timeEd32

Hopefully this is true and it's because we've realized we need that extra money to get a proper striker in.

This is the biggest cultural divide I've ever encountered on here. This mindset is more difficult to understand than your accents. The best team is the team left standing at the end. The season exists as preparation for the playoffs. That's all it's for, that's all it should ever be for. You don't make the playoffs, you learn from it and try to make them next year. That doesn't mean regular season games aren't incredibly important. They are; but not more than the playoffs. I'm American and I think this is the most ridiculous opinion ever. Actually, the part in bold isn't an opinion - it's just an incorrect statement. And to say regular season games in US sports are "incredibly important" is a gross exaggeration. The only sport where this is true is college football, which still has its own issues. The NFL it's true for half the season and then there are an increasing number of pointless games. Don't get me started on the NHL and NBA regular seasons. It's a great idea but it doesn't break up the hold the mega rich teams have over the league itself. They'll just spend even more and hoard even more players to avoid 4th. I'm not worried about the CL, parity in England will sort the CL out in time. Parity in your league will make it easily the strongest league. Massive do or die fixtures beyond what most of the other teams in Europe could ever dream of participating in makes the EPL stronger. Hell, it might even improve your national team, ffs. Hardened English players knowing what it means to perform when it's all on the line year after year instead of on those infrequent occasions when they land a cup final. Each team plays each other home and away. Absolutely no need for playoffs. The issue of mega rich teams won't be solved by giving them an extra half a dozen or so games which would no doubt add to their already bursting coffers. But it solved it here. With 162 games, you could argue there's even less need for playoffs in baseball, but we've got them and it's possible for a (comparatively) poor team to topple the teams spending hundreds of millions of dollars. This is due to teams taking an active role in improving themselves year after year (which imo does not happen in the EPL. Most teams work to maintain the status quo) which spreads the top talent around, and affords more opportunities for talent to develop. There isn't a need for playoffs in baseball (if they switched to a balanced schedule), but it's all about $$$. The baseball playoffs deliver the most random champion of any sport, even more so now with the WC games. It's a great idea but it doesn't break up the hold the mega rich teams have over the league itself. They'll just spend even more and hoard even more players to avoid 4th. I'm not worried about the CL, parity in England will sort the CL out in time. Parity in your league will make it easily the strongest league. Massive do or die fixtures beyond what most of the other teams in Europe could ever dream of participating in makes the EPL stronger. Hell, it might even improve your national team, ffs. Hardened English players knowing what it means to perform when it's all on the line year after year instead of on those infrequent occasions when they land a cup final. Each team plays each other home and away. Absolutely no need for playoffs. The issue of mega rich teams won't be solved by giving them an extra half a dozen or so games which would no doubt add to their already bursting coffers. But it solved it here. With 162 games, you could argue there's even less need for playoffs in baseball, but we've got them and it's possible for a (comparatively) poor team to topple the teams spending hundreds of millions of dollars. This is due to teams taking an active role in improving themselves year after year (which imo does not happen in the EPL. Most teams work to maintain the status quo) which spreads the top talent around, and affords more opportunities for talent to develop. They don't play each other the same amount of times, do they? Do each team play all of the others at all? There are two leagues. AL and NL. Every AL team plays each other an absolutely ungodly amount of times, and (I think) each division in the AL plays of the teams in a single division from the other league plus any local rival. This is relatively recent. Teams from the AL and NL never used to play at all unless they met in the World Series. So you've got all the AL teams going head to head over and over again, but we've still got playoffs and no one is upset. The schedule isn't balanced within the league let alone out of the league. This is true for all four major sports because of divisions and conferences. It's fine because there are playoffs, but for the millionth time - there is nothing more fair for declaring a champion than the format of the Premier League. Financial imbalance is a completely different topic.

If there was ever a good time to lose while fighting relegation it was today. We have a little over a week to bring in players that could help guarantee our safety.

That's harsh on Mitrovic, but he's quite clearly sending a message to Ashley and Charnley.

Still pretty confident we'll stay up.

It's all very tight now though. I think every team from Palace down (bar Everton) could potentially get dragged into this. We're quite obviously going to have to get our points at home. I like Mitrovic and think some of the stick is an overreaction, but we quite obviously need a proven striker. Need to stop fucking around and get Berahino or Remy.

Not great, not terrible. Mitrovic should have scored but so should Deeney. Aarons off the pace, which is not that surprising. Thought Lascelles was decent aside from the giveaway that should have led to a goal. Saivet grew into it as the half went on. Wijnaldum and Mitrovic too isolated. Should go to our usual formation with Perez on and Mbemba at LB.

Ridiculous game and terrible for Norwich. Couldn't have gone better.

Really interesting team. Perez needs a break. Hope we stuff them.

Norwich 1 v 0 Liverpool Crystal Palace 0 v 2 Spurs Leicester 1 v 1 Stoke Man Utd 1 v 1 Southampton Sunderland 0 v 1 Bournemouth Watford 0 v 2 Newcastle West Brom 0 v 1 Aston Villa West Ham 1 v 2 Man City Everton 3 v 1 Swansea Arsenal 2 v 0 Chelsea

That would be terrible.

This stadium will very likely hold a World Cup Final so it's pretty significant.

McClaren has ruled this out - said we don't have four fit defenders let alone five. I'd be shocked if it's not the same formation with Saivet and Shelvey in the middle and hoping for the best with someone barely qualified forced into LB.

Yeah, not actually happy he's injured right now. He clearly would have been the LB this weekend.

Sometimes you're ok.

Agreed a weak middle was part of our issues, the weak middle also contributed to the additional pressure the back four have been under this season, the middle has also reduced the number of goals a possible striker could score through lack of forward play and movement to free up areas of space. For that I think Shelvey is a great signing just what the middle needed and will help us improve however I wont be jumping up and down saying its been a great transfer window as we bought two midfielders which was my entire point as I still see us weak at centre half and left back and I dont see having our current strikers being enough to get us the goals we need. If we were signing 4 players this window and shelvey was amongst them then great if he is the only quality edition I still dont know if thats enough to see us through. That's quite a bit different from what you first said, which made it sound like we got midfielders we don't need. I don't think anyone would say our business should be done, but when the window opened CM was our greatest need and we've taken care of that (hopefully).

You don't think we needed central midfielders?

At least we know the midfield will be Shelvey and Saivet. Hopefully Saivet looks a bit more settled this time out. Mitro will score at least one.

Ugh, hate Monday games.

That celebration reminds me of Colback trying to track back when he's given the ball away. Ginger c***.

Hold on, Villa have a current goal difference of -20, Sunderland -18 while our current goal difference is -15. Yet they reckon our goal difference will improve to 13 but still be the worst in the league? Great example of why you shouldn't extrapolate from stats like these They aren't expecting it to improve. It could be more indicative of future performance, however, it doesn't weight recent performance more heavily. This is a projection of where it should be based on the data. Obviously things happen in football matches and all sports that are unexpected and one or two games in a sample size of 20 can skew the data pretty badly. Also, this is a pretty new stat that is still being worked on year by year so it's by no means perfect. That said, it has us with the worst expected goal difference when in reality we are 3rd worst. Sunderland and Villa are in 19th and 18 and this metric has Arsenal, City, and Spurs as the top 3. Where it differs greatly is having Chelsea 4th with a +7.6 and Leicester 7th at +3.4. Also, Palace 17th with -10.1. None of these are that surprising though - Chelsea have underachieved, Leicester are a counter attacking side that have overachieved, and Pardew's teams routinely have a GD difference that's not indicative of their place in the table. Anyway, I hesitated to even post that stat as I knew everyone would ignore the others some of which are pretty interesting but as more and more work is done to improve football statistics metrics like this will become commonplace and fairly reliable indicators of future performance.

I'm not at all saying the champion has to be the best team. The playoffs are great in the sports that already have them. I'm just trying to get some to admit that the champion isn't necessarily the best team. Not one bit, imo. Seen too many top seeds get wiped off the floor in US sports to think that it does. I missed this. This is crazy talk. The Warriors and Spurs are without question the two best teams in the NBA this season. If they both lost in Round 1 of the playoffs you would take that to mean they weren't actually the best teams? Of course. We both know that isn't going to happen though, there's more chance of Shelvey actually being Messi tbh. Fine, the Spurs lose to the Thunder and the Warriors lose in the finals to the Cavs. That doesn't change who the two best teams were in the 2015-16 season. True, it doesn't. The Cavs would be the best team in the 2015-16 season. Wrong, the Cavs would be the champions and it would be well earned but that doesn't make them the best team. Were the Giants the best team when they beat the 18-0 Patriots? Please don't say yes. They won the game that mattered, and had gotten as far as the Patriots had. So yes. Yes, they are the champions and we can all laugh about 18-1 for the rest of time. Wonderful, but that Patriots team is one of the best teams in the history of the NFL and quite obviously the best team that season. You must be trolling me at this point. The "best" team will be the champions. The NFL plays through play-offs, so regardless of how good a seasonal record you have, if you can't perform when it counts you don't deserve to win it all. The Patriots had the best seasonal record that year, yes, I'm not arguing against that point. But given that there's play-offs, I do not think they deserved to win it all though since they couldn't pull it off. Which is why play-offs are more interesting. They lost because of one of the most miraculous plays in the history of sports that couldn't be replicated if you tried it 500 times. I'm not arguing that they "deserved" to win it all either. The NFL has playoffs and they lost. That still doesn't mean they weren't the best of the 32 teams that participated in the sport that year.

Did you write that? That's outstanding. Bravo

It's going to take awhile for the majority to turn. Will need multiple extended runs like the terrible ones he had here and probably a relegation battle. Can't wait to take it all in.

Not one bit, imo. Seen too many top seeds get wiped off the floor in US sports to think that it does. I missed this. This is crazy talk. The Warriors and Spurs are without question the two best teams in the NBA this season. If they both lost in Round 1 of the playoffs you would take that to mean they weren't actually the best teams? Of course. We both know that isn't going to happen though, there's more chance of Shelvey actually being Messi tbh. Fine, the Spurs lose to the Thunder and the Warriors lose in the finals to the Cavs. That doesn't change who the two best teams were in the 2015-16 season. True, it doesn't. The Cavs would be the best team in the 2015-16 season. Wrong, the Cavs would be the champions and it would be well earned but that doesn't make them the best team. Were the Giants the best team when they beat the 18-0 Patriots? Please don't say yes. They won the game that mattered, and had gotten as far as the Patriots had. So yes. Yes, they are the champions and we can all laugh about 18-1 for the rest of time. Wonderful, but that Patriots team is one of the best teams in the history of the NFL and quite obviously the best team that season. You must be trolling me at this point.