Dark Munster

I done all the Saints/Swansea/Huddersfield/WBA permutations, with the aid of my computer. In summary what I found: a win today is better than a draw, and a draw is better than a defeat.

Which is why he was prepared to gamble keeping the clown on for as long as he did. He personally had nothing to lose, knowing if the worst happened he could jump the sinking ship and retire to Benidorm.

Yes, the West Ham debacle being the perfect example.

Not to mention a mysterious fire alarm at 2 am.

Just to out pedant your pedanting, if they get a 9 goal swing it's more than likely they'll also overtake our goal total (which is only 2 better at the moment).

It was a rhetorical question. Of course we won't be down. Drawing with them, and then matching Swansea's result against Stoke with ours against on-the-beach City is far from impossible. They'd be favourites of course, but far from a certainty. Having said that, lose against Swansea and we'd be 95% down.

While I share your contempt for the board and for them to be gone, if we survive we'll have a big advantage next year, even if Reed and Co. are still here: we won't have the clown managing us for 30 matches. That'll be worth an extra 10 points at least. Unless of course Beaker and Bunsen double down and go for another attempted Pochettino clone, a 40-something Argentinian with nice hair, coaching ability be damned.

So if we draw and go into the final match outside the relegation zone we're gone?

95th minute: I'm rushed to the hospital with a heart attack.

Will you be wearing a ref's kit and carrying a whistle?

Another finger injury, this time to McManus. Not sure how serious.

https://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?59469-Relegation-The-Run-In&p=2625216#post2625216 If we'd won yesterday a draw could well have been enough against Swansea. Now we almost certainly need to win.

Yes, in a nutshell.

Probably, but not definitely. For example, if we draw our last 2 matches their point today could be the difference between them staying up and us going down.

Er no, if they'd won both their matches before us they'd only need a point against us to reach 100 points. Now that they've just dropped 2 points against Huddersfield it means they need to beat us to get to 100 (assuming they beat Brighton later this week). It's a bad result today whichever way you look at it.

The ref shouldn't have given him his first yellow.

Yes, a win against Swansea would mean today's point was a good one. We'd be more or less safe. But a win today and a draw against Swansea would have meant that we would have had several avenues of escape (assuming no big goal difference swings): we'd be safe with any of Huddersfield failing to get at least 2 points against Chelsea, City and Arsenal (very likely), or Swansea not beating Stoke (less likely but not impossible), or us getting a point against City (less likely but not impossible). But now if we only draw against Swansea we'll need to match or better their result against Stoke with ours against City, or get a draw against City and hope Huddersfield lose their last three. Not likely.

After so many "must-win" matches this season we've finally arrived at the real one.

So true. And not to mention the mind-numbing incompetence of not bringing in goal-scorer over the past 4 windows (instead selling JRod, loaning out Gallagher, and spending £20m on the clown's mate, a League 2 level flop). Heads indeed need to roll, the leading ones being those 2 muppets Beaker and Bunsen.

Actually I'd rather forget that, thanks.

Well we got one, but it feels like a loss doesn't it?

Exactly this. In North America they use video replays, and measure each game (basketball, hockey, am. football) to the second. Here we're amateurish with timekeeping and keep dragging our feet with VAR. And to make it worse, here the consequences of shit ref decisions/timekeeping can be devastating: we all know the potential financial disaster of finishing bottom three in the PL. Ironically in North America where they're professional in reffing/timekeeping there are no negative consequences of finishing bottom (no relegation, and in fact the bottom clubs get rewarded with a high draft picks!)

5-1 I think, but anyway Spurs had nothing to play for either. In fact they had just lost their chance of finishing first with a nasty draw against Chelsea, so were completely deflated. OTOH Swansea will have everything to play for (unless we're already down by then).

Not bad by the average Essex bowlers.