Caporegime
No proper football for a month and a half now 
Greenlizard0 PL & Championship Football Thread ** spoilers ** [12th - 13th November 2022]
- Thread starter explicit4u
- Start date
Soldato
Ready for the world cup?No proper football for a month and a half now
No proper football for a month and a half now
Haven't experienced any proper football at all this season tbf.
Caporegime
I think Newcastle fans really should only hope for top 6, unless you spend a fair whack in January
And that would still be excellent progress.
The last thing you want at the moment is undue pressure
Arsenal and City for me are the only ones I could place, the other 2 spots coming from Spurs/Newcastle/United and Pool. Two big factors being long term injuries incurred from the world cup and January Transfer window.
Squad depth is going to be integral. Abit of a dream for us Geordies, will see if we can maintain it! I hope we can.
Squad depth is going to be integral. Abit of a dream for us Geordies, will see if we can maintain it! I hope we can.
Soldato
I would snatch your hand off for a europa conference league place now
Caporegime
I see Chelsea falling off a cliff. Potter is a victim of his own hype. I am not saying he is a bad manager but going to Chelsea mid way through a season without the proper time to prepare could see him get the axe by next summer as Chelsea fans do not have the patience required. They brought so many new players as well and are missing Kante.
Last edited:
Caporegime
Well you would be silly to do that. All of the "big 6" have a lot of players at the WC and no doubt players will pick up injuries or just generally not be as well rested as the rest of the league.
United have looked leggy for weeks and most of our first XI are off to the WC, some of them are likely to be playing until near the end.
If Newcastle can keep this up they could easily get 3rd. At some point Tottenham will have an injured Kane and they will fall off a cliff. Chelsea are all over the place. Liverpool will be up there by the end of the season. Not sure about United. I think we will be very erratic depending on injuries.
I'm cautiously optimistic about top 4 for united, provided we get a decent striker and the likes of Casemiro, Garnacho, Eriksen, Fernandes come back from the WC fit. We are improving, which is more than can be said for most other teams.
City it almost feels like they got carried away thinking all they need to do is keep lobbing balls forward to the goal machine. I'm sure they'll still be in the mix late season though. Arsenal too if the WC break doesn't disrupt their form too much.
If I was to place a bet right now, I'd probably say go for a top 4 of (not in order) Arsenal, City, Newcastle, United.
City it almost feels like they got carried away thinking all they need to do is keep lobbing balls forward to the goal machine. I'm sure they'll still be in the mix late season though. Arsenal too if the WC break doesn't disrupt their form too much.
If I was to place a bet right now, I'd probably say go for a top 4 of (not in order) Arsenal, City, Newcastle, United.
Soldato
You’re absolutely right in everything you say, the problem is I don’t think Newcastle have the squad depth (the cup game proved that) to maintain the intensity we play across the whole season, and we haven’t really had our bad patch yet. If we want to give ourselves the best chance of finishing in the top 4 I think we need at least 5 signings in January 2 starters and 3 backups
Alexander Isaak should be fit by then unless he's the next Michael Owen
Caporegime
I am surprised everyone thinks Liverpool are not going to be there. The vast majority of their players will have a nice month rest over winter. Who ever gets Liverpool on the restart are going to get a pasting.
Adam you literally said weeks ago that Liverpool had no chance of making the top 4!
Caporegime
I like Isak, but what is his role going to be? If it's an out and out goal scorer he's unproven at this level at doing that
Biggest treat to the Toon for top 4 imho.
There attacking threat hasn't gone away. Some of the metrics are fantastic. Distance from goal and the number of chances created etc. Players to come back.
If big Andy can learn to square the ball more they will score even more goals. (Which he has been past few games.)
Alison best keeper ever has been keeping them in games. This could have been a lot worse for them if he wasn't there.
If they can sort out the Benny Hill defending and shore of the middle then they will start to move up.
As you seem to like analytics and stats, based on xG, Liverpool should have around 0.5 more points than they have. With the exception of City, every side above us has ended up picking up over 3 points more than their xG has warranted. So while you say that if Alisson wasn't so good things could have been worse (which is fair) based on overall performance, Liverpool should have more points and based on the performance on others, we should be a lot closer to 3rd and 4th.
The key for us is getting players back. We've been threadbare most of the season, often filling our bench with kids and sometimes even having to have 2 keepers on there just to make up the numbers. If and I say if because every time somebody comes back another gets injured, we can get some sort of squad together for the 2nd half of the season then I'm very confident that our form will pick up. We typically perform at our best in the 2nd half of the season, something stattos have suggested is linked to our pre-season preparations and I did see some suggest that we may have overdone that this season, overcompensating for the winter WC.
Caporegime
Everyone seems to be picking up loads of injuries. It's almost like this cramming more and more games into smaller and smaller time might be bad for a player's health.
Caporegime
Its OK there are 5 subs allowed now...