The Europeometer™ (2024/25)

[frankpingel]

Agree with most of that but have to point out we are favourites v Man U. 

 

 

Edited March 19, 2023 by frankpingel
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[SteV]

18 minutes ago, Paullow said:

I'd be much more confident of a greater points tally if the venues were all completely reversed. The away fixtures are really tough, some big, traditional grounds we have to go to - Everton, Villa, Leeds where you know their fans will be up for it against another big city team, especially with that team being on the up (controversially in some peoples eyes), West Ham too.

 

Our home form is very good, but we probably won't be betting favourites to beat Man U, Tottenham, Arsenal, not massive faves to beat Brighton, and (from all 12 remaining fixtures) it's just really Southampton and Leicester at home where you look and think we should definitely be winning that one, whereas if they were reversed, you would be thinking Brentford, West Ham, Villa, Everton, and Leeds, if that makes sense. We likely wouldn't win all 5 of them (and we did obviously drop points in two of them), but every match the opponent would range from in and around 4/1 to 6/1, and individually we'd be expected to win, whereas here, we will only have two fixtures where the opponents will be that price.

 

 

 

 

 

We are slight favourites to beat Man Utd. Would imagine we’ll be stronger favourites against Spurs (depending on how the next month goes obviously). Possibly not against Arsenal though.

[SUPERTOON]

Thing with our remaining home games is I’d expect most of the opposition to come out and have a go which will suit us nicely. 

[Geogaddi]

36 minutes ago, duo said:

I just realised how tough our run in is....

• Sun 02-Apr -Manchester United(h)  
• Wed 05-Apr -  West Ham(a)         
• Sat 08-Apr - Brentford(a)         
• Sat 15-Apr - Aston Villa(a)         
• Sun 23-Apr - Tottenham(h)         
• Thu 27-Apr - Everton(a)         
• Sun 30-Apr - Southampton(h)         
• Sat 06-May- Arsenal(h)         
• Sat 13-May- Leeds United(a)         
• Sat 20-May - Leicester City(h)         
• Sun 28-May - Chelsea(a)         
• Date tbc Brighton(h)

• Sun 02-Apr -Manchester United(h)  Win
• Wed 05-Apr -  West Ham(a)         Draw
• Sat 08-Apr - Brentford(a)         Draw
• Sat 15-Apr - Aston Villa(a)         Draw
• Sun 23-Apr - Tottenham(h)         Win
• Thu 27-Apr - Everton(a)         Lose (still scarred from last season)
• Sun 30-Apr - Southampton(h)     Win
• Sat 06-May- Arsenal(h)          Draw
• Sat 13-May- Leeds United(a)      Draw
• Sat 20-May - Leicester City(h)         Win
• Sun 28-May - Chelsea(a)         Draw
• Date tbc Brighton(h) Win

21 points would put us on 68.

 

 

Edited March 19, 2023 by Geogaddi

[Paullow]

16 minutes ago, SteV said:

We are slight favourites to beat Man Utd. Would imagine we’ll be stronger favourites against Spurs (depending on how the next month goes obviously). Possibly not against Arsenal though.

Yeah, fair enough, but we won't be odds on like we would at home against some of those bottom half teams. So in the 'double chance' odds, Man Utd are 8/15 to achieve either a win or a draw, so odds-wise, it's more likely we won't win that match than win it. We were around 4/6 to beat Forest and around 7/10 to beat Wolves, so in both cases we were odds on and expected to win, whereas I think it'll just be Southampton and Leicester where we will be odds on in the remaining 12 (maybe Leeds at a push). I guess it could change by the time we play teams, if they have less to play for, but still a generally tough remaining set of fixtures.

 

That said, there are obviously advantages that some of the '6 pointers' against the better sides are at home because statistically we will have a better chance of getting points, and simultaneously ensuring direct rivals don't take 3 points, but instead of having say 6 easier games and 6 tougher games, we've basically got a large amount of remaining games (like 8 or 9) where many would expect the end result to easily go either way.

 

 

 

 

Edited March 19, 2023 by Paullow

[Cronky]

12 hours ago, Kid Icarus said:

Will be interesting to see how Conte's rant goes down. Personally I think it's probably more likely to galvanise them than it is to make them shrink even more.

 

I don't think slagging your players off in public like that is ever a good idea. And the weird thing for me is that they're already in the top four. It's not like they can seriously see themselves as challengers to the top two at this stage. 

 

It looks to me that for Conte, it's winning or nothing. He can't deal with the current position - it sounds like it's him who has lost the fighting spirit.

[80]

I think people who have/are writing us off are making the mistake of overestimating our competition. I can see why you'd expect history to repeat with experienced campaigners like Liverpool, but truly the only thing consistent about them, Tottenham and others is their inconsistency. It's not a fluke, they've got real underlying problems.

 

Meanwhile, I'd argue we've got one of the highest quality lower halves of the table in a long time. No team has any reason to give up on their season at this stage. So I think we can expect the top tier to finish with an unusually low points tally, with very few 3 point gimme games around.

 

As for us, I'm just so happy to see some attacking invention return to us. It looks like we're coming back into form at just the right time...

[Interpolic]

If we can get regular clean sheets back into the equation, Isak on a run of good fitness and surely to God some players chipping in with goals elsewhere then we're laughing. 

 

Forest have a very impressive home record and we blew them away the other night, on another night that would have been a breeze scoreline-wise. If we're on it at places like West Ham, Brentford, Leeds, we can do the same. 

 

Man Utd game is massive - a draw keeps it ticking along, a loss would be a blow, but a win would set us up for the run-in with serious momentum. We don't need to win every game, just need to avoid slipping back into frustrating draws against teams below us and we're in a good position. 

[Gawalls]

39 minutes ago, 80 said:

I think people who have/are writing us off are making the mistake of overestimating our competition. I can see why you'd expect history to repeat with experienced campaigners like Liverpool, but truly the only thing consistent about them, Tottenham and others is their inconsistency. It's not a fluke, they've got real underlying problems.

 

Meanwhile, I'd argue we've got one of the highest quality lower halves of the table in a long time. No team has any reason to give up on their season at this stage. So I think we can expect the top tier to finish with an unusually low points tally, with very few 3 point gimme games around.

 

As for us, I'm just so happy to see some attacking invention return to us. It looks like we're coming back into form at just the right time...

We’ve always had attacking invention just couldn’t finish it.

[80]

Nah, we were much more rapid and incisive against Forest than we have been in prior weeks. We've had periods of sustained pressure, but the ultimate moves and balls in have been formulaic. Isak, Murphy and Willock have to get a lot of credit for changing us up.

 

Our set pieces have picked up too - that surprise dink from Trippier to Isak in the first half which ended up on the cross bar was great, caught Forest totally flat footed.

[Interpolic]

40 minutes ago, 80 said:

Nah, we were much more rapid and incisive against Forest than we have been in prior weeks. We've had periods of sustained pressure, but the ultimate moves and balls in have been formulaic. Isak, Murphy and Willock have to get a lot of credit for changing us up.

 

Our set pieces have picked up too - that surprise dink from Trippier to Isak in the first half which ended up on the cross bar was great, caught Forest totally flat footed.

 

Totally agree, we were looking very laboured for weeks and devoid of ideas going forward. It was a concern tbh. The uptick in performances the last couple of games are almost as pleasing as the results. 

 

We did play quite well vs Man City and to an extent Liverpool mind, but there was a run of games before that where it looked like it was getting stale. 

 

 

Edited March 19, 2023 by Interpolic

[TRon]

15 hours ago, r0cafella said:

Conte will always complain, the backing he gets is never enough. 

 

Check his trophy record though. I do wonder why Spurs would ever go back to Poch even though he's one of my favourite managers in the Prem in recent times. He's won nothing of note has he?

 

 

[ilikenewcastle]

4 minutes ago, TRon said:

 

Check his trophy record though. I do wonder why Spurs would ever go back to Poch even though he's one of my favourite managers in the Prem in recent times. He's won nothing of note has he?

 

 

I felt he was a bit of a yes man too. He very much bought into Levy's 'top 4 is all that's important' approach and it seems to me the fans are sick of that.

[Jaqen]

1 hour ago, ilikenewcastle said:

I felt he was a bit of a yes man too. He very much bought into Levy's 'top 4 is all that's important' approach and it seems to me the fans are sick of that.

 

They were in a title race and Champions league final to be fair under Poch. On the whole Spurs have generally been really competitive under Levy whilst moving into a new stadium and competing against sides with much bigger spending power. Conte has been backed with close to £200m in a year, he's managed to make one of the most exciting front 3 in Europe look boring as fuck. There's way more blame on him than Levy. 

[Guest]

Pochettino was great. If Howe does for us what he did there he'll be our greatest manager in memory.

[TRon]

22 minutes ago, Optimistic Nut said:

Pochettino was great. If Howe does for us what he did there he'll be our greatest manager in memory.

 

Howe will win a trophy IMO. That will make him the greatest manager in our history. Poch got sacked by Levy so one of those two was missing something.

[Guest]

 

 

 

 

[80]

If I supported Olimpia Ljubljana I'd be feeling really pumped right now.

[STM]

That win against Forest was gargantuan.

 

We've effectively just replaced our batteries with nice shiny new ones.

 

If we beat Man United we will make top 4 for sure IMO. A draw wouldn't be terrible in all honesty.

[Coffee_Johnny]

End of March tracking has us bang on the 30 year average for fourth place, after this many games. 

[Kid Icarus]

It's mad how the average stagnates in Jan-Feb, then massively shoots up between March and April.

[NoU]

8 minutes ago, Kid Icarus said:

It's mad how the average stagnates in Jan-Feb, then massively shoots up between March and April.

That is probably because of the amount of games those months. If the x-axis was games played instead of months, I am sure you would get much more even lines.

[Kanji]

Don't look now...but Five Thirty Eight's analysis has us finishing 4th. 

 

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/soccer-predictions/premier-league/

[Stottie]

The thing to note with fivethirtyeight is how low they are drawing the bar. They have us as fourth with 66 points. This sounds realistic to me, and the takeaway from it should be that we probably only need five wins. 5-4-3 gets us the 19 points to hit 66.

 

Liverpool have three hard games coming up, starting with Man City. If you include the cup semi, Brighton have four in a row in April, Spurs and Chelsea away, the semi, then Man City two days later.

The pressure is only going to crank up and a team having momentum is one way to counter it.

 

[Paullow]

'TopFourometer' is probably not the most appropriate place to post this, but after this weekends results in both the league and FA Cup, I think it's extremely likely that we will be playing some form of European football next season for the first time in over 10 years.

 

I'm personally thinking 6th place, but I reckon we will finish anywhere from 3rd to 7th. I could see Liverpool and/or Brighton passing us, but after our win, and Brentford and Chelsea both dropping points (both from winning positions), I can't really see us finishing below either of them. Chelsea have too many points to make up, and I'm not sure Brentford will be able to sustain their charge and overhaul the gap with their remaining fixtures.

 

With Man Utd, Man City, and Brighton all progressing in the FA Cup, if we were to finish 7th in what would be one of the worst case scenarios, and those 3 finished above us, and one of them went on to win the FA Cup then 7th place should be good enough for Europa Conference, but if Sheff U won it then 6th place would get that and 7th would get nothing, but it's extremely unlikely that Sheff U will beat Man City and either Man U or Brighton in the final (and they would have to win it, as a final is not enough these days).

 

Possibly other factors to consider if Man Utd / Chelsea won their respective European competitions and didn't do enough in the league, but it's hard to see a realistic scenario where passports won't now be required later in 2023.

 

 

 

Edited March 20, 2023 by Paullow