Wet Sham (A Match Thread)

Current bottom three: the three promoted teams.

Current next three: last season's three promoted teams.

We need to stop pissing points away but I’m pretty confident we will. At this stage last season we weren’t often in positions where we could piss points away, especially away from home.

Agreed. We’ve arguably pissed away at least a point today, 2 against Luton and arguably another vs Man United. But going from a lame 4-0 last season to a 3-2 thriller is progress.

I hear this a lot. But losing 3-2 rather than 4-0 is still losing.

But we have had results better than last year (Chelsea, Villa) so I'm hopeful we will be ok. And you would like to think less points than last year will stay up.

Perhaps major concern is staying up may not be good enough to keep Cooper, who knows?

I am slightly more interested in the ‘this year vs last year’ results comparison with the promoted/relegated teams excluded entirely. After all, whatever we think will happen.. we wont know who the three worst teams are until the season is done, so we dont really know who this years equivalents are. After all, this time last year, we were easily one of the worst teams.

Like-for-like against teams we actually played last year, including mere improvements in losing scorelines, illustrates progress. If you lose 3-2 instead of 4-0 then that’s a change from being thrashed to competing. Keep repeating that and the narrower defeats turn into draws and wins.

Points will always be pissed away. At least if we’re competing better we’ll have more opportunities to piss them away and more practice at not pissing them away.

We're 4 points ahead on that basis (beating Chelsea and Villa in games we drew last season). Much better goal difference as well but I don't have that to hand.

But by comparing on that basis, you are ignoring 16% of the games and, more critically, 32% of the points we actually got last season.

The two games that are different also show that any attempt to compare to last season is pretty meaningless - playing Chelsea under Poch and Villa under Emery is far harder than under Lampard and Gerrard respectively.

Incidentally - one set-piece goal all season (presumably Boly's accidental header at Old Trafford) is not good enough.