December Fixtures

Newcastle's midfield is a massive obstacle for us.

Don't think you need to delve too deep into December over looking at games in 2's and 3's. That first clump is more favourable than the second. The third will depend on how fatigued we are and where we're at mentally.
 
Newcastle Chelsea Bayern Liverpool is quite a fun run.

Gauntlets like these are some of the best times as a football fan.
 
Newcastle (A)
Chelsea (H)
Bournemouth (H)
Bayern (H)
Liverpool (A)
West Ham (A)

Aston Villa (H)
Nottingham Forest (A)

Brutal fixture list but was to be expected after a very easy last 6, think Villa have the potential to do us at home if we're not at the races.
 
They really aren't that amazing, they pack the middle like there's no tomorrow and use Trippier well. They also now have a lot of injuries. We have just been so hit and miss we've started to fear everyone.
To quote a famous break up line "It's not not you, it's me". It just feels like we're so easy to shatter, yesterday we've got our goal early and that helped us massively but we were so lucky not to concede in the first half, our midfield just seems unable to get some control over the game... Hopefully that changes with Mainoo playing more and someone else other than McT partners him
 
They have a lot of injuries to and sometimes (like most of our wins this year) a team gets lucky?
Aye luck is our best bet, it will depend massively on confidence if we manage to build any in the next few games, we're really shaky right now in that sense. Everything goes well and we'll start to believe, one set back can cause a chain reaction that puts us under immense pressure yet again...
 
anything over 11-12 points in the league would be great. 2nd half was much better against everton but against good teams we will get punished for our absolutely dreadful spells that we always fall into during games.
 
To quote a famous break up line "It's not not you, it's me". It just feels like we're so easy to shatter, yesterday we've got our goal early and that helped us massively but we were so lucky not to concede in the first half, our midfield just seems unable to get some control over the game... Hopefully that changes with Mainoo playing more and someone else other than McT partners him
I'm hopeful their fanbase will be a negative for them - they already had that confrontation with Trippier after the loss to BMouth and the expectations are through the roof at St James' now. We just need to play boring football, keep the ball a bit and I expect they might over commit. It's that or we get hammered, you never know with this United.
 
“You aim to be there or there about by Christmas” a wise man once said.
Newcastle, Chelsea, Liverpool and Villa are big for our season. We’ll be sitting pretty if we can get something from these games.
I’d like to think we can bank 3pts against Bournemouth, West Ham and Forest.
Bayern is obviously dependant on Wednesdays result.
Considering we seemed to have a terrible start to the season, we are in a remarkably strong position. All to play for.
 
Even if we had a fully fit squad I would still be very apprehensive going into those fixtures. We've been dealt a tough hand.
 
One game at a time we shouldn't look too far ahead, I'm actually quite confident we'll do ok don't know why, but getting that penalty overturned made me feel that the luck might be finally turning for us, then again, I could be completely wrong and it was a one off.
 
Today was supposed to be our day of respite this month.

Now, it feels like when the Fellowship had to go into the Mines of Moria.

And ETH is Gandalf.
 
Could very easily lost the next 4. We don't even have one of those huge, against all odds performances in us.
 
I could definitely see us losing the next two.

Newcastle have Luton and Forest to close the year, but have Liverpool on the 1st.

West Ham have it pretty tough just now, with Arsenal and Brighton right after us.

Brighton have Palace and Spurs to close the year and then that West Ham match on the 2nd.

I don't think there's much chance of us moving up to close out the year as Newcastle should roll through Luton and Forest, but a result for us on Saturday probably ensures we don't drop down to 8th to end the year, and we might be able to put a bit of breathing room between us and the teams below us.
 
Right, then: 2 wins, 1 draw, 5 losses. Scored a total of 6 goals in 8 matches. Conceded 12.

Happy new year, boys.