2024/25 Relegation Battle (Without Everton!)


Sporting Billy said:
So, who do we want to win tonight? Leicester or Brentford? Also, tomorrow, Ipswich or Spurs?
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Got to be Brentford and Ipswich as they are in and around the same part of the PL that we are in. I know there are some people still having sleepless nights about the over hanging threat of relegation that is lingering 13 points below us, but I think this is a week we could let those teams in the bottom 3 grab a win if nothing than to just give them some hope of staying up.
 
judge said:
Tbf, even 5 points will probably be enough, an 18 point gap and vastly superior goal difference. Plus, if you look at Dyche's last 14 league games in charge, he got substantially more than 6 points. I get that people don't like him and the brand of foootball he played, but he wasn't totally useless (otherwise we would have been relegated a few seasons ago).
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He clearly left for a variety of reasons, but the idea that Dyche was definitely taking us down is for the birds.

He’d have basically had to lose all 6 of the games Moyes has managed so far, and even then we’d still be ahead of Ipswich. People seem to have forgotten that before the losses to two form teams in Forest and Bournemouth (look how others have fared at Bournemouth this season) we had taken 6 points from 4 games v Wolves Arsenal City Chelsea. Our goal difference was superior to the sides at the bottom, clean sheets better, defence better.

Quite simply we made a horrendous start, got edged in some games we shouldn’t (Southampton, Brentford), and had some bad injuries down the spine of the team (Branthwaite Garner McNeil) , and that put us closer than was comfortable to the relegation zone.

But no way we were going down. The bottom 3 are trash. Even this Wolves team that is absolutely terrible is probably going to stay up,

That doesn’t mean that changing the manager wasn’t the right thing to do. As soon as the owners changed then the opportunity to get a better manager was rightfully taken. But people claiming we were definitely going down just aren’t reading the trends, we weren’t going down this season.
 
Saint Domingo said:
He clearly left for a variety of reasons, but the idea that Dyche was definitely taking us down is for the birds.

He’d have basically had to lose all 6 of the games Moyes has managed so far, and even then we’d still be ahead of Ipswich. People seem to have forgotten that before the losses to two form teams in Forest and Bournemouth (look how others have fared at Bournemouth this season) we had taken 6 points from 4 games v Wolves Arsenal City Chelsea. Our goal difference was superior to the sides at the bottom, clean sheets better, defence better.

Quite simply we made a horrendous start, got edged in some games we shouldn’t (Southampton, Brentford), and had some bad injuries down the spine of the team (Branthwaite Garner McNeil) , and that put us closer than was comfortable to the relegation zone.

But no way we were going down. The bottom 3 are trash. Even this Wolves team that is absolutely terrible is probably going to stay up,

That doesn’t mean that changing the manager wasn’t the right thing to do. As soon as the owners changed then the opportunity to get a better manager was rightfully taken. But people claiming we were definitely going down just aren’t reading the trends, we weren’t going down this season.
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I think that the idea that we were definitely staying up is also for the birds.

The performances were getting worse and worse, there are a lot of factors to consider and nothing is a definite but, at the time of his departure, I would say it was 50/50 at best. The fight seemed to be ebbing away from the players, they could not bring themselves to another game where they struggled to get a shot away because there were only 1/2 players allowed to go forward. It was a downward spiral and nobody can sit there and say with any confidence that we were going to improve on that or even level it out a bit.
 

Saint Domingo said:
He clearly left for a variety of reasons, but the idea that Dyche was definitely taking us down is for the birds.

He’d have basically had to lose all 6 of the games Moyes has managed so far, and even then we’d still be ahead of Ipswich. People seem to have forgotten that before the losses to two form teams in Forest and Bournemouth (look how others have fared at Bournemouth this season) we had taken 6 points from 4 games v Wolves Arsenal City Chelsea. Our goal difference was superior to the sides at the bottom, clean sheets better, defence better.

Quite simply we made a horrendous start, got edged in some games we shouldn’t (Southampton, Brentford), and had some bad injuries down the spine of the team (Branthwaite Garner McNeil) , and that put us closer than was comfortable to the relegation zone.

But no way we were going down. The bottom 3 are trash. Even this Wolves team that is absolutely terrible is probably going to stay up,

That doesn’t mean that changing the manager wasn’t the right thing to do. As soon as the owners changed then the opportunity to get a better manager was rightfully taken. But people claiming we were definitely going down just aren’t reading the trends, we weren’t going down this season.
Click to expand...

It would have been wrong to say Dyche was definitely taking us down, because we were still a point clear when he left. But equally there was a real chance we could have gone down because we had only won 3 games in half a season. The problem wasn't we were definitely going down, the issue was that no one could say we were very likely to be safe either.

It's now very likely, probably extremely likely, that we will be staying up. That's why we needed to change manager. The turnaround in a month has been huge.
 
Sporting Billy said:
So, who do we want to win tonight? Leicester or Brentford? Also, tomorrow, Ipswich or Spurs?
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I dont have a feeling of who i want to win. But exepct nothing but a Brentford win based on Leicester's form. and the way Brentford seem to have changed from winning at home and now cant, to now winning away after not winning away for months

Spurs i thnk may sneak it, but a Ipswich win would also not surprise me
 

wandyr79 said:
Part of me is still looking down. Anybody below us I want to lose, so draws would be OK for me, just to cement safety that little but more. The more freedom the players can play with the better.
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It’s an interesting debate- logically we are now safe unless something crazy happens, but at the same time if something crazy is going to happen it’ll start with Ipswich and Leicester winning this weekend.

So while logically it would maybe make sense to root for the teams way below us to beat the teams around us- human nature also dictates you contemplate the worst case scenario while it is still possible.

So overall I think our next goal is still mathematical safety. Get it completely off the table. From a business perspective certainty is better than “almost certainly”- it could move along commercial deals or pre contract negotiations with players when we ARE a PL team next season.

I also look at April and want any pressure completely off- if we go to Anfield with title pressure on them and no pressure on us, who knows?

So overall I think my instinct will be to root against the teams below until we’re uncatchable but I guess the nice thing is none of these results are life and death and can be argued either way as a decent result for us, and it’s nice to be in February not sweating these things either way.
 

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