2024/25 Relegation Battle (Without Everton!)


Walken said:
I may have started drinking quite early today
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Jeezus. I started at lunchtime on the allotment. Thankfully it's only Skol-level stuff, but still..
 

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Saint Domingo said:
We were tracking around a point per game and had been (and more) for close to 2 years (good form or bad). Obviously Moyes is a better manager and once the owners were in it was the right decision to get the best manager possible. But then people claiming we were definitely going down were panicking way too much.

We weren’t going down no matter how much people wanted to catastrophes. Even if we’d stuck with Dyche and lost all 8 games making it 10 losses in a row (which never happened under Dyche at Everton) we’d still have more than a good chance of staying up.

Both things can be true. It was the right decision to go for Moyes once Friedkin took over, but we were also never going down.
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Isn't hindsight a wonderful thing? Have to admire your confidence on this matter as the vast majority of us were bricking it.
There's no way in hell to say with 100% certainty that we were going to stay up at that point, just as there was no way to categorically state we were going down. At the time, though, the latter was a disturbingly distict possibility, if not a borderline probability. Had Dyche stayed, the odds were about even as far as I was concerned.
 

canuckblue said:
Isn't hindsight a wonderful thing? Have to admire your confidence on this matter as the vast majority of us were bricking it.
There's no way in hell to say with 100% certainty that we were going to stay up at that point, just as there was no way to categorically state we were going down. At the time, though, the latter was a disturbingly distict possibility, if not a borderline probability. Had Dyche stayed, the odds were about even as far as I was concerned.
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Agree with this. I think it would have been a hugely nerve-wracking and uncomfortable ride for us with of course the stadium move lurking in the shadow.

"We probably would have stayed up anyway" says more about the state of the bottom three than it does about Dyche.

We had zero goals in us, no fight, no inspiration, with morale on the floor. It was ugly and getting worse. I'm just so relieved that we've been spared the awful ordeal of must win games for the Old Lady's final matches.
 
canuckblue said:
Isn't hindsight a wonderful thing? Have to admire your confidence on this matter as the vast majority of us were bricking it.
There's no way in hell to say with 100% certainty that we were going to stay up at that point, just as there was no way to categorically state we were going down. At the time, though, the latter was a disturbingly distict possibility, if not a borderline probability. Had Dyche stayed, the odds were about even as far as I was concerned.
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Just not the case, as has been shown. We didn’t have the goal difference, the goals conceded, or the number of clean sheets to suggest we were going in that direction. We had a bad start to the season but the trajectory was forecasting a points total that would have kept us up easily. Even Moyes said he didn’t see us as a relegation team whatsoever. The other teams were getting worse and worse every week.
 
Saint Domingo said:
Just not the case, as has been shown. We didn’t have the goal difference, the goals conceded, or the number of clean sheets to suggest we were going in that direction. We had a bad start to the season but the trajectory was forecasting a points total that would have kept us up easily. Even Moyes said he didn’t see us as a relegation team whatsoever. The other teams were getting worse and worse every week.
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"As has been shown." Which is purely hindsight. We could have just as easily kept losing and Ipswich and Leicester could have strung some results together and it would be a different scenario. All ifs and buts, innit?
 
Saint Domingo said:
Just not the case, as has been shown. We didn’t have the goal difference, the goals conceded, or the number of clean sheets to suggest we were going in that direction. We had a bad start to the season but the trajectory was forecasting a points total that would have kept us up easily. Even Moyes said he didn’t see us as a relegation team whatsoever. The other teams were getting worse and worse every week.
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We had 17 points from 19 games, it was pretty bad.

But hey, now it's not.
 
canuckblue said:
"As has been shown." Which is purely hindsight. We could have just as easily kept losing and Ipswich and Leicester could have strung some results together and it would be a different scenario. All ifs and buts, innit?
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Which equally applies to all those saying we were definitely going down. We could have lost 10 in a row, we could have won 4 in a row and moved clear. Both equally unlikely.

I’ve seen Everton teams stop running and conceding goals left right and centre downing tools. That team was blunt as anything upfront but that work rate alone and defensive record would have in my opinion kept us easily ahead of the bottom 3 teams.

It was the right decision to change manager once the takeover was complete though with Dyche’s contract ending in June.
 

Saint Domingo said:
Which equally applies to all those saying we were definitely going down. We could have lost 10 in a row, we could have won 4 in a row and moved clear. Both equally unlikely.

I’ve seen Everton teams stop running and conceding goals left right and centre downing tools. That team was blunt as anything upfront but that work rate alone and defensive record would have in my opinion kept us easily ahead of the bottom 3 teams.

It was the right decision to change manager once the takeover was complete though with Dyche’s contract ending in June.
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There's no guarantee that work rate and defensive record would have continued, especially if the losses continued. Still, it's all what-ifs by this point and neither of us is going to change his mind. At least we agree on the final point.
 
Can’t believe still some banging on about Dyche and pretending we weren’t in danger of relegation.

Delusion at its finest. Move on.

Embrace that we can relax and just enjoy the rest of the season regardless of results now in spite of what Dyche did to us.
 

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