Relegation Avoidance Thread

[briny_ear]

6 minutes ago, useless said:

Typical that as soon as we find ourselves near the relegation zone then you start getting results like Watford beating Man Utd, and now Leeds beating Spurs away as it stands. It's worse for Newcastle they're seven points adrift of safety at the moment, at least we will be four points clear of the bottom three whatevey happens between Tottenham and Leeds.

Looks like Conte has put a few rockets up the arses of Spurs players at half time so I don't expect Leeds to get the three points here. Let's hope not...

[Mantis]

I see a lot of parallels between this season and 2010/11. New manager named Gerrard following on from a popular, long-serving manager, problematic pre-season, injury problems, star-player sold in the summer, promising youngsters coming through, Gary Mac and Ashley Young etc

But also: a potentially very competitive relegation battle that could pull in half the league.

Edited November 21, 2021 by Mantis

[robby b]

5 minutes ago, briny_ear said:

Looks like Conte has put a few rockets up the arses of Spurs players at half time so I don't expect Leeds to get the three points here. Let's hope not...

Hojboj !  1-1, good man. 

[JAMAICAN-VILLAN]

I don't think people realised how serious the situation actually was.

The board wouldn't have taken action IMO otherwise.

A win against Palace would make me feel much better, but they are absolutely flying.

Let's hope agent Benteke understands the assignment.

[Mantis]

10 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

I don't think people realised how serious the situation actually was.

The board wouldn't have taken action IMO otherwise.

A win against Palace would make me feel much better, but they are absolutely flying.

Let's hope agent Benteke understands the assignment.

Was more the form we were in than anything else IMO. Losing can quickly become a very bad habit.

[jim]

23 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

I don't think people realised how serious the situation actually was.

The board wouldn't have taken action IMO otherwise.

A win against Palace would make me feel much better, but they are absolutely flying.

Let's hope agent Benteke understands the assignment.

I think a few held onto the belief the previous manager always got us out of slumps and we’d be fine 

[tom_avfc]

30 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

I don't think people realised how serious the situation actually was.

The board wouldn't have taken action IMO otherwise.

A win against Palace would make me feel much better, but they are absolutely flying.

Let's hope agent Benteke understands the assignment.

We’d just lost 5 in a row albeit 3 of those were games we’d be expected to lose.

Even after losing 5 in a row we were 1 point below the point per game average that would keep you up 9 times out of 10.

We hadn’t been able to name our first choice 11 once all season, had numerous players to come back from injury and a number of high quality signings who were always going to take a bit of time to bed in.

Our squad is considerably better than at least 5 other teams in the league and when our first team players began to come back we were always going to improve.

I’d have backed us to stay up with or without sacking the manager.

Had we not managed to throw away the most comfortable lead in the most ridiculous fashion against Wolves this thread would never even have been opened.

[useless]

Our next five games are Palace, Man City, Liverpool, Leicester, and Norwich, not as difficult looking as I thought, Man City and Liverpool will be incredibly tough to get anything from, but we're capable of getting something from the other three. I think we can aim for five points from those at least.

[briny_ear]

7 minutes ago, tom_avfc said:

We’d just lost 5 in a row albeit 3 of those were games we’d be expected to lose.

Even after losing 5 in a row we were 1 point below the point per game average that would keep you up 9 times out of 10.

We hadn’t been able to name our first choice 11 once all season, had numerous players to come back from injury and a number of high quality signings who were always going to take a bit of time to bed in.

Our squad is considerably better than at least 5 other teams in the league and when our first team players began to come back we were always going to improve.

I’d have backed us to stay up with or without sacking the manager.

Had we not managed to throw away the most comfortable lead in the most ridiculous fashion against Wolves this thread would never even have been opened.

Just get the feeling that the board were looking for more than 1 point per game, which is effectively what they had been delivered throughout the 2021 calendar year. Don't think individual results had that much of an impact vs the overall performance over a longer period. 

[DaveAV1]

9 minutes ago, jim said:

I think a few held onto the belief the previous manager always got us out of slumps and we’d be fine 

The problem with Dean was that we always seemed to go into slumps and once they start they seem to take too long to get out of. The fact that they kept happening would probably keep us always with one eye looking over our shoulder and even when we’ve had a good run and are relatively safe, we’d keep falling short of where we were aiming for. 

I like Dean Smith a lot and was gutted for the man when he went. Unfortunately he was a manager that many of us, not all I know, kept in our hearts but in our heads he wasn’t quite able to get us where we all were hoping to head for. Deep down we knew it in the end. It’s a hard unsentimental business and sentiment doesn’t ultimately get you very far. He took his club that was floundering in The Championship and took us back to the promised land. While doing so he restored our pride and hopefully set the foundations for even better things. For that he should be immensely proud and we should be equally grateful. In this respect sentimentality can have its place and rightly so, but that place is in the past. 

[DaveAV1]

18 minutes ago, tom_avfc said:

We’d just lost 5 in a row albeit 3 of those were games we’d be expected to lose.

Even after losing 5 in a row we were 1 point below the point per game average that would keep you up 9 times out of 10.

We hadn’t been able to name our first choice 11 once all season, had numerous players to come back from injury and a number of high quality signings who were always going to take a bit of time to bed in.

Our squad is considerably better than at least 5 other teams in the league and when our first team players began to come back we were always going to improve.

I’d have backed us to stay up with or without sacking the manager.

Had we not managed to throw away the most comfortable lead in the most ridiculous fashion against Wolves this thread would never even have been opened.

Do you really think that managing to stay up was what NSWE had as this season’s target? I accept we have been unlucky with injuries but that’s a fact of life for all clubs at some point in a season. I’d also like to think that expecting to lose any games shouldn’t  be an attitude that any manager should have, certainly not one who wants to work under this regime. Equally that doesn’t mean that you expect to win any game either, but there should always be an expectation to have a plan that gives the team a decent chance as a bare minimum. 

[tom_avfc]

14 minutes ago, briny_ear said:

Just get the feeling that the board were looking for more than 1 point per game, which is effectively what they had been delivered throughout the 2021 calendar year. Don't think individual results had that much of an impact vs the overall performance over a longer period. 

Oh I completely agree. To say the situation was “more serious than people realise”, as the comment I was replying to did, suggest that we’d have gone down with Dean Smith. Personally I think we’d have ended up around mid table once players came back/ settled in.

Off topic but I’d also say that if the board expect much more than mid table then they probably shouldn’t be aiming to have negative net spends in summer transfer windows. 

[tom_avfc]

1 minute ago, DaveAV1 said:

Do you really think that managing to stay up was what NSWE had as this season’s target? I accept we have been unlucky with injuries but that’s a fact of life for all clubs at some point in a season. I’d also like to think that expecting to lose any games shouldn’t  be an attitude that any manager should have, certainly not one who wants to work under this regime. Equally that doesn’t mean that you expect to win any game either, but there should always be an expectation to have a plan that gives the team a decent chance as a bare minimum. 

As above I was replying to a post that suggested the situation was “more serious than people realised”. For me the situation was that we were likely to finish lower mid table which given losing our best player and a negative net spend in the summer is probably what I’d have expected going into the season.

For what it’s worth I think we’ll finish around 12th-14th and I think we’d have done the same without sacking the manager. Anything above this would be a good achievement from Gerrard although obviously we have a January transfer window to change this.

[DaveAV1]

1 hour ago, tom_avfc said:

As above I was replying to a post that suggested the situation was “more serious than people realised”. For me the situation was that we were likely to finish lower mid table which given losing our best player and a negative net spend in the summer is probably what I’d have expected going into the season.

For what it’s worth I think we’ll finish around 12th-14th and I think we’d have done the same without sacking the manager. Anything above this would be a good achievement from Gerrard although obviously we have a January transfer window to change this.

I don’t know if you’re right or not but the fact remains that we were averaging around a point a game since January and that clearly wasn’t acceptable to the hierarchy. Injuries and players leaving are a fact of life for managers that they are expected to overcome. Particularly at a club that is well funded and well run with elite facilities. As our new manager has said, there are no excuses to fail, everything is here to help players and coaches. 

I believe the negative net spend tells its own story, in that the board had doubts about the immediate future regarding the managerial position. They gave Dean extra time probably because like most of us, they liked him and wanted him to succeed. A rare moment of sentimentality? Perhaps but ultimately we all, including Dean obviously, had a lot to lose. Hard decisions sometimes have to be made often with great reluctance, this was one of them. 

[Peter Griffin]

8 minutes ago, DaveAV1 said:

I don’t know if you’re right or not but the fact remains that we were averaging around a point a game since January and that clearly wasn’t acceptable to the hierarchy. Injuries and players leaving are a fact of life for managers that they are expected to overcome. Particularly at a club that is well funded and well run with elite facilities. As our new manager has said, there are no excuses to fail, everything is here to help players and coaches. 

I believe the negative net spend tells its own story, in that the board had doubts about the immediate future regarding the managerial position. They gave Dean extra time probably because like most of us, they liked him and wanted him to succeed. A rare moment of sentimentality? Perhaps but ultimately we all, including Dean obviously, had a lot to lose. Hard decisions sometimes have to be made often with great reluctance, this was one of them. 

I think Purslow made it quite clear during the Gerrard presser. He wants continuous improvement each year and he wasn't getting it this season. It wasn't about avoiding relegation, it was the fact that we looked miles off finishing higher than 11th.

[useless]

Time to wake up and get with reality, we're in a relegation battle, win tomorrow would be stupendous, especially with all our rivals having tough games, could be a chance for us to open up something of a gap between ourselves and the bottom three Palace doing well and we've lost five of the last six, but for all that they're still only three points ahead of us, no reason why we can't beat them, they're not that great.

[useless]

We could be seven points clear of relegation if we win tomorrow

[HanoiVillan]

1 hour ago, useless said:

Time to wake up and get with reality, we're in a relegation battle, win tomorrow would be stupendous, especially with all our rivals having tough games, could be a chance for us to open up something of a gap between ourselves and the bottom three Palace doing well and we've lost five of the last six, but for all that they're still only three points ahead of us, no reason why we can't beat them, they're not that great.

10 wins should probably be enough for safety, maybe 11 if we really keep avoiding draws, so a win tomorrow would be nice as it would be basically halfway there. As you say, they're good but they're not *that* good, we're in with a chance. We do have a terrible record at Selhurst though, don't think we've won there since that game when Benteke scored a great winner.

[useless]

Gerrard is our manager now, he's been brought in to dispel all these unwanted records haunting us from the past, we're not the team we used to be.

[turvontour]

1 hour ago, useless said:

Time to wake up and get with reality, we're in a relegation battle, win tomorrow would be stupendous, especially with all our rivals having tough games, could be a chance for us to open up something of a gap between ourselves and the bottom three Palace doing well and we've lost five of the last six, but for all that they're still only three points ahead of us, no reason why we can't beat them, they're not that great.

How can we be in a relegation battle in November? Also, who are our rivals? Teams that have actually been in the relegation zone in the last year?