I'm not convinced we're going down. It's a possibility but I'm not concerned yet.

Sorry for the Bigfeller size post but here's how I see it. Up until January, we were having an okay season. Not brilliant, making errors but generally putting in promising performances and mostly getting the results we needed.

Since January we have lost the following games:

Man City (cup)
Stoke
Bournemouth
Liverpool
Tottenham
Villa
Leicester
Chelsea

Of those eight games, let's put aside whether or not we should or shouldn't have won or whether these teams are in or out of form and admit that, realistically, five of these games - Man City, Liverpool, Tottenham, Leicester and Chelsea - were those we could have expected to have lost given that they have the quality that we don't. And, leaving aside the fact that we were 2-0 up, we'd have maybe expected a draw against a very good West Ham side before the game. So, we're really looking at Stoke, Bournemouth and Villa as big concerns for having lost those as these should have been seen as important wins.

Now, there's a big difference in how we've played against Leicester and Chelsea compared to how we've played in the previous six and it's more in tune with how we'd been playing before Christmas. Put aside our poor performances in a six match run of games that started with Man City and ended with West Ham, let's say we've regrouped and turned a corner at Leicester. Leicester are top for a reason - you win titles by getting wins out of a performance and they have the quality in their team to do that. Likewise, we gave Chelsea a headstart but they also had a bit of luck too. Is it fair to judge our chances of survival on the outcome of two games against teams who simply have the quality that we don't? We've shown we are capable of winning games this season, capable of scoring goals. Do people really think that, playing the way we have these past two games and how we played before Christmas that we can't get a result from anywhere? Are we just irreversibly s**t now?

Posted By: tim berry, Mar 3, 12:31:06