tajjuk

Does sound promising, always have admired Bilbao and their academy has a good track record.

Shame they have already been picked apart by the big boys and the rest will go in the summer. Still not sure why no one has gone for Ziyech.

Lallana, Luke Shaw, Clyne etc. were the main highlight of the article and I suppose it has somewhat of a point. Though we are hardly a foreign XI, we have JWP, Redmond, Gunn, Ings, Bertrand who all have England caps or U21 caps, plus Yoshida has been here for years and generally the Scandanavian players seem to settle into British culture pretty well. And then Valery is a youth academy product so has been around British football for a while. But probably good we focus more on some lower league talents. There are definitely some good players in the Championship right now.

IF Chelsea lose Hazard, which is looking likely, then I'd probably nominate them as the most likely of the big 6 to potentially have a bad season. He has 16 goals and 12 assists this year, pretty much half all the goals scored are down to Hazard. Realistically they are not going to replace him, no player that level is going to go to them and Abramovich seems to be spending less of the cash as well. I doubt Pulisic will step up considering he's not exactly a first teamer at Dortmund. Man Utds a maybe but they can realistically go out and spend like £250 million if they want, even if they lose Pogba and Rashford. I doubt many will leave pool, maybe VVD if one of Real or Barca came knocking, he might throw a wobbly but if they win the league or just miss out can't see them leaving. Hard for any team to close that gap I reckon, we'd need to have to an exceptional season and one of them to have a bad one. But I reckon we are probably as likely as anyone else based on our performances under Ralph, a young improving team, a full pre-season of Ralf working on them as well, and hopefully some key signings, who knows? I think this season getting ahead of Bournemouth, Palace, Burnley and Newcastle would be a decent achievement, looking at our fixtures they are all winnable so its possible, it would be great to look at the season and end up comfortably clear of the bottom 3.

Not really hardly like this is his only success, I mean the guy was touted for the Bayern job last summer, and now he has proven his methods work in PL. Sarri's biggest achievement was getting Napoli to 2nd place, and he got the Chelsea job off the back of that. Ralph did similar with RBL and has now shown his mettle in the EPL.

It's staggering, it works out to 57 points over a whole season, 10 more than the current 7th place team have with 4 games left (or 5 for Wolves). And considering our remaining fixtures there is nothing to say we won't finish on a high and push that points per game average even higher. IF we can get some good key additions, next year could be very exciting, I mean I cannot see a non-top 6 team pushing into that top 6, the gap is too big, its hard to see any of them dropping down aside maybe a Hazard less Chelsea next year.

This thread is hilarious. I presume (lets all hope this doesn't happen) if some bigger club steals Ralph from us, the many posters in here who were so quick to criticise him will not be that bothered? I honestly think we probably have the 4th/5th best manager in the PL right now. It's good news for us that the likes of Utd and Arsenal are progressing ok wit new managers and Bayern have turned it around under their manager, otherwise I'd be worrying over the summer. (Chelsea might ditch Sarri, but I somehow can't see Ralph working there)

He needs to kick on from here though and really establish himself in the first team, he's had little cameos in the team before where he's looked really promising but has then fallen out of the picture. Kind of player we have needed for a long time, with pace, work rate and ability to beat a man.

Hughes was awful, he had already relegated Stoke, imo just the change of manager bounce alone kept us up coupled with Swansea's collapse. Like all relegation firefighters as well, we shouldn't have kept him on the next season, though I wonder whether Ralph would have been available in the summer, he might have been seeing if a bigger job came up so maybe it all worked out well in the end.

To be fair 7th gets Europe most years and the way we have performed under Ralph we are basically performing similarly with the Wolves, Evertons, Leicesters, and Watford and its one of them who is going to finish 7th. -------- Think we are safe, if any team goes down that is not Cardiff, its Brighton, they are in freefall. 5-0 at home to a Bournemouth team that has been awful since xmas is truly shocking.

Realistically out of those 5 teams we are the ones in form the most and have the easiest run ins. Personally I think we will pick up 8-10 points, but certainly even if Cardiff win 4 games which would be close to miraculous, they'd have to do it by beating Burnley and Brighton and considering those two teams last 4 fixtures you'd be more worried about them than us. I think really we'd have to get something like 1 win from 6 winnable games to even be threatened and even then that would require 3 wins from Cardiff, which still looks unlikely. Win on Saturday would be a good start though to basically banish relegation worries, especially if Cardiff lost at Burnley. It would also generally be good to finish the season in decent form because often teams take that through to the new season, like Burnley finished awfully last year and carried it on this season.

They seem pretty confident their team will bounce back and be angry, IMO they are more likely to be mentally deflated, takes a lot for a team to come back from a disappointment like that and whilst they are still I suppose playing for top 7, that is probably a lot less incentive than a cup final. It'll be close I reckon and I think a late goal will win it, their predictions of them smashing us seem a little over the top and over estimating how good they are considering they have lost twice to Huddersfield, they really can't be that good.

Yeh might struggle to pick themselves up after that.

Tough to call, be interesting to see how both teams approach it, they have had most of their success on the counter, we are obviously at home so you'd expect us to have a go at them but that may then play into their hands. A distraction of a cup final would probably help, might have a few of them taking their eyes it a little.

Their equaliser changed the game and of course they got some benefit from the officials for it, which seems to happen a lot, big team underperforming lets give them a little helping hand. It knocked the stuffing out of us and took the pressure of them a bit, had we got into half time 1-0 up I think we would have at least gone on to get a draw. But at the end of the day, our team probably cost about 10% of theirs and we gave them a good game, Liverpool have spent like £300 million plus over the last two season, we will never be able to compete with that.

Mane is unlikely to get any abuse and VVD won't care, the weaker willed ones are probably Lallana and Lovren, but I doubt they will play. Crowd just needs to get behind the team, they did against Arsenal and I think that made a difference. If we are it 100% and put them under pressure, then they might just crack, they are doing ok, but they are not the team that was turning everyone earlier in the season, they needed late goals to see off Fulham and Spurs, and they weren't very good in either game. If we can stop them scoring early then the longer that goes on the more they will feel it because even a draw they can't really afford. It's also a free hit for us, if we lost we are still 5 points clear of Cardiff with an easier run in, so we can play without that pressure.

I'd expect people to look at the meaning of the comment not take it literally, I seriously doubt that he spends hundreds of thousands of pounds on a night out in London anyway, but more importantly it's a pretty irrelevant fine to a whole country's FA when they will be probably making millions from participating in global football tournaments. It's bit like the whole diving issue, if people really want it out of the game, you have to stop giving out just yellow cards for it and starting actually giving out punishments that have an impact, like 3 game bans. Which is the same here, these countries and teams need to be banned from tournaments and competitions or deducted points. If a country misses out on say qualifying from the World Cup because they are deducted 6 points for their racist fans, not only will the country itself do more to tackle the issue but at least some of the idiots doing it will realise what they are doing is hurting the team they support. Same with Calgiari, their fans have repeatedly done this, if they suddenly got a 6 point deduction from the Italian FA for this, they would now be in the relegation zone, if a team gets relegated from a league or misses out on Champions league or a title etc. this will stop or heavily reduce.

Could easily overtake Newcastle and Bournemouth now I reckon, have to play both of them, and a game in hand over both as well.

On Whoscored he is our highest average rating player, he's also in the op 5/6 for most defensive stats, like interceptions, blocks, tackles etc. in the league. Only 4 centre backs in the league rate higher than him on whoscored, Van Dijk, Bamba, Schar and Duffy, all of whom are much older than him. Pretty impressive considering our troubles and that he is only 22.

Did they? They parked the bus at home, Chelsea were just awful, slow and ponderous. Both teams were horrendously boring to watch. One played not to lose at all costs and had 10 men behind the ball almost always, and the other as far as I could tell was playing for a high pass completion stat. They might have Burnley, Brighton, Fulham and Palace to play, but to win those games they need to score goals, and IIRC, only the Palace game is at home and Cardiff are terrible away as well. Plus Palace are better away from home and Cardiff will have to try to win that game. Liverpool for is a complete free hit, Cardiff will lose at City, apparently he's playing the kids vs them anyway. So we'll still be 5 points ahead of them come Friday and Liverpool are not exactly free flowing at the moment. Lots of draws and narrow late wins, so there is a chance we could get something. If we play like we did against Spurs 2nd half or vs Utd or Arsenal I think we could beat them.

To be honest I think that sentence applies to 7th down. I seriously doubt if you took the best eleven from 7-20 they would be able to challenge for the top 6, everyone is quite 'meh' to be honest. I don't think our team is any worse than Evertons, Wolves, Bournemouths, West hams etc. it was just managed badly at the start of the season. I mean your 'commitment and well-drilled players' I think basically describes how Watford are that high and how Burnley finished 7th last year to be honest.

Double post for some reason. Clear out the deadwood and invest in some quality, especially going forward and centre back, and I think we could be back to challenging for the best of the rest next year.

Which shows that our team is really not that bad its just been horribly managed and considering we still have 7 games left and only 1 is against a top 6 side, we could actually end up finishing nowhere near relegation at this rate. Overtaking Bournemouth anyone? Only 5 points behind and we play them at home.

Huge 3 points, we need Chelsea to do their job now and beat Cardiff.

No Gros or Andone for them, probably their two best players. I mean their team looks decidedly average on quality, but we know they are very solid and organised.