05 Dec 2021 20:36:37
You can sugar coat this all you want, as a point well earned but watching scrambling draws and overtime wins are not stuff of champions or even relegation escapers. More of relegation fodder. Please let us not be in dire straits come Christmas. A bad omen indeed. Everybody has to play the top teams sometimes let's just give them a game and see what happens - you never know but
At this rate I will be ecstatic with a 17th, a busy summer plugging gaps and a thank you and goodbye to some who are just not quite Premier material. The goodbyes, sadly may just include Raph and KP but que sera, it will probably happen again until we scale the heights and fight regularily in Europe. 17th first tho, regroup, resupply and go again.
06 Dec 2021 10:23:13
Leo, ‘fraid I disagree with you a little on your first point. Failing to scramble draws or overtime wins makes for relegation fodder. Achieving them is more like relegation escapers. But clearly we don’t want to be in either camp. Scrambling overtime wins when you’ve not played well is close to the stuff of champions, so is fine in itself - it’s the draws we need to reduce, by converting to wins. Some of that has been a matter of luck, as in the lucky deflections setting up goals for Wolves and Brentford, but clearly we need to pick up our performances, particularly our cutting edge, and if Bamford is back to fitness ( it did momentarily look like he might have tweaked something a little in his celebration slide) , that should help with our attacking patterns of play. And of course we need to hope (and pray - for those of us who are so minded) that KPs injury is a minor one, or that whoever comes in for him is better able to deputise now that DM duties are being shared by Forshaw.
If KP and Coops are missing at the weekend, it’ll be interesting to see who comes in for them, Struijk (if fit) would have been first choice for either, but obviously can’t play both. If he were to cover for KP, maybe Llorente could go to left CB and Cresswell slot in on the right - that option would certainly be handy in both boxes. If Struijk’s at CB, I guess Dallas or Shack could be played at DM - it would be interesting to see Bate given a go, but that seems highly unlikely and giving him his debut at Stamford Bridge could possibly either inspire or overwhelm the lad.