PL Top 4 race

The way those results in midweek went . Am I right in thinking 5th isn’t the sure thing many thought?
4th is a no go zone for us. Spurs will take 4th easily if they stay injury free.
Villa are deffo there for the taking. Especially if they keep going in the conference league.
Just not sure our group have got it in them to win 70-75% of our remaining matches.
I’d take 6th tbh, think the Europa league is our level. Tired of us embarrassing ourselves in the CL.
 
Can see us being able to get amongst Spurs and Villa. Get Martinez back, Rashford hitting some form and Hojlund carrying on. Equally we can struggle along with a knackered squad.

First time I'm not arsed about CL quali. So much money spent on Sancho, Mount Antony, Case and we've got about six months worth out of one player. Eriksen turned into a 20 min player. We need a reset in the players we bring in and the cost.
 
I still think there's a potential Villa collapse incoming as they're the only team of the 3 still in Europe and they've no experience of managing the extra games. History shows that the team that no one expected to be the in top 4 race tend to blow it in the end, see the likes of Leicester, West Ham in recent years. Though obviously not always, Newcastle held on last season for example.

The problem is I don't see how United accumulate 9 more points than Villa for the rest of the season, as we are absolutely dreadful. Dreadful again yesterday against relegation candidates at home, we have a strong chance of dropping points in every game we go into given how bad our performance levels are. That loss to Fulham at home was an absolute disaster, if we were looking at a 5 point gap instead of 8 that would be a huge difference to us.

If AWB and Hojlund return from injury and we have no more injuries for the rest of the season then there's a tiny chance we can scrape enough ugly results to fluke a CL spot if we get lucky and 5th place gets CL. But our next 3 league games are Brentford away, Chelsea away and Liverpool at home. Put it this way, that's more likely to be 3 defeats than it is to be 3 wins.
 
Dominos said:
… there's a tiny chance we can scrape enough ugly results to fluke a CL spot if we get lucky and 5th place gets CL. But our next 3 league games are Brentford away, Chelsea away and Liverpool at home. Put it this way, that's more likely to be 3 defeats than it is to be 3 wins.
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Neither of these options is likely.. I think we will get two wins. And that should be enough to keep us in the race for top 5. Villa isn’t our only shot, Spurs also have a tough set of fixtures to come.

Top 5 is certainly gonna be enough for the Champions League, we will get closer to that on Thursday.
 
4th and 5th places are for Spurs and Villa respectively, not because they wont drop points but because we will drop more points
 
Plant0x84 said:
Yep, I’m confident Villa will falter, but I can’t decide if it’s best for them to beat Ajax and have more matches to play/more fatigue or whether I want them knocked out and their confidence knocked.,
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The Premier League earning that fifth spot is far from certain after last week, so really we need Villa to beat Ajax and, in particular, West Ham to knock out Freiberg.
 
Spurs could have notched up a 12 point gap on us before we kick off at Brentford,not forgetting there is also their game in hand at Chelsea too
 
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Andycoleno9 said:
Wow, i didn't look at Villa's schedule. Very, very tricky.

It is ON!
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Have you seen our fixtures? We have to play Chelsea, arsenal, Newcastle, Liverpool and Brighton yet.

Yeh, not a chance we're getting anywhere near 4th/5th :lol:
 
Ayoba said:
Have you seen our fixtures? We have to play Chelsea, arsenal, Newcastle, Liverpool and Brighton yet.

Yeh, not a chance we're getting anywhere near 4th/5th :lol:
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Doesn't feel right including Chelsea in a list of tricky fixtures these days
 
Are Villa considered to be in the title race? Because the gap between Villa and City is the same as the gap between United and Villa.
 
Plant0x84 said:
Yep, I’m confident Villa will falter, but I can’t decide if it’s best for them to beat Ajax and have more matches to play/more fatigue or whether I want them knocked out and their confidence knocked.,
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We need them to progress in Europe for a 5th CL spot
 
devlinadl said:
Are Villa considered to be in the title race? Because the gap between Villa and City is the same as the gap between United and Villa.
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We’re not catching Villa but I do think Spurs can still feck up majorly
 
Andycoleno9 said:
Wow, i didn't look at Villa's schedule. Very, very tricky.

It is ON!
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Is it really though? They might lose 9-13 points imo, but we're chasing them by 8, so it seems unrealistic we'll get 5th as we also might lose around 6-13 points.

McGinn might be a big loss for them the next 3 games though. He's been great this season except for his red card yesterday. Also they have competition in their squad and players coming back. Draco Malfoy seems to have found a formula on when to not risk too much with his formation.
 
Plant0x84 said:
Chelsea, Newcastle and Brighton?! :lol:
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Chelsea isn’t a hard fixture for us nowadays but on the road we’ve been shaky to say the least, don’t know why you laugh at Newcastle and Brighton, regardless of form our record against them the past few years has been atrocious.
 
InfiniteBoredom said:
Chelsea isn’t a hard fixture for us nowadays but on the road we’ve been shaky to say the least, don’t know why you laugh at Newcastle and Brighton, regardless of form our record against them the past few years has been atrocious.
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Newcastle have injury problems of their own, and the De Zerbi bubble is certainly deflating, if not already Popped. We’ll be grand.
 
ROFLUTION said:
Is it really though? They might lose 9-13 points imo, but we're chasing them by 8, so it seems unrealistic we'll get 5th as we also might lose around 6-13 points.

McGinn might be a big loss for them the next 3 games though. He's been great this season except for his red card yesterday. Also they have competition in their squad and players coming back. Draco Malfoy seems to have found a formula on when to not risk too much with his formation.
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It is on because they will lose at least 15 points in next 12 games. But, in reality it is off because no way we win 9 points more than them.
 
Our run in looks horrible IMO. We can't rely on being Moments FC too many more times, so we're going to have to up our game considerably to have a chance of finishing 4th or 5th. We're a shit team and cannot play as well as Villa or Spurs on a consistent basis. Logically they will finish above us unless one or both have a big drop off. We're more likely to falter than they are.
 
It’s amazing that we already beat Villa home and away and yet, we are still 8 points behind them. I do think we’ll catch them though but not Spurs
 
AndySmith1990 said:
Doesn't feel right including Chelsea in a list of tricky fixtures these days
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Plant0x84 said:
Chelsea, Newcastle and Brighton?! :lol:
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Chelsea have drew against City, arsenal and Liverpool at home this season.

In what universe can we just assume United will turn up to Stamford Bridge and win?

Need I remind you we just lost to Fulham at home. This United team is capable of dropping points in any game, our performances are dreadful. Sometimes we'll scrape by despite poor performance like we did against Everton, sometimes we'll pay the price like we did against Fulham.
 
Apart from the home games against Sheffield Utd and Burnley, the other games remaining are all games where we didn't win the equivalent fixture last season or against teams who have beaten us earlier this season. In fact half of them have completely embarrassed us in the past 1.5 seasons (Liverpool, Bournemouth, Brighton, Brentford, Newcastle).

That's a tough fixture list for us, given the type of teams who we struggle against. Just the 2 easy games, and the rest I can see us losing any individual one of them given how we play.
 
Ayoba said:
Have you seen our fixtures? We have to play Chelsea, arsenal, Newcastle, Liverpool and Brighton yet.

Yeh, not a chance we're getting anywhere near 4th/5th :lol:
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In addition to Brentford away, who beat us 4-0 last season. And Bournemouth away, who beat us 3-0 at home this season. Palace away, who beat us at home this season and where we failed to win away last season. I'm not confident about any of these games.
 
Pintu said:
Updated probabilities. We now have ~18% chance of making top 5…

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These odds make sense. villa are basically nine ahead (we’re never catching goal diff)
What that means is in the remaining ten games we have to win THREE more games than Villa. So even if Villa only win just three more games we’d have to win at least six and get a result from the 7th. Looking at our fixtures there’s actually no chance of this happening realistically.
Europa here we come!
 
Ludens the Red said:
These odds make sense. villa are basically nine ahead (we’re never catching goal diff)
What that means is in the remaining ten games we have to win THREE more games than Villa. So even if Villa only win just three more games we’d have to win at least six and get a result from the 7th. Looking at our fixtures there’s actually no chance of this happening realistically.
Europa here we come!
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This should be the bare minimum… i think we can get at least 6 wins and 3 draws.


Home:
Liverpool, N’Castle, Burnley, Arsenal, Sheffield
D…………...W…………..W……………L…………..W

Away:
Brentford, Chelsea, Bournemouth, Palace, Brighton.
D.…………...W……………..W…………………W……………..D
 
Just as a reminder... these have been our Away results since the 7:0. Won 9, Drawn 2, Lost 10.

Sun Mar 5, 2023Liverpool (7.)7:0L
Sun Apr 2, 2023Newcastle (3.)2:0L
Sun Apr 16, 2023Nottm Forest (18.)0:2W
Thu Apr 27, 2023Tottenham (7.)2:2D
Thu May 4, 2023Brighton (6.)1:0L
Sun May 7, 2023West Ham (15.)1:0L
Sat May 20, 2023Bournemouth (14.)0:1W
Sat Aug 19, 2023Tottenham (8.)2:0L
Sun Sep 3, 2023Arsenal (5.)3:1L
Sat Sep 23, 2023Burnley (15.)0:1W
Sat Oct 21, 2023Sheff Utd (20.)1:2W
Sat Nov 4, 2023Fulham (14.)0:1W
Sun Nov 26, 2023Everton (19.)0:3W
Sat Dec 2, 2023Newcastle (7.)1:0L
Sun Dec 17, 2023Liverpool (1.)0:0D
Sat Dec 23, 2023West Ham (8.)2:0L
Sat Dec 30, 2023Nottm Forest (16.)2:1L
Thu Feb 1, 2024Wolves (11.)3:4W
Sun Feb 11, 2024Aston Villa (4.)1:2W
Sun Feb 18, 2024Luton (18.)1:2W
Sun Mar 3, 2024Man City (2.)3:1L

Last season we lost to Brentford 4-0 and Brighton 1-0, drew at Chelsea and Palace both 1-1, beat Bournemouth 1-0. They're all banana skins for us by no means easy fixtures. Our two remaining easy bankable 3 pointers is Sheffield Utd and Burnley at Home. The rest of the fixtures we could very easily draw/lose.
 
Can easily see us losing the next 4:
Brentford A
Chelsea A
Liverpool H
Bournemouth A
 
bosnian_red said:
Apart from the home games against Sheffield Utd and Burnley, the other games remaining are all games where we didn't win the equivalent fixture last season or against teams who have beaten us earlier this season. In fact half of them have completely embarrassed us in the past 1.5 seasons (Liverpool, Bournemouth, Brighton, Brentford, Newcastle).

That's a tough fixture list for us, given the type of teams who we struggle against. Just the 2 easy games, and the rest I can see us losing any individual one of them given how we play.
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Totally agree. The home losses to Palace, Brighton, Fulham and Bournmouth have ruined our chances of CL football. Some really poor performances.
 
The defeatism here is exhausting and demoralising… We’ve beaten the odds before; we can do it again.
 
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