Plotting our escape.....

[Ads]

By my admittedly dodgy calculations, if games only lasted for 85 minutes, then we'd be 4th in the league

Sheff Weds scored on 85 mins, Huddersfield 86, Forest 87 and Brentford 88. Is that 7 dropped points in the last 5 mins?

It is.

But what I think you're saying is that by come Preston, as long as there's only one minute added on, we might win it?

[eamonn]

Brentford and Hudds deserved something for how they dominated territorially in the second half even if they didn't create a great deal. You deserve all you get when you spend half the game waiting for the final whistle.

 The Wednesday and Forest (in particular) games were harder to take as the opposition didn't play any better than us.

[Brian Taylor]

By my admittedly dodgy calculations, if games only lasted for 85 minutes, then we'd be 4th in the league

Sheff Weds scored on 85 mins, Huddersfield 86, Forest 87 and Brentford 88. Is that 7 dropped points in the last 5 mins?

It is.

But what I think you're saying is that by come Preston, as long as there's only one minute added on, we might win it?

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37378935. They take 'curses' seriously in Ireland. Maybe rdm should do likewise

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37378935

[Toronto Villa]

I like our attacking options but they need to be options and not all be played at the same time. I'd sooner we grinded out some hard fought 1-0, 2-1 wins than going for broke and then conceding late. We need the confidence of winning to free us from the tension that has a hold over the entire place. Goals will come with freedom and confidence.

[PaulWinch again]

What would be nice would be three things -

- an actual plan of attack
- a defence that can actually communicate
- a sense of urgency

Those three things would massively change our fortunes.

[Ads]

We are a team that cannot win a game. Cannot see us doing anything but limping towards the 3rd division.

[PaulWinch again]

We'll win games at some point. Whether there will be enough wins for the top 6 is certainly up for debate, but we're not going down.

[Toronto Villa]

I'd like us to go back to shooting 50 times a game and when we have the lead have a plan to steadily and intentionally see out the game. Today we didn't look like scoring and we almost got screwed towards the end. How you go from one attacking extreme to the complete opposite is beyond me.

[Ads]

What makes you think we are going to win games? We look as bad as last season.

By and large we are too open. We shit our pants in the 85th minute and could easily have been beaten by fucking Ipswich who are garbage.

We can't win away games, we are shit at home. We are unbalanced, with Sherwood in a mask who is grasping at selection and formation.

We are far more likely to be relegated than finish in the top half. It's absolutely atrocious.

[exiled on the wirral!]

A point behind our 1987-88 promotion season points wise...bleak times!

[Goldie.7]

It's around 19 wins for the top six, so far we've won one. So in theory we'll need to win every second game from now on.

Does that look likely?

[Lastfootstamper]

A point behind our 1987-88 promotion season points wise...bleak times!

A point which would've deprived us of an automatic spot.

[spartacuss]

Don't know whether this has been referenced before, but I found more than an echo of our 'slippage' last season (and current state?) in this article about the slackness and lack of team spirit at Everton last season under Martinez:

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/sep/16/ronald-koeman-revolution-everton-roberto-martinez-gareth-barry

I remember someone on H & V talking about (last season, can't recall exactly) our players all headphoned up and isolated when being 'together' travelling to and from matches, so this extract from the article about Koeman's new approach caught my eye:

 'Players were told to report to Finch Farm at 9am each day to eat breakfast together. No mobile phones are allowed at mealtimes. Baseball caps and headphones are also banned when travelling to matches. Training has a sharpness that has been reflected in Everton’s play in the final third and when out of possession.'

This team as opposed to a group of players aspect is of interest to me, because some years back a nephew of mine was part of the catering and waiting team on the Villa team bus and - although he was never indiscreet enough to reveal much (sorry!) - he did comment on the way, win or lose, there was generally a good team spirit on the bus.  He mentioned Mark Delaney in particular as a good MC for collective team-building involvement.

I'm probably a bit old-school on this, but the self-absorbed, atomisation that headphoned-up players seems to represent,  probably doesn't help building team spirit.

[Clark W Griswold]

Yes, we're probably going to need about 70 points min for 6th. That's another 62 points in 38 games. Following on from 8 in 8 and from last seasons debacle I'm not confident. By the way, 46 points should just keep us up by a place or 2, so if it gets any worse we could actually be down again.