Worst run of fixtures ever?

Irrational. said:
City game aside, we could’ve, and probably should’ve had another extra four points on the bird. Just goes to show how far we’ve come.
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Yeah should have took all 9 points this week really but despite the goal difference gap we are within 3 points of 3rd which is positive
 
To further the fixture conspiracy @Pogue Mahone ....

Here are the Premier League teams ranked by the timeframe in which they have to squeeze in their three festive matches…

1) Leeds: 167.75 hours (6 days, 23 hours, 45 minutes)

Wednesday December 28: Man City (H) 8pm, Amazon
67 hours – joint-shortest rest period between games
New Year’s Eve: Saturday December 31: Newcastle (A) 3pm
100.75 hours
Wednesday January 4, 2023: West Ham (H) 7:45pm

=2) Liverpool: 168 hours (7 days)

Boxing Day: Monday December 26: Aston Villa (A) 5:30pm, Amazon
98.5 hours
Friday December 30: Leicester (H) 8pm, Sky Sports
69.5 hours
Monday January 2, 2023: Brentford (A) 5:30pm, Sky Sports

=2) Manchester United: 168 hours (7 days)

Tuesday December 27: Nottingham Forest (H) 8pm, Amazon
88.5 hours
New Year’s Eve: Saturday December 31: Wolves (A) 12:30pm, BT Sport
79.5 hours
Tuesday January 3, 2023: Bournemouth (H) 8pm
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https://www.football365.com/news/pr...td-city-liverpool-leeds-spurs-chelsea-arsenal

So we're joint 2nd, Chelsea are 15th (9 days 2 hours) and Spurs have the nicest run (9 days 7 hours)
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Fecking hell. So when we finally get easy fixtures they’re all on top of each other and we have a squad full of WC jaded players up against teams who have mainly been chilling out over the last few weeks.
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Could have been even worse too. The Bournemouth game was scheduled to be 2nd December but was only moved "in order to protect the players' rest periods between match rounds 18 and 19."
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Fecking hell. So when we finally get easy fixtures they’re all on top of each other and we have a squad full of WC jaded players up against teams who have mainly been chilling out over the last few weeks.
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Don't forget to add that we're playing west ham just as they've finally fixed their form, and have worked their way up to 10th, making newly promoted fulham the only side in the top 12 that we haven't played in our opening 12 games. Then we play Villa in league and cup right at the start of the new manager bounce.

It all events out, but it's like our fixtures were hand selected to be toughest imaginable start.
 
One good thing about our tough fixture is that you can tell the players are really buying into ETH’s methods and and the relatively good results will only improve their confidence which we’ve been lacking for quite a while now.
 
JB7 said:
Could have been even worse too. The Bournemouth game was scheduled to be 2nd December but was only moved "in order to protect the players' rest periods between match rounds 18 and 19."
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bosnian_red said:
Don't forget to add that we're playing west ham just as they've finally fixed their form, and have worked their way up to 10th, making newly promoted fulham the only side in the top 12 that we haven't played in our opening 12 games. Then we play Villa in league and cup right at the start of the new manager bounce.

It all events out, but it's like our fixtures were hand selected to be toughest imaginable start.
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I remember having an argument with someone (might be @Mockney? or @Plechazunga?) once where I said that luck can’t possibly play any part in a league victory. And the best team always wins the league. This sort of shit seriously undermines my argument.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
I remember having an argument with someone (might be @Mockney? or @Plechazunga?) once where I said that luck can’t possibly play any part in a league victory. And the best team always wins the league. This sort of shit seriously undermines my argument.
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Don't remember the argument but I'd have been fully with plech/mockney on that one. Although you definitely can't win a league purely on luck, but if two teams are very close to each other it can often only be small things like luck that separate them. Or sometimes for example it can be an incompetent official not noticing or choosing to ignore Drogba standing a full metre offside.

Same reason I don't like the "it evens out over a season" argument, because generally it doesn't, and when people have looked at it if anything some teams seem to get repeatedly screwed over or helped out. It's just difficult to be definitive about because you can never be certain how a game or result would have panned out if you change a decision or a schedule etc.

I actually don't think having a lot of players at the world cup is necessarily a bad thing. At least they should still be relatively match fit, and we've seen in recent seasons how shite teams (in particular, us) are when that isn't the case. Last thing we need is 4 games in a week when we're lumbering about looking like our whole team has just woken from a 300 year cryosleep.

Also our two game false start is now particularly annoying as if we'd taken say, 4 points from those games, which we probably quite easily would now, we'd be in a fantastic position considering our fixtures.
 
Now - finally - do people know why I was so pissed about fixtures being postponed when the queen died? Back in, for instance, the treble year, we had a squad capable of coping with this PL bullshite. we don't these days... just have to hope that no one picks up a serious injury in the Joke Cup in Qatar
 
Not out of this run yet, as Sociedad by two goals midweek is a real challenge. West Ham have sorted themselves out, being one of the form teams in the league, then we have Emery’s first two Villa games, home and away. Fulham have only lost once at home this season too and are still in good form.

Banking on points during the easier run over the Christmas period is perhaps a bit naïve anyway, as Liverpool have shown. You still have to go and put in a good performance to win those matches.
 
TMDaines said:
Not out of this run yet, as Sociedad by two goals midweek is a real challenge. West Ham have sorted themselves out, being one of the form teams in the league, then we have Emery’s first two Villa games, home and away. Fulham have only lost once at home this season too and are still in good form.

Banking on points during the easier run over the Christmas period is perhaps a bit naïve anyway, as Liverpool have shown. You still have to go and put in a good performance to win those matches.
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We can ignore the Sociedad match because the thread was about league fixtures and how “luck” had landed ETH with an incredibly tough run of fixtures in the league. Which will bias a lot of the analyses about how well he’s doing his job. Hence there’s been a narrative from a few people on here, about how he maybe should have been doing better, that only makes sense if you completely ignore our fixture list.

I do agree the next few are no gimmes. We would definitely have been a lot better off coming up against West Ham earlier in the season and it seems unfair that we’re the only top four contender (I think?) who didn’t get to play Stevie G’s Villa.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
We can ignore the Sociedad match because the thread was about league fixtures and how “luck” had landed ETH with an incredibly tough run of fixtures in the league. Which will bias a lot of the analyses about how well he’s doing his job. Hence there’s been a narrative from a few people on here, about how he maybe should have been doing better, that only makes sense if you completely ignore our fixture list.

I do agree the next few are no gimmes. We would definitely have been a lot better off coming up against West Ham earlier in the season and it seems unfair that we’re the only top four contender (I think?) who didn’t get to play Stevie G’s Villa.
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Yeah, I’m not sure how bad Villa were under Gerrard. I know you aren’t big on expected data, but they are midtable for expected points so far, just ahead of us and Chelsea, albeit having played more games. With average finishing, Gerrard would still be in a job. They had several disappointing results against other sides near the bottom, but they were mostly coin flip matches, where both sides did little. They were much the better side against Chelsea, before the wheels came off against Fulham. Newcastle was comfortably their worst match of the season yesterday though under their caretaker.

Fans weren’t happy, because they weren’t getting the most out of exciting players in the squad, but they weren’t consistently bad or anything, just a bit dull – and generally you need results to justify dullness, especially when you have the exciting attacking players that they do.

I definitely would have preferred to face them under Gerrard, as I expect Emery to make them tough to beat quite quickly again though. Hopefully we can give him a rough first week.

Moyes away at a big six side should be a gimmie, but he got his first win in a cup game last season against us. He’ll get one in the league eventually… but no wins in 69(!) attempts so far.
 
TMDaines said:
Not out of this run yet, as Sociedad by two goals midweek is a real challenge. West Ham have sorted themselves out, being one of the form teams in the league, then we have Emery’s first two Villa games, home and away. Fulham have only lost once at home this season too and are still in good form.

Banking on points during the easier run over the Christmas period is perhaps a bit naïve anyway, as Liverpool have shown. You still have to go and put in a good performance to win those matches.
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The next 4 games aren't easy at all and a good test of where we're at.

Then the Christmas period is against sides who will have a lot more time on the training pitch as a near full squad than us during the World Cup.
 
Despite their current league standing today's opposition wasn't easy and likewise next week away to Villa in their new manager's first game in charge won't be easy either
 
Realistically I think we've done very well after the first two nightmare weeks. The derby was a disaster but we've beaten, Arsenal, Liverpool, Spurs, good draw at Chelsea where we could have won.

If we can get 6 points from the final two pre-world cup league matches I think it sets us up well for the second half of the season. Villa is going to. be very difficult after coming from Spain
 
I think we can be really happy with our results over this period. Every game has been tough. But we're given ourselves a very good chance of top four now I think.
 
Beat Sociedad by 2 goals and get 6 points from next 2 league games and - all things considered - it's been a very good start to the season, particularly following our opening games.
 
It's been a tricky start for Erik, but it's worth saying that we've had 4 games against Sheriff and Omonia in that period. If we want to compete as a top club, those games would be in the CL and likely against a much higher standard of opposition, so I don't think the start has been ridiculously difficult, just trickier to navigate than one would like.

Also, with our start, it made many of those games literally must-wins as well, so that didn't help. In a way, the start has validated my faith in ETH as the man, as opposed to Spurs who have been beaten well by us, Newcastle and Arsenal, with only a draw against Chelsea to show against other top teams. I'd rather our trial by fire as opposed to Spurs and Conte being flattered by their league position.

On another note, a key to navigating periods like this is having a strong start against the lesser teams and killing off the games early. How often when were at our best did United score a couple in the first 15/20 minutes while our opponents were trying to come to terms with the movement and quality.

Now we're just lacking that killer instinct and like today, West Ham have time to get reorganised, hang in there and then throw the kitchen sink for the last 10 mins. Going forward, basically the Spurs game needs to be the blueprint, but taking those early chances. Then you can use your subs, rotate one or two and keep your squad fresh.

We haven't really had a run to build that early pattern of dominance, against Southampton and Leicester we were in a different phase, and Everton was a really good performance bar the last 5 mins. Just thinking of how many of those 2-0 wins did we see on those Saturday afternoon games after a midweek European tie, with a strong first half followed by a 'professional' second 45.
 
We've played 12 PL games and for me we've now played the 9 teams who will finish top 10 with us come May.

Arsenal, City, Spurs, Liverpool, Chelsea, Newcastle, Brighton, Westham, Leicester.

It's been an absolute joke how the fixtures have fallen and yet we've still got a very decent return of PTS. Massive credit to ETH for that. To not play a single promoted team yet is a bit of a joke.
 
Liverpool, Arsenal, Tottenham, Newcastle, West Ham, Brighton all out of the way at home with a handy return of 13 points. Still City and Chelsea to come at Old Trafford but not much to fear from the other 11 remaining home fixtures. Hopefully those are the games where we start to see Ten Hag’s possession football more consistently and put a run together.

In the 10 games since the Brighton/Brentford disaster we have accumulated 23 points and that’s despite 7 of those games being against teams that finished in the top 8 last season and also Newcastle who have displayed top six form in 2022.

If we were to maintain that form for the rest of the season (2.3 points per game) that’s 83 points. Of course it’s not that straight-forward: we’ve seen today that we won’t have it all our own way against the teams below us in the table and that a few missing players can make a big difference to our performance level. Nevertheless, it’s still fair to say that on average the games to come are easier on paper than those we have just faced in that 10 game spell.

Whisper it quietly but we are very well placed for a top 4 finish.
 
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