VillaChris Posted January 16, 2022 Share Posted January 16, 2022 2 hours ago, Vive_La_Villa said: Really? That’s after what was a very good first half to the season too. We had about 10 more points at this stage last season. However due to how many away wins there were compared to normal seasons so many points totals were inflated. You won't be needing 56 points to finish 11th for example this season. 50 points might be good enough to finish 10th for example. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
useless Posted January 17, 2022 Share Posted January 17, 2022 We were on 32 points after 20 games last season, compared to our current 23 points. But if you look at the fixtures we've played so far this season and compare the results with the equivalent fixtures and results from last season, then we're only four points worse off. Also our current points total is distorted by the fact that we lost five games in a row, obviously can't take those five defeats away, but has to be taken into account when predicting how we will do for the rest of the season because that bad form was under a different manager. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
It's Your Round Posted January 17, 2022 Share Posted January 17, 2022 I always thought we’d do better in the second half of the season anyway, even while Smith was here. It always takes time for new players to bed in and we had to adjust for the loss of Grealish. I think we’ll get stronger and stronger as the season wears on. The players will get more drilled in Gerrard’s ways, the new boys will settle in and we’ve got Bailey to come back yet. Whether a strong finish is enough to see us into Europe, not sure, but it will be an outside goal to aim for it. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villa89 Posted January 17, 2022 Share Posted January 17, 2022 23 points after 20 games? We've really been piss poor this season. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HalfTimePost Posted January 17, 2022 Share Posted January 17, 2022 We aren't getting into the Europa League, I doubt we could get the Conference league either at this point, but tbh we'll be best off with a strong end to the season, finishing outside of the conference league places but having the strongest end to the season outside of the top 4. Then taking that feel good factor into next year without the extra games of the Conference League and hoping to take the slot of a West Ham or Arsenal in the Europa League who will have more games than us. We're 5 point's off Brighton in 9th and 3 off Leicester in 10th (who have 2 games in hand). Finishing above them in 9th should be our realistic aim, it's an improvement on last season and gives us a decent position with 0 extra games next season. If we can push Wolves/United for 8th, great but an 8/9 point gap will be too large to overcome when all is said and done 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villa89 Posted January 17, 2022 Share Posted January 17, 2022 1 hour ago, HalfTimePost said: I doubt we could get the Conference league either at this point We don't want to be in that...ever... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zatman Posted January 17, 2022 Share Posted January 17, 2022 21 hours ago, Demitri_C said: Im wondering why we didnt arrange the leeds game this week? Surely would have been a good opportunity to play it tues of wed? There are various postponed games this week. We could have got the Leeds or Burnley game out the way Premier League cant orgsnise anything Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ender4 Posted January 17, 2022 Share Posted January 17, 2022 1 minute ago, villa89 said: We don't want to be in that...ever... i disagree. If we have serious intentions of being a European club, then any games in Europe is better than none. Starts building up co-efficient for when we qualify for Europa league, brings more recognition and therefore more commercial income, play more games which keeps fringe players happy as they get some game time. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MaVilla Posted January 17, 2022 Share Posted January 17, 2022 (edited) 6 hours ago, useless said: We were on 32 points after 20 games last season, compared to our current 23 points. But if you look at the fixtures we've played so far this season and compare the results with the equivalent fixtures and results from last season, then we're only four points worse off. Also our current points total is distorted by the fact that we lost five games in a row, obviously can't take those five defeats away, but has to be taken into account when predicting how we will do for the rest of the season because that bad form was under a different manager. yep i also have us only 4 points worse off in like for like fixtures, for 20/21 vs 21/22 (even though we are actually 9 points different at the same game week position - without factoring like for like games). Interesting. Edited January 17, 2022 by MaVilla Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El-Reacho Posted January 17, 2022 Share Posted January 17, 2022 4 minutes ago, ender4 said: i disagree. If we have serious intentions of being a European club, then any games in Europe is better than none. Starts building up co-efficient for when we qualify for Europa league, brings more recognition and therefore more commercial income, play more games which keeps fringe players happy as they get some game time. Also gets the squad experienced and accustomed to Thursday night games with all the travelling and upheavel that goes with them. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rightdm00 Posted January 17, 2022 Share Posted January 17, 2022 Would love it if we could get to 50 pts by season end. Then next season would be the push for 60 and Europe. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CVByrne Posted January 17, 2022 Share Posted January 17, 2022 Realistically we needed to be beating Brentford to get us thinking about a run to snatch 7th possibly. It's a bit unrealistic now though Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MotoMkali Posted January 17, 2022 Share Posted January 17, 2022 20 hours ago, useless said: This is the table based on games since Gerrard's arrival. Wolves, Arsenal, and Man Utd have taken just two more points than we, West Ham just one more point, despite playing two more games. And we've played 3 of the top 4 and 4 of the top 7. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomsky_11 Posted January 17, 2022 Share Posted January 17, 2022 Based on the remaining fixtures and how we've performed under Gerrard thus far, European qualification doesn't seem a complete write-off just yet, but would take a very good consistent run to get there. Feels to me the board probably think so too, given how the transfer window has gone so far. In 9 games under Gerrard so far we've taken 13 points from 9, so 1.44ppg. Do this to the end of the season and we'd finish with 49. Fairly solidly mid table but a fair way off Europe. I think for me this is base expectation for Gerrard this season. There are plenty of reasons I think we can achieve above this though. Firstly, did we get the points the performances deserved in these 9 games? I feels to me like what we got was closer to the minimum they deserved. Brentford and Utd could and probably should have been wins. You could maybe argue a draw more likely from the Brighton game on the other hand? Either way we'd still be up of the points we actually achieved. To me it seems if the performances stay at the current level, we could achieve more than 1.44ppg. Add to this that we already seem to have a better team than we did for majority of Gerrard's games so far, and should hopefully continue to improve as a team going foward. I'd suggest that a team that now includes Coutinho and Digne should be capable of performing over the level of Gerrards first 8 games. And we could improve things even further with two weeks to the end of the transfer window. The difficultly level of Gerrard's games so far seems much higher than our remaining fixtures as well. 5 of the 9 were teams in the top 7 in the league at ko, and only 2 of the 9 games were against bottom half of table opposition. The average position of teams played was 8.3. Compare this to the remaining 18 games, only 5 of the top 7, 10 games against bottom half teams, average postion 11.6. Feels like we should get more ppg from the remaining games given the average team played is more than 3 places lower in the table right now. So what would we need to do to get into Europe? The average points required for 6th place in the last ten seasons was between 64 and 65, and for 7th between 59 and 60. The current 6th and 7th place teams in terms of points-per-game are tracking around this level, West Ham at 63.9 and Man Utd 60.8 when there points totals now are extrapolated straight to end of season. So fair to say something around 60 gives us a shot at 7th and around 65 would probably be required for 6th. So about 37 more points in 18 games for 7th, and around 42 for 6th. A massive ask on the face of it. What might we need to do to get there though? First off, ten games against bottom half teams. 30 points to play for here. If we can take all or the majority of these it gets us a long way there. Taking each game individually there's not one I don't think we should be winning in our current form. The two hardest arguably, given the are positioned highest, are Palace and Southampton, and for both we have home advantage. The hardest away game is against Leeds. 8 games after that, where between 1-1.5ppg might be enough to get Europe if the other 10 games have gone well. The easier of these games are arguably 4 away games: Brighton, Leicester, West Ham and Wolves. Two teams we've already beaten under Gerrard, another seemingly on the slide after injuries broke their consistency, and a local derby against a team that can't really score but also doesn't concede many right now. These could go any way. The three remaining home games are Arsenal, Spurs and Liverpool, all teams we've beaten in recent seasons, but I think a much tougher prospect than before. But then by the time we play them we could be a much better team too. And with home advantage could we get something from any of these? Difficult but not impossible. The last game, on the final day, is Man City away. I'd expect them to have wrapped up the league by this point. Would still expect a Man City win, but with nothing to play for might that give us more of a chance than otherwise. The recent home game certainly suggested we can compete with them when they do need the points. The next six games are obviously key to any of this being remotely achievable, given they include half our games against bottom half teams. A good run now could secure a reasonable chunk of the points we would need while putting us on a high going into a run of six against top half opposition. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomav84 Posted January 17, 2022 VT Supporter Share Posted January 17, 2022 2 hours ago, villa89 said: We don't want to be in that...ever... really? a european tour is a european tour, whatever competition it is 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CVByrne Posted January 17, 2022 Share Posted January 17, 2022 We are too soft to get the run we need, we will always have too many periods where we just concede easy goals and they will cost us ultimately. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KMitch Posted January 22, 2022 Share Posted January 22, 2022 These next 5 matches will define our season and determine if we're going to legitimately be challenging for Europe or settling for mid table again. Leeds Newcastle away Watford Brighton away Southampton 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nepal_villan Posted January 22, 2022 Share Posted January 22, 2022 5 minutes ago, KMitch said: These next 5 matches will define our season and determine if we're going to legitimately be challenging for Europe or settling for mid table again. Leeds Newcastle away Watford Brighton away Southampton Get 12 points out of those 5 matches and we can start dreaming of Europe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aston_Villan4 Posted January 22, 2022 Share Posted January 22, 2022 48 minutes ago, KMitch said: These next 5 matches will define our season and determine if we're going to legitimately be challenging for Europe or settling for mid table again. Leeds Newcastle away Watford Brighton away Southampton If this team keeps developing in a positive way then there's no reason we can't win all of those. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Albrighton Posted January 22, 2022 VT Supporter Share Posted January 22, 2022 50 minutes ago, KMitch said: These next 5 matches will define our season and determine if we're going to legitimately be challenging for Europe or settling for mid table again. Leeds Newcastle away Watford Brighton away Southampton Each of those I see as a game we can realistically take three points in, probably starting as favourites for every one. I don’t expect the full fifteen points, but a points return in double figures should be the aim. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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