Finger. At best.
Villa’s last 4 games: 12 points to our 6.
After tonight they have Fulham (H), Bournemouth (A), Spurs (H), Man U (A). I’ll be surprised if it’s less than 8. Likely 10. Possibly 12. They have the taste for human flesh after their PSG exploits.
Having thought 65/66 will be enough, it’s looking more like 68/69.
Four games against teams in the bottom half, each of which we won the reverse fixture against, three of them by at least two goals. If we’re a champions league team, we should be expecting something in the 7-9 region.
Provided we can beat Brentford (including post Cup fatigue etc), I’d go higher than 7-9.
So if we can beat Brentford, I’d be confident of 7-9 points plus whatever we can get from Palace [& even they have tailed off a bit of late - shipped 10 goals in 3 halves (admittedly vs City & Newcastle, so it can happen) plus a 0-0 home draw with Muff.]
There’s a not-implausible world where we’re on 68-70 points by the time we get to the Chelsea game, & I reckon Chelsea will be out of the equation by then; they’ll beat Man U & Everton but their other 2 are Newcastle away & Liverpool, so they could easily go into that game with 63-64 points.
It feels like 2 from Forest, Newcastle & Villa (City could win all their remaining league games). So we want a City win tonight (though I now feel that I need to wash) - because that would mean Villa could only get to a maximum of 69 points - & I reckon we can surpass that… provided we beat Brentford.
(And thank fuck we won last night!)
I'm already getting a bad feeling about the Leicester game.
Come on now, Jim. Their players gave up weeks ago and the manager will be off this summer by the look of it. If Forest can score first, they'll have no fight in them.
But let's be clear. Lestoh are shit and we're at home, so if we have designs on a Champions League place, nothing other than three points will do. We'll need this fixture to take some pressure off another one for us.
I think my angle for being concerned is that the game is the last time this season the Leiester players are going to be able to redeem any semblance of respect or admiration from their fan base. They might feel that beating us and perhaps denying a CL place would in some ways counter their awful performances.
This season or the first meeting in the 26/27 season?
Alright Keir, calm down.
Don't think there are that many of them that 'feel' very leicester. In fact I strongly suspect that many of them are activating their agents in the hope that they don't have to feel leicester for very much longer at all.
The respect for 90% of the players (and management / owners) went ages ago. El Khannouss the Keeper, and the academy prospects are about the only ones out of the firing line.
They keep bringing this 15 year old kid on as a sub and the commentators rave about him every time, then he runs around looking like a lost 15 year old kid and I wonder what good they think it's actually doing him.
Are they teaching him to be a loser?
But that's a big "provided" - our record against Brentford isn't great, we could be knackered/demoralised/distracted and their form seems to have ticked up recently to the point where MotD was trying to talk them into a European race.
Also West Ham have been poor recently but it'll be their last home game of the season and, if we do beat City, another mid-week game when we could be knackered/distracted/demoralised.
All of the next 4 are very winnable for the reasons I and you have given but this is football - seems unlikely we're going to put together another 5 match winning league run, while we're also involved in the cup.
I did start with 8 as the target (2 wins, 2 draws seems like a decent run) but that seemed too specific.
Barring a meltdown from someone it looks like being an interesting Championship playoff series - Sheffield United, Sunderland, Bristol City and Coventry. Of those 4 Bristol City are by far my preference to win it, I like the city of Bristol a lot and I think I'm right in saying that it's the largest city in England to have never had a club in the Premier League. Wouldn't hate Coventry either, if nothing else because it would be the turd icing on the shit sandwich that Leicester City's season has been.
Seems like loads of empty seats at the Etihad, yet they also seem to be building an estra tier on the stand behind one goal.
It’s pretty poor if they can’t fill the stadium for this fixture.
Understandably, there were plenty of extra seats at Spurs last night (but they claim the attendance was 59,000, capacity 63,000).
Considering he’s supposed to be the best goalkeeper in the world, Martinez seems to concede an awful lot of soft goals.
