Will we win the Premier League

[Smirker]

If we beat Arsenal on Tuesday we are absolutely in this and can win the league.

I don't think we will lose the game. Head is saying draw.

[lovejoy]

They are all massive games from here on.  We will lose one eventually, and how we react will be key. 

Exactly, it’s not not winning, it’s how you bounce back. The pressure will mount and the press will love a narrative of 10 point gaps blown etc.
Personally I’m at the point where champions league football is the expectation and anything else is a bonus.

[SoccerHQ]

This season reminds me a bit of 2008/09.

By then we'd had two and a half years of MON so all the squad knew what to do, we had long winning streaks up to the February and won many games from losing positions. Think we had 52 points after beating Blackburn away in early February so we must've been very close to the top positions at that time.

The difference of course was our bench was totally pap apart from the occasions Carew was on it and O'Neill was clueless with rotation while Emery is the master at it.

Winning that game yesterday from the triple sub shows imo our squad is the third strongest in the league after Man. City and Arsenal as Liverpool's bench is awful currently and Chelsea subs really didn't make an impact at all so that bodes very well for the challenge ahead.

Would be incredible to get to 70 points and have 7/8 games still remaining. Then you never know. Think that is what Unai means by referencing "30 games" when the MOTD interviewer was trying to get him to declare we're in the title race. He is far too wily to give silly soundbites like that.

[Dave]

Would be incredible to get to 70 points and have 7/8 games still remaining.

That would be our highest Premier League points total since 1993, from 75% of the available matches.

Incredible feels like it would be damning it with faint praise.

[pauliewalnuts]

The biggest difference was that MON didn't have the first idea of tactics beyond his one 'thing', ie the counter attacking. That's why our away record was so much better than home, when teams came to VP and parked the bus, he had zero idea how to handle it.

He also had no idea how to manage a squad across the demands of a whole season, and as you said re rotation, the very thought that he might have made subs like yesterday's - ie to react to what was going on in the match at the time, and to change things - rather than just changing whoever played at RB and/or throwing Steve Sidwell on on 75 minutes is laughable.

[SoccerHQ]

Maybe teams will counter our rope-a-dope strategy by copying what we do. Draw us on in the first half and then bring on their five "finishers" off the bench.

Liverpool's subs bench yesterday was: Conor Bradley, Cody Gakpo, Trey Nyoni, Mamardashvili, Robertson, Freddie Woodman, Calvin Ramsey, Rio Ngumoha and the delightfully named Wellity Lucky.

So two players I've never heard of (Ngumoha was the 16 year old kid who scored last minute at Newcastle), two keepers and Calvin Ramsey made little impact on loan at Preston and Bolton in last two years.

I don't think people realise how good our squad actually is this season. I'd say it is third best in the league behind Arsenal and Man. City. Think people just rate Chelsea's squad because they sign so many players each transfer window but none of their subs could do anything when put on in high intensity match yesterday.

I didn't rate the signing of Lindelof but he's been brilliant in all three prem games he's started so that is what you want from backup player, comes in to start regularly at congested part of the season and the quality level dosen't drop at all.

[SoccerHQ]

The biggest difference was that MON didn't have the first idea of tactics beyond his one 'thing', ie the counter attacking. That's why our away record was so much better than home, when teams came to VP and parked the bus, he had zero idea how to handle it.

He also had no idea how to manage a squad across the demands of a whole season, and as you said re rotation, the very thought that he might have made subs like yesterday's - ie to react to what was going on in the match at the time, and to change things - rather than just changing whoever played at RB and/or throwing Steve Sidwell on on 75 minutes is laughable.

I did quantify my post above by saying that.

However in 2008/09 despite all that we still had runs winning four prem games in a row a few times. After 18 games that season we had 34 points and then won loads of games in January.

Man. United won the league that season with 90 points, Arsenal finished 4th on 72 so that feels a good barometer points wise for our finishing position this season.

[PeterWithesShin]

We won 4 of the last 16 in 08/09, and one of those was against Doncaster. We won 4 in a row once in the league, against Hull, Albion, Portsmouth and Sunderland who were all shit.

[N'ZMAV]

lets not compare MON with Unai.
Unai has more tactical expertise in his left bollock than MON had in his whole career.

[Sexual Ealing]

Maybe teams will counter our rope-a-dope strategy by copying what we do. Draw us on in the first half and then bring on their five "finishers" off the bench.

Liverpool's subs bench yesterday was: Conor Bradley, Cody Gakpo, Trey Nyoni, Mamardashvili, Robertson, Freddie Woodman, Calvin Ramsey, Rio Ngumoha and the delightfully named Wellity Lucky.

So two players I've never heard of (Ngumoha was the 16 year old kid who scored last minute at Newcastle), two keepers and Calvin Ramsey made little impact on loan at Preston and Bolton in last two years.

I don't think people realise how good our squad actually is this season. I'd say it is third best in the league behind Arsenal and Man. City. Think people just rate Chelsea's squad because they sign so many players each transfer window but none of their subs could do anything when put on in high intensity match yesterday.

I didn't rate the signing of Lindelof but he's been brilliant in all three prem games he's started so that is what you want from backup player, comes in to start regularly at congested part of the season and the quality level dosen't drop at all.

Wellity Lucky can think himself unfortunate not to have played more.

[Small Rodent]

They are all massive games from here on.  We will lose one eventually, and how we react will be key. 

Exactly, it’s not not winning, it’s how you bounce back. The pressure will mount and the press will love a narrative of 10 point gaps blown etc.
Personally I’m at the point where champions league football is the expectation and anything else is a bonus.

This is exactly how I feel.

For the moment, the Champion’s League place is ours to blow with the ten points gap.

But even that is very harsh on my half way through the season

[RamboandBruno]

The biggest difference was that MON didn't have the first idea of tactics beyond his one 'thing', ie the counter attacking. That's why our away record was so much better than home, when teams came to VP and parked the bus, he had zero idea how to handle it.

He also had no idea how to manage a squad across the demands of a whole season, and as you said re rotation, the very thought that he might have made subs like yesterday's - ie to react to what was going on in the match at the time, and to change things - rather than just changing whoever played at RB and/or throwing Steve Sidwell on on 75 minutes is laughable.

I did quantify my post above by saying that.

However in 2008/09 despite all that we still had runs winning four prem games in a row a few times. After 18 games that season we had 34 points and then won loads of games in January.

Man. United won the league that season with 90 points, Arsenal finished 4th on 72 so that feels a good barometer points wise for our finishing position this season.

I used to get excited during the main O’Neil years, but it was nothing like this, nothing like any of the years under Emery, especially this year. We’ve seen a year on year transformation or major tweaking in tactics to combat whatever hurdles have been put in our way. We've also smashed records all over the place. The era’s are incomparable to me. 

[PeterWithesShin]

[brontebilly]

Think the big change these days is that once we equalised it kind of seemed inevitable we would go on and win the game.

[SoccerHQ]

The biggest difference was that MON didn't have the first idea of tactics beyond his one 'thing', ie the counter attacking. That's why our away record was so much better than home, when teams came to VP and parked the bus, he had zero idea how to handle it.

He also had no idea how to manage a squad across the demands of a whole season, and as you said re rotation, the very thought that he might have made subs like yesterday's - ie to react to what was going on in the match at the time, and to change things - rather than just changing whoever played at RB and/or throwing Steve Sidwell on on 75 minutes is laughable.

I did quantify my post above by saying that.

However in 2008/09 despite all that we still had runs winning four prem games in a row a few times. After 18 games that season we had 34 points and then won loads of games in January.

Man. United won the league that season with 90 points, Arsenal finished 4th on 72 so that feels a good barometer points wise for our finishing position this season.

I used to get excited during the main O’Neil years, but it was nothing like this, nothing like any of the years under Emery, especially this year. We’ve seen a year on year transformation or major tweaking in tactics to combat whatever hurdles have been put in our way. We've also smashed records all over the place. The era’s are incomparable to me. 

Oh yeah for sure. The way we won under MON was conceding lots of possession, rapid counters through Gabby with Young crossing it for Carew or someone else to head in and Laursen steaming in from set pieces.

2007/08 was good fun at least after years of mediocrity. Lots of high scoring games and really good results v Arsenal and Chelsea but we had little control in those type of games compared to now and the using 14 players thing blew up in our faces from March onwards when we'd always have terrible ends to the season.

Now we pace ourselves through the season and we have a far superior squad to 23/24 when we limped towards the finish due to injuries and that cost us in the Europa Conference league.