP perpective, which might be enough to fill out the squad with a few more players to cope with the schedule. And if we are going to commit to big spend in any summer it's the next one, as it's the last where the Grealish money impacts the FFP assessment period.

5 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

You must be confident then next week that we are goung to go to wolves and win something we havent done in years

Yes, years*.

*the season before last.

2 hours ago, rodders0223 said:

If we can't get better deals than some of these mugs some people need to be replaced.

It's fine they've got it all sorted, the ticket price increases will surely make up for it....

Meanwhile, in Germany…

All tickets for three games are free, paid for by sponsors. With aim to eventually make all home games free. In a stadium bigger than Villa Park even after our expansion is finished.

11 hours ago, lexicon said:

Unai's 3rd in that list, is he not? 

Hasn't made it to 25 games yet...

8 minutes ago, lexicon said:

Gregory's record is mad. Has anyone else come close besides Unai?

O'Neill had a 13 game unbeaten run. Smith had 12 in the Championship. Atkinson only other PL manager with 10 game unbeaten run. MacAllister (3 games) and McLeish (7 games) had a combined run of 10 unbeaten.

Atkinson 2nd to Gregory for points in first 25 games with 47. O'Leary 3rd with 36. Your favourite Gerrard 4th with 34.

Needs to win every game for rest of season to overtake Gregory as most successful PL manager after first 25 games.

Going unbeaten in the next 4 would equal our PL record unbeaten run of 14. Earning 8 points in next 4 would match the points return from this run also.

On 28/10/2022 at 20:11, tomsky_11 said:

Who do we play and what points would we potentially need to finish with between 53 and 60?

Pre winter break - new MNU bha - 4 to 5 points - At least one win from these feels doable, with Brighton perhaps most likely. At least one or two points from the other games seems feasible if we play as well as we did on Sunday.

Post winter break - LIV tot WOL LEE sou LEI mnc ARS - 12 to 15 points - 4 games we should be looking to win, bookended either side by 4 of the 'top 6'. We'll need to be consistently good against the weaker sides and then hopefully pick up the odd point against the stronger sides.

The "easiest run of the season" - eve CRY whu BOU che NFO NEW bre FUL (+ lei to be rescheduled) - 18 to 21 points - 4 very winnable home games, plenty of opportunity to pick up points from the others with only Chelsea to play from the 'top 6'.

Well we've made up the points we dropped in that post winter break run and then some!

We've already passed my original 53 point prediction with 5 games to spare, with 26 from a possible 30 in the "easiest run of the season".

On 28/10/2022 at 20:11, tomsky_11 said:

Tricky finish - mnu wol TOT liv BHA - 6 to 8 points - three 'top 6' sides and local derby away from home not the nicest finish. At least Brighton at home final day is a good opportunity for 3 points.

Achieving low end of this predction is enough for 60 now. And weirdly, despite the teams' average league position being higher than when I made the prediction, these fixtures don't look quite as tricky, as others have said Utd struggling with injuries, Wolves probably safe and Spurs a mess (they were 3rd, only 3 points off City and 5 off Arsenal on 28th Oct when I posted the above)

On 28/10/2022 at 20:11, tomsky_11 said:

60 points and almost guaranteed top 7 would require 48 points (1.85ppg) over our remaining fixtures. As I've posted in the Emery thread, he's achieved this kind of run at every club he's managed apart from Spartak (where he only managed 17 league games in total). So we would appear to have a manager capable of putting together the kind of run we'd need.

To give that rate of 1.85ppg some further context:

- Dean Smith's best 26 game run in the PL for Villa, from the end of 19/20 until Grealish's injury in early 2021, was at 1.7ppg

- Eddie Howe got 44 points from 27 games, or 1.63ppg, for Newcastle last season.

Emery currently on 2.1ppg from 20 games. Losing all remaing games he would still finish season with higher ppg than Howe did last season. One more point means he equals Smith's best 25 game PL run.

2 hours ago, chappy said:

The lower Holte where everyone stands the whole game anyway, no idea why they’re not putting rail seating in there.

Yep. Can’t remember last time we sat down in the lower. Bit p*ssed they’ve stuck the rail seats in the upper as was hoping we’d get them. (Has there been any talk at fan meetings of adding more later @OutByEaster??).

And seems a bit of a contradiction to introduce this paid bar crap in the same place as the rail seating.

1 hour ago, OutByEaster? said:

The meeting was informed that the Club intends for the majority of Adult season ticket prices to increase by 15% and our 23/24 season ticket prices will move us into the top 8 of the Premier League benchmarking.

There are 7 London clubs. I assume this means we'll be more expensive than at least 3 of them.

12 minutes ago, StewieGriffin said:

Easy for me to say as a non-STH who struggles to go very often, but if we want to compete with the big 6 without Champions League money/prestige for bigger sponsors, then the club has to get it's extra revenue from somewhere...

I'm assuming a 15% increase isn't going to generate much more than about £3M in extra revenue. Doesn't feel like that's gonna make a massive difference to the club. Definitely will to a lot of fans though.

Navarro is Head of Scouts at Betis according to his LinkedIn page.

There's a Spanish youtube channel about sports management that Benito was interviewed on last year and he's described as Chief Scout.

6 minutes ago, bobzy said:

Fulham away (lost 3-1)

3-0

12 minutes ago, MrBlack said:

I assume some of our reverse fixtures were under Gerrard

Fulham. Brentford under Danks. Loss and a win. Think a couple of Brighton's were under Potter. Also obviosuly all Spurs' we're under Conte.

12 minutes ago, MrBlack said:

Not to mention the fact you're flipping home and away, where Liverpool have looked far worse away than at home. 

Same results but add a goal to team now at home and take one off the team now away (ie. previous away wins and 3 goal home wins have same result, two goal home wins become draws, 1 goal home wins flip, and draws become wins for side with home advantage now)

3 Man Utd 73

4 Newcastle 71

5 Brighton 62

6 Liverpool 61

7 Spurs 60

8 Villa 60

What the table looks like if all remaining results match the earlier reverse fixture:

3 Man Utd 75

4 Newcastle 74

5 Liverpool 63

6 Brighton 63

7 Villa 63

8 Spurs 60

3 minutes ago, bobzy said:

Spurs have 8 games listed, but have played 31 in the league.

West Ham game shouldnt be there. That fixture was Feb 19th and they won 2-0.

34 minutes ago, bobzy said:

How have Spurs got 8 game remaining?  Don't Brighton have 2 games in hand on them, let alone us?

Something isn't right here...

Missing Newcastle - Brighton game, which is to be rearranged

33 minutes ago, Tomaszk said:

 

Ha. 14th best season from how we started it would be some achievement.

A slightly lower total of 67 points would be our best PL season ever, fractionally beating the 38-game-adjusted 1992/93 season.

2 minutes ago, tomsky_11 said:

Also nice as we've never had a 69 point season.

Other less sexy possible points finishes we've never had previously:

52, 65, 66, 67, 71

Had we always had 3 points for a win, 1912/13 and 1921/22 would have been 69 point seasons.

If you standardise performance in each of our top tier seasons by making it 3 points for a win and then proportionally adjusting total as if a 38 game season, a 69 point finish would be the joint 14th best season of 108 top flight seasons in our history.