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No damage done

ranks39 said:
I think what our ambitions will run up against is financial realities. We cannot risk a future points deduction when our aim is 40 points. Make no mistake, this team and 1 or 2 additions that hit the ground running could very well keep us in the top half but let's just clear the first hurdle(40 points).
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The bottom three are currently on target to get 4, 25 and 27 respectively. We already have 28.

For us to be dragged in on 39 pts, West Ham will need to get 26 pts from their remaining 20 games. Thats 1.3 pts per game as opposed to the 0.72 pts per game they are currenly getting. 1.3 per game represents 49 pts over a full season and would have got 13th last season. Are West Ham capable of the form of a 13th place team for the rest of this season? We wont need 40 pts. It will be between 30 and 35 I reckon and maybe even lower.

Basically avoid defeat at West Ham and beat Burnley at home and that's us safe I reckon even if we lose every other game (which we won't).
 

Undercover said:
The right back playing centre back often plays centre back when you play five at the back.

Geertrudia can play either CB or DM and has a £20m option on him.

Le Fee would almost certainly start out wide if you had a full team so you were only really missing one winger.

You actually looked better when you brought your two strikers of the bench.

The winger who scored and the full back who cleared it off the line would not have been playing had you been at full strength so you could have lost 2-0.

You probably did miss your AFCON players but most of them were replaced with expensive experianced alternatives not apprentice kids.
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Only a football fan could come up with 'logic' like this:lol:

They were playing and we did score and we did clear it off the line. Plus if they had not been playing, it would have been because our first choices were playing instead.

Read it back and have a think man.

You missed a massive opportunity to beat the weakest Sunderland side of the season thus far. Three more league games and we will be back to somewhere close to full strentgh. See you at Elland Road. Should be a cracking match.
 
We aren’t going down so this season we’ve achieved the goal.

But if you think drifting away and being crap for 24 games or so is ok. Well no I don’t agree.

17 points the first 9 games.
11 points the next 9 games.

A hell of a drop off and I suspect it’ll be worse still the next 9 after we lose the next 3.
 
Undercover said:
We have two goalkeepers, three full backs, four centre backs, six midfield players, three wingers and two strikers who are all of a similar quality, so if spread out reasonably
we could lose five players without it impacting the team and performance too much, assume it is the same for you. With five players out our bench could look something like, Meslier, Byram, Bornauw, Gruev, Tanaka, Harrison, Gnonto, Piroe, Nmecha. Who are all experianced players so I guess that your squad may be a bit younger than ours.
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No because the players we are missing are of a far higher standard.

When we played the visitors, we actually had more champions league starts in our line up than they did.
 
Southern Monkey said:
We aren’t going down so this season we’ve achieved the goal.

But if you think drifting away and being crap for 24 games or so is ok. Well no I don’t agree.

17 points the first 9 games.
11 points the next 9 games.

A hell of a drop off and I suspect it’ll be worse still the next 9 after we lose the next 3.
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the last 9 which have included trips to the Etihad and Anfield, played f***ing Arsenal when they hadn't conceded a goal in 8 odd games and the derby. And now missing half our starting 11. Of course it was going to drop off :lol:
 
tynevalleyblackcat said:
The bottom three are currently on target to get 4, 25 and 27 respectively. We already have 28.

For us to be dragged in on 39 pts, West Ham will need to get 26 pts from their remaining 20 games. Thats 1.3 pts per game as opposed to the 0.72 pts per game they are currenly getting. 1.3 per game represents 49 pts over a full season and would have got 13th last season. Are West Ham capable of the form of a 13th place team for the rest of this season? We wont need 40 pts. It will be between 30 and 35 I reckon and maybe even lower.

Basically avoid defeat at West Ham and beat Burnley at home and that's us safe I reckon even if we lose every other game (which we won't).
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We were 6th at Xmas and you’re talking about the bottom 3? What’s wrong with you?! Do you think we might come 17th ha ha ?!!!

I think we will lose a lot of games coming up but we’re not going down. 15th I think with around 43 points. We are so boring going forwards and can’t acore away from home so we will not pick up many more points. If anyone thinks we are playing well and will get a load of points I love the optimism!! We won’t we are poor and will drop away we just can’t acore goals.
 
Southern Monkey said:
We aren’t going down so this season we’ve achieved the goal.

But if you think drifting away and being crap for 24 games or so is ok. Well no I don’t agree.

17 points the first 9 games.
11 points the next 9 games.

A hell of a drop off and I suspect it’ll be worse still the next 9 after we lose the next 3.
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Your 'hell of a drop off' represents 46 pts over a full season and pretty much every Sunderland fan on the planet would have taken that an hour after Watsons goal at Wembley. If we can stay at that terrible 11 pts per 9 games for the rest of the season, we will finish with 52 pts which would have got you 13th last season.

We are however on target to better that due to the 19 pts in the first 9 games. Hope this helps.......

Has anyone ever suggested to you that maybe you tend to look on the negative side of things? Your conviction that we will lose our next three games despite having lost 4 from 18 in the premier league and not lost back to back games all season, suggests a little hint of negativity or Saudi tendancies perhaps.
Southern Monkey said:
We were 6th at Xmas and you’re talking about the bottom 3? What’s wrong with you?! Do you think we might come 17th ha ha ?!!!

I think we will lose a lot of games coming up but we’re not going down. 15th I think with around 43 points. We are so boring going forwards and can’t acore away from home so we will not pick up many more points. If anyone thinks we are playing well and will get a load of points I love the optimism!! We won’t we are poor and will drop away we just can’t acore goals.
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I was responding to a poster (it might have even been you) who mentioned 40 pts for safety.

I don't think we will go down. Far from it. Get through these next three games and I think we will kick on. This is not Reidy's team who think 'we have hit the target so lets go on the piss'.
 
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ranks39 said:
I agree. Keep on not losing and we are safe as houses. Survive AFCON and kick on.
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What's earliest we can get any AFCON players back ? Any teams looking like not qualifying etc ?
Excellent point with the players we have out !

28 points before January 😊
 
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DR CHEESE said:
What's earliest we can get any AFCON players back ? Any teams looking like not qualifying etc ?
Excellent point with the players we have out !

28 points before January 😊
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As it stands, the absolute earliest that anyone could be back is after tomorrow's matches(Talbi), but it would take an absolutely crazy high tide of third-placed teams. Talbi and Diarra have yet to feature for their teams.

Morocco(Talbi) - 1st in group A, likely winners of the group - last group stage match is tomorrow
Senegal(Diarra) - 1st in group D, worst-case scenario is third place but most likely top 2 in the group. Even with third place, they'd be on four points which would put them into the knockouts. Last group stage match is Tuesday.
DR Congo(Sadiki and Masuaku) - 2nd in group D, worst-case scenario is third place but most likely top 2 in the group. Even with third place, they'd be on four points which would put them into the knockouts. last group stage match is Tuesday.
Burkina Faso(Traore) - 2nd in Group E, worst-case scenario is third place but the winner of the next match will come second or first. Even with third, they'd likely go through to the knockouts on 3 points. Last group stage match is Wednesday.
Mozambique(Reinildo)- 3rd in Group F , worst-case scenario is fourth place in the group but most likely third. They're currently the top-placed third place team so they'd likely go through to the knockouts, even if they stay on 3 points. Last group stage match is Wednesday.

From there, the knockout first round is played between 3 January and 6 January, so anybody knocked out here would likely miss City, Tottenham and Brentford. Mozambique, DR Congo, and Burkina Faso are the most likely to fall here, although I wouldn't be shocked if DR Congo and/or Burkina Faso were to progress.

Quarterfinals are 9 and 10 January, so anybody knocked out here would likely miss City, Tottenham, Brentford, and Everton(FA Cup).

Semi-finals are 14 January, so anybody knocked out here would miss City, Tottenham, Brentford, Everton(FA Cup), and most likely Palace.

Third place and finals are on 17 and 18 January, so anybody knocked out here would miss City, Tottenham, Brentford, Everton(FA Cup), and Palace.

Everybody, barring injured players, would likely be available for West Ham on 24 January.

Morocco(Talbi) are the hosts and one of the favorites, with Senegal always a strong contender. DR Congo and Burkina Faso could make a bit of noise, too, with Mozambique a likely one to fall in the first knockout round.
 
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Summer Bee said:
To be fair we were missing our first choice RB, first choice CB, first choice CM, first choice LW and first choice RW. Very few teams would look good with that missing
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We were missing even more than that.

LB Reinildo
CB Ballard
CM Sadiki
CM Diarra
RW Traore

All missing from the starting 11. Then from the bench we're missing:

LW/RW Talbi
CB/LB/RB Onien
Alese LB/CB
LB Masuaku

We literally didn't have a match fit, senior defender on the bench yesterday. We had Harrison Jones, Jenson Jones, Leo Hjelde (who hasn't played in about 10 years), Tutierov and then Dan Neil (who we refuse to play). Mundle was there but isn't fully fit to start, and then Isidor and Mayenda (who has been massively underused and hasn't played in ages).

With all due respect to some of those lads, that yesterday was the worst starting 11 and bench combo we've had for any game this season. Some of those players should be nowhere near a PL bench at this stage. But that's where we are with injuries, suspensions, and AFCON.

I'd have taken a draw when I saw the team sheet.
 
Southern Monkey said:
We aren’t going down so this season we’ve achieved the goal.

But if you think drifting away and being crap for 24 games or so is ok. Well no I don’t agree.

17 points the first 9 games.
11 points the next 9 games.

A hell of a drop off and I suspect it’ll be worse still the next 9 after we lose the next 3.
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‘We’ :lol: 🦨
sadsack01 said:
We should have been 2, maybe 3 up by half time.
They dominated the second half so a draw was a fair result which a lot of Leeds fans also agree with.
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The way to consider the result is that Leeds lost the opportunity to move 2 points closer to us. They need the points more than us at the moment.
 
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twang said:
Today’s team sheet indicated we
Need more quality players at the club …
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We will have another 7 when the Afcon lads and Ballard are back. More than enough.
Summer Bee said:
To be fair we were missing our first choice RB, first choice CB, first choice CM, first choice LW and first choice RW. Very few teams would look good with that missing
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Egg blinking zackerley
 
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Ilios said:
The missing players is a compounding problem.

1. Ballard, Sadiki, Reinildo, Diarra are absolutely nailed-to-the-wall first choice, and some of the best players at the club.

2. Talbi, Traore have been our most used wingers this season. Both gone.

3. The current list of unavailable players is Ballard, Reinildo, Onien, Alese, Masuaku, Sadiki, Diarra, Talbi, Traore. That means that not only are 5 or 6 first choice players unavailable, but some of the players we would rotate in for them are ALSO unavailable.

4. Because of #3 we've had play a barely-fit Cirkin, who hadn't played a minute of first-team football since the playoffs through injury. We've had to play Geertruida in CM, rather than using him in his natural position as a Ballard replacement, which in turn would've allowed Mukiele to stay RB, Hume to go LB and not have to bring in Cirkin from the cold. We couldn't even go to a back 5 today either, with Onien suspended, Ballard injured, Geertruida in MF, and 2 defenders at AFCON and Alese injured. We literally did not have a defensive option on the bench, other an academy bairn whose never kicked a professional ball.

We played Chris Rigg (our probably 5th choice CM) as our starting RW because Talbi, Traore are both unavailable, and Mundle is just back from long-term injury and isn't fit enough to start games. We could have played Le Fee out LW and moved Adingra RW, but we couldn't because Le Fee had to play CM because 2 of our 3 first choice CMs are at AFCON.

5. Our bench was completely f#cked, because almost everyone that would normally be on it, was either on the pitch or unavailable.

All of this, and we've taken 2 points from Brighton away, and an impossible task against the Yorkshire Globetrotters.
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Brilliant post
 
Chuck Reinildo Sadiki Diarra and Ballard into that team and it’s a different game altogether -we did not have them -ground out another result and when they are back with one or two additional purchases we will be very strong 2nd half of season -looking forward to it
 
ChrisAshley said:
Some right overreactions going on, we're a newly promoted club without about 4 or 5 first teamers and a depleted bench, any point is decent and Leeds are in form at the moment too.
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Our bench today looked very weak tbf; Hjelde, H. Jones, J. Jones and Tutierov were never getting on the field today (realistically), leaving our options restricted to three attackers and Dan Neil.

It's weird cos January is just around the corner, and as much as it'd be nice to get some cover in, I don't want players in for the short term. I'd be happy with one or two real quality additions.
 
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