t00nt00n313

It's just occured to me that if we win all our remaining games (unlikely but not completely unplausible) we would very likely finish the league in second. Can always dream anyway

Forest losing to brentford is massive I reckon, I could see them getting maybe 7 points from their remaining games (draw to palace away, lose to Chelsea, win the other two) which puts them on 67 but their gd is pretty bad. Especially with forest playing Chelsea it means we now have more potentially paths to 5th (I'll be honest before I had ruled out first missing out completely). I'm staring to think 67 points may be enough, so like a draw to Brighton and Chelsea, then a win against Everton for example. That does still ride on villa not winning every one of their remaining games mind.

Id be quite happy to try 5 defenders at the back for either Chelsea or Brighton but I don't see howe doing it.

I really doubt howe will put Miley in as the first choice. Most likely he plays willock with Miley coming in as a sub at around 70 mins or so.

I don't know how much we can spend, I imagine we will but I doubt we will have enough to cover every spot that people want them to cover/replace. Of all areas midfield is the area we are least in demand of reinforcement to be honest. Right winger and a couple of younger defenders are the main priority. After that maybe a new goalie or backup striker, then finally a new mid fielder.

Desperately need willock to get back to good form again.

Brighton is such a weird game. We have a mixed record against them at home and a horrendous record against them away. They aren't in great form ATM but then we also might be missing Jolinton. That said if we do manage to beat them and assuming Chelsea don't beat Liverpool (i.e. a draw or lose), I'll go from thinking we are slightly more likely not to get CL than we are ATM, to thinking we are slightly more likely to get cl. Under this scenario, we'd just need a draw to Chelsea and a win to everton (assuming we lose to arsenal) to secure cl. These next two games are are massive.

Whilst I agree that villa are on form and definitely could win all their games, all it takes is one bad day at the office or a slip up for a draw.

I was fully expecting a loss here and it's not the end of the world, but it was the way they lost it which has me worried. We have a tendency to go on a winning streak then be awful for 5 games or so and I really don't want that to be the case here. Really hope botman is back fit after Ipswich we could really do with him against Brighton and Chelsea.

Can't say it wasn't coming.

I want to say that we have been better this second half but that might just be cause of how bad the first was. Still think we are going to lose this.

Looking a bit better towards the end of the second half I thought but still

Worried were gonna get tired before then and they also have more viable options on the bench.

I don't think we're winning this but I'd defo take a draw (even that I don't think we'll get unfortunately).

Don't get why they keep going on about the saudis bank rolling our success, do they just not understand how ffp works since it was so long ago that they were in the premier League? Feels like they genuinely think it's still the early 2000's where teams like us can do a city or Chelsea. We had a net negative spend this season for a reason and it wasn't just for the lolz

Would count Brighton away as another very difficult game, and tbh everton at home wont necessarily be a breeze either.

You have to think long term, the money we get just from being in the CL is huge and also it massive increases the power of our brand worldwide which will allow for us to get better players and also increase commercia revenue even more going forwards. And yes I wish football wasn't all about money but unfortunately it is.

Mad to think that there was a point in the league this season where we only got 7 points from 11 games and now we're third and have won the second most games in the league.

Don't see us winning this but then I said basically the same thing about palace and I was wrong about that, so you never know.

66 will probably be enough so long as we dont lose to Chelsea. 68 would nearly guarantee us.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet, got a hard run coming up. Villa (a), Brighton (a), arsenal (a), Chelsea (h), and even everton will be tough games. Ipswich (h) should in theory be one we win but they're a weird team and drew to Chelsea last weekend.

I bet some of the people who are saying we shouldn't play him and should keep burn/schar on will be changing their tune really quickly if we lose a couple or our next games.

Getting flashbacks to May last year when everyone thought we'd thrash man u and then we lost, and man U are showing some signs of getting better. That said that game was away and tbh I'm still more worried about the palace game than this one.

Villa really aren't as much of a threat as everyone seems to think they are, win our game in hand and they are 5 points behind us and they also have a tough run of games. it's still very much between us, city and Chelsea for 4th and 5th (forest have a really easy run of games).

For those interested I jotted out what I see as the most likely scenario of us getting CL football. Assuming we don't get any points away to arsenal, away to villa and away to brighton, we can get CL if the following happens. If chelsea don't win 5 out of 6 from the following (meaning that them getting 2 draws would suffice for us in this scenario): Forest h (final game of season) Man u h Fulham a Everton h L pool h Ipswich h And we beat: ipswich h palace h Everton h Man u h And also we win vs Chelsea at home (So us to win 62.5% or 5/8 of our games inc chelsea all of which are home games) We would get cl assuming villa also don't get 6 wins and a draw from their 7 games which is unlikely for Villa. Should also probably caveat that this assumes 5th place is cl.