CB Fry

None! Immense.

Look, you predicted match by match on a prediction thread that we would lose all five games against the "big five" (including Everton) in November and December. You've changed your mind now, that's fine. Probably worth a bit of humility rather than pretending you didn't predict that, when you clearly did.

You're ignoring the fact that that is all irrelevant. The team that finishes fourth this season - whether it is us or someone else - is 99% certain to get more than 65 points. It will be around 69 to mid seventies, as the last decade shows. That's what fourth place teams get, and worrying about form of any given team in any given season is unnecessary. The chances of the fourth place team finishing on 65 is best described as miniscule.

You're wasting your time. In their world the team in 4th - say Arsenal - and their 70 - plus points just disappear into thin air, leaving the way clear for the Super Saints to effortlessly stroll to fourth with the lowest points total in a decade or so.

65 would have landed us in fifth in 2008/9, Arsenal in fourth got 72 points. I'm not going to bother rechecking 2010/11 as it will be the same kind of thing as you are coming from the "just one more point than fifth" starting point, which is just a pointless argument.

I like it that you continue to try and score this "point" pretty much once a week. And fail. Give up.

Does he? Where?

This is a discussion about points required for finishing positions, not whether or not people think we are better than last season. Us being better than last season does not cosmically change the typical number of points required to finish in any given spot in the league.

65 is definitely doable for fourth. Mainly because I, like many others, am expecting Liverpool, Spurs and Arsenal to all be done for financial irregularities and all be hammered for 15 points each come May.

And, just for completeness, have just trailed back about six or seven seasons - 65 is nowhere, nowhere near enough in any of them.

Not this again FFS. If we get one point, or slightly better goal difference than the "average needed to finish fifth" then we will finish fifth. Because another team, surprise surprise, will achieve around the average needed to finish fourth and will subsequently finish fourth. Nice to see thus classic debate rolled out. Well I say debate. It's not really a debate. Just some people being wrong.

That's not what I said at all. Let's deal in facts of what you have said, on this forum. I said your prediction of 9 points from ten games was a prediction for relegation form. Less than a point a game. And I am right, it is. You said 9 points from 10 games was "the level required for 5th/6th". It isn't. Its relegation form. A run like that would see us fade away into eighth, at best as we'd be down to 1.45ish points per game for the season. No chance, whatsoever, of us holding our league position on the back of a collapse like that. We'd be down to eighth-ish after 20 games, with 4th then looking as distant as it did last year. You predicted we will lose all five games coming up against the "big" teams (including Everton) on a prediction thread and then pretended you didn't predict those results. Well you did. Where we differ is I don't think we will lose all those games. I have far more faith in Ronald and the boys than you do. And the other way we differ is I don't need to attribute made up quotes to you, like you make up sh it about me. Everything I write above can be traced to quotes on this forum from you. Let's remember which one of us pretends predictions they make on a prediction thread aren't their predictions. Laughable.

That Villa game has got banana skin written all over it.

Nice one. Will listen back on my Monday drive to work. Great omen for the weekend - Nothing can go wrong now.

We've had a good run of someone saying that every week. We're due a week where no one says it.

This. Already it feels like in order for Liverpool to get top four, they need to overtake us. Anything that builds the gap between us and them is just dandy. Chelsea can run away with the title for all I care.

I am sure they are not intensively scouring Cornwall, but they can cover it through the Bath centre (we still have this I think). We'll cover plenty of the country and it seems to be working well. We can leave most of London to the London clubs.

You're underplaying how important "being slicker PR-wise" is and would have been over the last four years. David Milliband was already a global statesman, chummying up to Hillary Clinton and just carrying himself like a leader, someone electable. Even if all other things were equal, the fact that David Milliband looks like he could actually be Prime Minister would be worth a decent few points in the polls. Beyond the PR stuff I think he would have been better at the actual "doing" anyway, and at least bring some genuine opposition to Cameron. Ed is just a bumbling gimp with no human touch and a dismal profile and can't see him laying a glove on Cameron next year, in what could have been a winnable election for Labour.

I had completely forgotten about that. That's beautiful, absolutely beautiful. Let's hope it still is come May.

I'm starting to think he isn't really a professor.

So you say you think we are good enough to to be top four and keep putting these little digs in at other posters for "not believing". Except it's you that keeps typing out huge rambles about our desperate need to buy expensive, experienced quality to stay top 4. So as far as I can see the person who "doesn't believe" Ronald Koeman's SFC is good enough for top 4 is, well, you. Anyway. We're not going to spend £30m on individual players. It's not going to happen, so you can stop directing your little sneers and digs at forum contributors. There's a brass plaque on a pavilion in Staplewood that tells you all you need to know. Read thise words. And then belt up about it.

I've seen the new official club boots and they are incredibly detailed.

That pretty much makes no sense. Hague got in as a new young hope for the Tories (and he wasn't a wet lefty etc like Ken Clarke). He bombed, but that wasn't a masterplan to avoid power, especially as he was replaced by that well known election winning big hitter Iain Duncan Smith. The Milliband leadership came from a similar kind of place: party reverting to type, eschewing popularity for core vales or something. Basically you end up with an unelectable twonk.

It's "pendantic", Bear.

Anytime. Basically no one's been negative, have they?