Toughest first half of a PL season?

Skills

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Jan 17, 2012
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Because of game cancellations etc by the half way point of the season for us (Match 19) - we would have played the top 2 teams in the league Home and Away, and the rest of the top 10 once.

The two games we've had delayed are against teams in the bottom half of the table.

Has there been a more challenging first half of a season?
 
Skills said:
Because of game cancellations etc by the half way point of the season for us (Match 19) - we would have played the top 2 teams in the league Home and Away, and the rest of the top 10 once.

The two games we've had delayed are against teams in the bottom half of the table.

Has there been a more challenging first half of a season?
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Look on the bright side, it makes the second half of the season a lot easier :)
 
Raw said:
Statistically the only team to have a tougher first 19 games is Brighton (based on this)
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Not sure how they're ahead when they play Leicester and Liverpool home and away while we have the top 2. Maybe it's other big games being away while we had many at home.

But yeah, our 2nd half has 12/19 easy on paper. Like really easy.
Only tough games on paper are:
  • Spurs away
  • Liverpool away
  • Newcastle away
  • Chelsea home
  • Brighton away
  • Palace away (relatively tough)
  • West Ham away (relatively tough)
The rest are:
  • Palace home
  • Leeds home
  • Leeds away
  • Leicester home
  • Brentford home
  • Villa home
  • Southampton home
  • Everton home
  • Forest away
  • Wolves home
  • Bournemouth away
  • Fulham home
Thats a ridiculously easy run where all the lower mid table sides we play at home where it's generally much easier, and we play the absolute bottom sides away where it shouldn't matter. Tough big games, but there's not many of them, and I'd guess we can at least get 1/2 wins and a couple draws out of them. The easy games really should be close to perfect.

If we go 10/1/1 in the easy games, and 2/2/3 in the tough games, that's another 39 points in the 2nd half of the season. That's 74 points for the season not counting what happens in the next 2. And I bet we do a bit better than that and end around 80.
 
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bosnian_red said:
Not sure how they're ahead when they play Leicester and Liverpool home and away while we have the top 2. Maybe it's other big games being away while we had many at home.

But yeah, our 2nd half has 12/19 easy on paper. Like really easy.
Only tough games on paper are:
  • Spurs away
  • Liverpool away
  • Newcastle away
  • Chelsea home
  • Brighton away
  • Palace away (relatively tough)
  • West Ham away (relatively tough)
The rest are:
  • Palace home
  • Leeds home
  • Leeds away
  • Leeds home
  • Brentford home
  • Villa home
  • Southampton home
  • Everton home
  • Forest away
  • Wolves home
  • Bournemouth away
  • Fulham home
Thats a ridiculously easy run where all the lower mid table sides we play at home where it's generally much easier, and we play the absolute bottom sides away where it shouldn't matter. Tough big games, but there's not many of them, and I'd guess we can at least get 1/2 wins and a couple draws out of them. The easy games really should be close to perfect.

If we go 10/1/1 in the easy games, and 2/2/3 in the tough games, that's another 39 points in the 2nd half of the season. That's 74 points for the season not counting what happens in the next 2. And I bet we do a bit better than that and end around 80.
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That's interesting, I like it when people do the leg work in working stuff like this out.

Get 4pts from our next two games and things start to look promising on paper. Just need a few players to maintain good form and we may be within the realms of a challenge.
 
bosnian_red said:
Not sure how they're ahead when they play Leicester and Liverpool home and away while we have the top 2. Maybe it's other big games being away while we had many at home.
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Think it could also be due to the position of each team, i.e a team higher in the table would fare better against others. Not sure how exactly they calculate it though.

Also you put Leeds 3 times there :) Think you meant Leicester?
 
Smores said:
That's interesting, I like it when people do the leg work in working stuff like this out.

Get 4pts from our next two games and things start to look promising on paper. Just need a few players to maintain good form and we may be within the realms of a challenge.
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To challenge basically we'd need to get 2 wins in the next 2 games (up to 80 pts in the above calc), go perfect in the easy games (85), and go 3/2/2 in the tough games at least (88). Would mean going 15/2/2 for the 2nd half of the season along with beating city and Arsenal in the next 2. Just don't see us being capable of that. Can see 2-4 points from the next 2 games, and then 12 wins, 3 draws, 4 losses as a normal prediction for our 2nd half of the season, considering we are in all comps. Would give us 76-78 points on the season.
 
Raw said:
Think it could also be due to the position of each team, i.e a team higher in the table would fare better against others. Not sure how exactly they calculate it though.

Also you put Leeds 3 times there :) Think you meant Leicester?
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Yup you're right! And yeah that's how they mention it, which is why it doesn't make much sense, since we would have played the top 2 twice, while they played Leicester and Liverpool twice! Though I guess if you consider that we play Brighton and they play us, then naturally theirs is tougher.
 
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