SaintBobby

It does look like it will be Cardiff or just conceivably Brighton. The bookies have Cardiff at 1/20 and Brighton at around 11/1 to go down. You can get odds as long as 500/1 on Saints or Burnley. Although it's a ludicrously over-used term, Tuesday really is "must win" for Cardiff. Even if they do, they are still about 1/5 to finish 18th.

Maybe. Getting to the right decision is obviously what matters. But the laws of the game - or at least convention - have always been that a refereeing decision can't be undone, I thought? For example, a ref might get the decision right by pausing for a couple of minutes, whipping out his mobile phone, logging on to the Sky Sports app and seeing if Sky thought it was a penalty or not on their running commentary. That might help get to the right decision, but it would be a bit weird (and probably a breach of the laws of the game?)

Just to ask again on the Cardiff non-penalty. Did the ref give the penalty because he was, say, about 75% certain it was a pen, but wanted a second opinion and then the lino talked him out of it or did he give the penalty because he thought the lino was signalling for one, went over to check this and the lino said "no, I got it wrong..." or "I was signalling for something else, sorry guv." I'm struggling to remember any other occasion in which a referee has made a decision, sought further advice and then reversed it (other than VAR, obviously). In my dim distant memory, I think there was some fiasco in the France v Kuwait match at the 1982 World Cup where the ref gave a goal, then over-turned it because the defending players claimed to have heard a whistle from the crowd and stropped, believing the ball to be dead. At least Mike Dean ended up with the right decision, but I've never seen a correct decision reached through such a route (i.e. not by the referee simply consulting with his officials and then deciding on something, but rather deciding on something and only then consulting with his officials).

Still hoping for a desired treble this season: 1. Saints stay up 2. Pompey stay down 3. Liverpool choke again Quietly confident of 2 and 3. Supremely confident of 1.

Can anyone explain to me what happened re: Mike Dean and his flip flop on the Cardiff penalty decision yesterday? Why did he change his mind? Did he misinterpret a flag or message from the lino and then simply clarify it? Still can't quite work out the chain of events/thought process.

Is the Brighton-Cardiff match on the tele? Weird if not, pretty vital game.

Bednarek for me. But I don't expect him to win overall - being great at CB is less eye-catching than being an explosive goalscorer. Most likely Redmond will win any vote. Maybe JWP.

I'm not really sure of the veracity of the data on that site. Don't they treat all results as equally likely, so all 20 teams start the season with a 5% chance of winning the league? If we lose to Wolves and Cardiff beat Burnley, it feels to me like our relegation risk goes up a lot. Basically, all I care about at the moment is staying well clear of Cardiff. If we end up pushing towards 12th, that's just a bonus.

I reckon Cardiff are toast. The bookies now have them at about 1/8 to go down. Saints are about 66/1. Obviously, they can technically win all their last six games and get 18 more points. But if they keep up their present points per game rate, they will only get about 5 more points. They really need six points to overtake us (due to our better GD) even if we lose all of our remaining games. Looking at their run in, it's a mix of matches against the top teams and others involved in the relegation scrap. My guess would be they are only going to pick up 4, 5 or 6 points. Maybe lower.

Massive step to safety. I’m just starting to look up the table

I'm not sure why you're counting a "non-win" as a defeat. If we'd, say, drawn with Everton, Arsenal and Spurs rather than beaten them, but beaten Cardiff, we'd be on 27 points, 2 clear of Cardiff, who'd be on 25 points. How many more points are Cardiff going to pick up? Who knows? Maybe as few as 3, 4 or 5 though. In which case, we'd be needing 1, 2 or 3 draws to stay up with a measly 5 wins to our name, assuming our GD remained better than Cardiff's. As I said at the time, 5 wins would be pushing it a lot. 6 wins would look much more plausible, although hardly anywhere near a guarantee. Obviously getting by on so few wins would basically make it certain that you need to beat the teams around you or just below you and we blew that v Cardiff. Also, goes without saying that if you're even thinking of staying up with 5 or 6 wins, you'd going to need a lot of draws rather than losses from the remaining games. We will see at the end of the season whether my view of 5 wins (including v Cardiff) might possibly have been enough (my guess is it will fall 2 or 3 points short) or my view that there was a fair chance that six wins would stand a fair chance of doing it turns out to have been right (that seems about 50-50 or a little better)

Oh.

Liverpool 2-1 up after a stupid penalty. Kind of wanted Fulham to win this one, as they can't catch us anyway IMHO.

Watford and Wolves both winning must be a slight help to us. Neither have anything to play for in the league really, and so are likely to focus on the Cup. Probably only of marginal benefit, but you can imagine their players wishing to avoid yellow/red cards at almost any price, players with very minor niggles being rested/subbed etc. I still think the FA Cup probably saved us last season - our run to the semis meant we ended up playing Swansea when they were in a death spiral rather than in the middle of a decent-ish patch of form.

Turned out just fine, fortunately!

Isn't Carillo still on the books too? I feel we will struggle to keep Lemina (sadly)

Yep...and pretty much stick to it. I did say the wins needed to include beating Cardiff at St Mary's, and we blew that one badly, which seriously affects the maths when you screw up a massive six pointer. Had we even drawn that match, we'd be very close to safe by now (say 30/1). Had we won it, we'd now be 8 clear of Cardiff with 9 games to go and with them averaging less than a point a game, we would stand a fair chance of staying up even if we lost all the remaining matches. The spread of points Cardiff are likely to get from here is anyone's guess. I would think their anticipated return is about six points (7 or 8 points based on their results to date, but they have a tougher than average run in). But, optimistically, it could be measurably lower than that. Perhaps just two, three or four. Saints' odds on being relegated are so long because Cardiff have so much to do.

I'd say 9/1 or 10/1 is about right. Basically, can't see where Cardiff are going to get the points from. Our GD means they need to get three more points than us over nine games. How many points is it likely Cardiff will get? Not sure, but could well be just 4 or 5 given their run in. If they do perform that poorly, we'd only need a small handful of points.

Well, today could have been worse....we just need to stay ahead of Cardiff, that's how I see it.

Geees....robbed

Boll ox

Cardiff are 2-0 down....

You can always spot the people who watch it on tele. The empty seats are usually directly behind the goals. So, when, say, JWP scores and the cameras zoom in, you see maybe 60% of seats empty (out of maybe 500) Both flanks were pretty full. Haven't seen the attendance number, I'd guess 29K-30K?

Have no idea how we got a point out of that. Gees, we were utter ****e

Great win after the screw up in the Cup. Feeling very confident of staying up now.