Top 4 ?

[blue_aussie05]

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Thanks for doing that. It’s impossible trying to guess any results because this season more than any other has been so unpredictable. The RS were top at Christmas, who’d have seen this collapse happening?

More than any other season, this will have unexpected results with many twists and turns to come.

For me, it’s all about mentality. It’ll be a big test of that tonight. In truth, we’re realistically nowhere near a top 4 outfit, so I do expect our quality to let us down in the final run-in. However, despite that, our points tally and position in the table have us right in the mix. I’m just hoping Carlo can sprinkle a bit of magic with his know-how to get a bit more out of the players.

We’ve still got 12 games left, which doesn’t seem a lot, but there’s still a third of the season to go and a lot of points to play for. Let’s see where we are with 10 games left, and more importantly with 5 games to go

 

[blue_aussie05]

I’m certainly looking up rather than down.

 

[Barnfred 55]

Might need your eyes checked

If we win the 2 games in hand we will be 2 points behind United and 1 point behind Leicester. That may of course change after tonight's game, but there are still another 10 games to go.

At this moment in time, the only thing assured (not mathematically but realistically) is that City are champions. The 3 other Champions League positions could go to any one of the next 7 or 8 teams. Personally I believe it's any 3 from Everton, Chelsea, Spurs, United and Leicester.

A loss tonight against Chelsea will make that task harder, but we are still in the race. Win tonight and I'd say we have a good chance of finishing 2nd when I look at the remaining games of all the clubs involved. Remember our last game is against City who will have won the league by then and hopefully will be looking forward to a European final the following week.

 

[Raino85]

People have mentioned the Arsenal home game in Martinez’s first season, which was billed as a top 4 decider at the time. I don’t think this Chelsea game is in the same category, though, as there’s far more teams in the equation this season.

If you remember, we were flying in the league in 2013/14 but we had to beat Arsenal in April in a must-win game to stand any chance of finishing 4th. I seem to remember we were 5th about 4-5 points behind with a game in hand, so really needed to beat them to go within striking distance.

We won comfortably 3-0 playing some great footy and made a big statement that day. The weekend after we won at Sunderland in a scrappy game to leapfrog Arsenal and go 4th. It was our 7th straight league win, and we were now sitting in pole position for top 4 with only 5 games left. That midweek we played Palace at Goodison in our game in hand and nobody saw anything but us winning, which would have cemented us in that top 4 spot with 4 games left. As everyone knows, we played awful and lost. We also lost 2 of the 4 games left, and ultimately ended up 7 points behind Arsenal. 7 points! Not even close.

After Arsenal lost to us, they obviously just kept winning, but we lost 3 of the last 5.

Our points tally of 72 points would usually have finished anywhere between 2nd to 4th any other year, although Spurs also finished 5th with 72 points the year before and Arsenal finished 5th with 75 points in 16/17. Just shows each season is different, and you just have to play with the cards that are in front of you at any given moment. This season is deffo an unusual one, and presents a great chance of either silverware or top 4. Let’s do our best to achieve both, but if we don’t get either, let’s at least go down fighting and believing!

Possibly my favourite Everton performance in my whole time supporting Everton that Arsenal win! They couldn't touch us that day!

 

[brieverton]

Possibly my favourite Everton performance in my whole time supporting Everton that Arsenal win! They couldn't touch us that day!

Certainly my favourite performance outside of the Kendall and Royle eras, arguably our best win in 20 years that Arsenal game, and maybe since as well. Pity we couldn't build on it.

 

[Sporting Billy]

Thing I remember about that game was Coleman doing keepy uppys down half the length of the field

 

[Drico]

Just out of interest @Drico who do you think will finish above us? I said earlier today that we could drop to about 9th if it all goes t1ts up, but I’m not expecting us to drop that low.

We’re currently 5th, so which two teams do you think will leapfrog us? Spurs, RS, West Ham?

I suspect we'll tail off and finish behind Spurs and Liverpool. I'll be disappointed if we finish behind Moyes, but he's put together a very consistent side there, to his immense credit. I had us down for 9th this season, so 7th or 8th will be respectable, but we hope for more.

 

[Nyhus]

If we win the 2 games in hand we will be 2 points behind United and 1 point behind Leicester. That may of course change after tonight's game, but there are still another 10 games to go.

At this moment in time, the only thing assured (not mathematically but realistically) is that City are champions. The 3 other Champions League positions could go to any one of the next 7 or 8 teams. Personally I believe it's any 3 from Everton, Chelsea, Spurs, United and Leicester.

A loss tonight against Chelsea will make that task harder, but we are still in the race. Win tonight and I'd say we have a good chance of finishing 2nd when I look at the remaining games of all the clubs involved. Remember our last game is against City who will have won the league by then and hopefully will be looking forward to a European final the following week.

Dont get me wrong, I dont think we’ll get 3d, but i do think saying its ‘out of sight’ when we might be a point behind when having played the same amount of games is very illogical. We have a real chance to get a very good leaguge position this season and see no reason for pretending we cant get there when we’ve already done a bunch of the things we ‘cant do’ this season. Like beating a bunch of the ‘top clubs’ and winning at anfield. The squad will have belief on a different level to previous seasons and everything is possible.

 

[ossie_21]

For top 4, gotta look at trying to chase Leicester down. Chelsea are a changed team and I’d pick them for 2nd, Utd 3rd. Leicester have to play the rest of the top 6, but it’s gonna be tough to hang in there with injuries starting to pile up.

Also looks like Spurs have turned a corner, the bitters could easily do the same so don’t want to get overtaken too easily either

 

[Brennan]

As I said last week, we’ll do well to finish top 6 with this squad.

 

[Wat Tyler]

So boring the same clubs qualifying every year.

to be fair Leicester have broke through. Think we are a way off yet still unfortunately

 

[Carloblues]

So boring the same clubs qualifying every year.

to be fair Leicester have broke through. Think we are a way off yet still unfortunately

We are when we.go into games against the big teams without our best players.

If we can keep beating the teams below us we can still qualify ( hard task like don't get me wrong )

 

[Canuck Darryl]

Doubtful.

 

[blue_aussie05]

Everton know how to beat all optimism out of us, don’t they?

As I’ve said all along, defeat tonight doesn’t rule us out. However, it does show the difference in quality of both teams

 

[alphabet]

Still got a solid chance at top4.