I keep drawing comparisons between the current season and 01/02, unexpectedly finding ourselves in the upper ecehelons of the division. Obviously there's no comparison between Sir Bobby and Pardew, but the teams are shaping up sort of similar - looking to play flowing football and a side packed with pace. New arrivals have made an impact, but rather than Bellamy & Robert we've got Cabaye and Ba. We do however lack the iconic number 9 but that's a small problem and ultimately the reason we won't emulate that great team.
The obvious comparisons that we started with a draw agaisnt top 4 opposition (rather more impressivelty in 2001 it must be said) however we then won our derby this year rather than drawing at home. Whilst we haven't had to face any more of the top 4 (so we can't match the 4-3 win over Man Utd yet), I'd comapre this to Spurs game as an action packed game ended with us feeling we really can hang with the top teams once more. We've also yet to have our "West Ham" and play awfully and get dicked 3-0 - some would argue the 0-0 at QPR can equal this in terms of performance but we avoided the defeat. Equally, we've had some luck this term as we did in 01/02, for example the Boro game, whilst we won 4-1 and played fantastically second half, it was against 10 men, after Schwarzer was sent off whereas Shay was only booked for a similar incident. It's easy to make comparisons between Given & Krul as Given saved us many times back then, something Krul is starting to do. I would compare the Boro win to our Wolves win, where although vastly different performances, we had some luck away from home and it continued a good start.
A laboured 1-0 win over to be relegated Leicester then followed, which is my comparison to yesterday's game. Which finally brings me to the point of this James of a post. Nobody will remember this game or the performance come the end of the season, but everyone will remember the league position. As miuch as it'd be nice to play champagne football every week, even when we were awesome it didn't always happen.
I hope if anyone scores for us they don a baseball cap and run for the tunnel like Pulis always does at full time for no good reason.