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Race for Champions League - 2023/2024


Don_Simon

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1 hour ago, Zatman said:

Real Madrid currently have 3 players injured with ACL injuries. They are widespread in football now

Ok, but going back to your original point. The hysteresis is not about the injuries in isolation, it's coupled with the poor form.

 

We've taken 8 points from the last 7 games, now sugar coat it all you want about Man Utd and Newcastle being top 4 teams last season but the fact is this season they are not. And two of those games were at home.

 

The other games were all against teams in the relegation zone. Realistically, after beating Brentford in December, most of our fans would have said we should be taking a minimum of 14 points from those 7 games, so to take just over half that amount is really concerning. (10 points against Sheff Utd x 2, Burnley and Everton, then 4 points from Man Utd x 2 and Newcastle would seem fair).

 

Now, if we had taken for example 14 points from those games, we'd now be on 52 points and not worried in the slightest of dropping out the top 5. The Kamara news would still be awful, but we'd take it a lot better. But with our form already making us worried, this news just exacerbates the negativity. It's not hard to see why. 

 

Let's give it until the end of the season and see what happens, but you can't blame fans for having this reaction, especially as Villa have thrown away these positions so many times before. 

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10 minutes ago, NurembergVillan said:

Equally, most fans would've been delighted with 2 points out of Man City and Arsenal, yet we got 6.

Football isn't binary - especially at such an elite level. The margins are tiny. If VAR doesn't disallow the opener against Sheff Utd at VP we likely win that. If Newcastle had played to their usual form we'd have got at least a point there.

I'd argue we played far better at home against Utd than we did against Arsenal. In fact, those two matches were almost a perfect reflection of each other. Arsenal missed a load of chances against us but we'd made a strong start, scored and held on.

What Villa have or haven't done from this position in the past is entirely irrelevant. The only people still involved on a matchday since then are us. So we're a big factor in making sure it doesn't happen again.

Yes but they were 2 games, we're now 7 games into this bad run. We did play better against Man Utd than Arsenal, but Arsenal are a much better side than Man Utd so I'm not sure it tells us too much. West Ham outplayed them too just last weekend at Old Trafford and shouldn't have lost. 

 

Those wins against City and Arsenal were superb, no doubt about it, but all the good work in beating them has been undone by losses against Newcastle and Man Utd. 

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13 minutes ago, Leeroy said:

Yes but they were 2 games, we're now 7 games into this bad run. We did play better against Man Utd than Arsenal, but Arsenal are a much better side than Man Utd so I'm not sure it tells us too much. West Ham outplayed them too just last weekend at Old Trafford and shouldn't have lost. 

 

Those wins against City and Arsenal were superb, no doubt about it, but all the good work in beating them has been undone by losses against Newcastle and Man Utd. 

So if we had lost to City and Arsenal, and beat Newcastle and United, that would have been better? 😂😂

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11 minutes ago, Leeroy said:

Yes but they were 2 games, we're now 7 games into this bad run. We did play better against Man Utd than Arsenal, but Arsenal are a much better side than Man Utd so I'm not sure it tells us too much. West Ham outplayed them too just last weekend at Old Trafford and shouldn't have lost. 

 

Those wins against City and Arsenal were superb, no doubt about it, but all the good work in beating them has been undone by losses against Newcastle and Man Utd. 

But that’s what happens in seasons, you have good form and bad form.  Hopefully we are coming out of our bad form because the performance against Man Utd deserved more, it was just one of those games.  If we perform like that against the next three teams it should produce a good haul of points.

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We have our backs against the wall now but it's still a fantastic position to be in.  We need that siege mentality as fans to get behind the boys not give up on them.

All to play for under the best manager we have had since Saunders.  To quote Ron "do you want to bet against us?"

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Just now, nick76 said:

But that’s what happens in seasons, you have good form and bad form.  Hopefully we are coming out of our bad form because the performance against Man Utd deserved more, it was just one of those games.  If we perform like that against the next three teams it should produce a good haul of points.

If we win the next 3 games then I'm sure the positivity will come back, but the fans are understandably deflated at the moment.

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2 hours ago, PieFacE said:

Whatever happens just back the team and enjoy the ride. We've waited so long to be in this position, there's no point in shitting the bed now we're here. 

I was fuming Sunday night but this is the answer. 

Edited by DCJonah
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As ugly as the last 10 games have been, we’re still not in relegation form - just about maintaining our position. 
 
Performing better defensively but a clear drop in attacking output. 
 
Will be a good eye and stat test to see what happens when Pau comes back. 

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Losing Kamara is obviously not ideal, but in the run in last season we played 10 games without him and won 6, drew 2 and lost 2. There was also a win at Chelsea where he played 1st half but was subbed at HT as he was clearly off it. We were winning at that point, but went on to secure the victory 2nd half without him.

Going to be tough again this time as there are other injuries now we didn't have then; we need the likes of Ramsey to step up, Pau and Digne to hit the ground running after their injuries,  Rogers to come in and provide some of the energy further up like Buendia was at the end of last season.

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1 hour ago, Leeroy said:

If we win the next 3 games then I'm sure the positivity will come back, but the fans are understandably deflated at the moment.

Deflated is fine!

Some real overreacting though with “seasons over”, “catastrophic fall”…that’s not deflated, that’s just OTT.

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5 minutes ago, nick76 said:

What happened Saturday night? 😉

I feel the air was getting hot...

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2 hours ago, Leeroy said:

We did play better against Man Utd than Arsenal, but Arsenal are a much better side than Man Utd so I'm not sure it tells us too much. West Ham outplayed them too just last weekend at Old Trafford and shouldn't have lost.

So are we talking about performance or results here?

Objectively, we've played well in our last 2 league matches and could have had 8 goals. As it goes we've scored 6 and conceded 2.

From a performance perspective, you could say the Arsenal game (after the goal) was an indicator that the players were running out of steam and results might be about to change. We won a game that we probably deserved to lose.

By that measure, we're now in better "form" having played well in our last 2 league games.

If it's just results that determine form, we've lost 2 league games since 5th November. Both against relatively "in-form" teams.

This isn't a post I'd have written on Sunday night, but right now I'm feeling optimistic purely based on what I watched in our last 2 league games. 

 

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