The Race to be Relegated 24/25 Thread

[Tony Towner]

Yeah it's not easy, makes you wonder if it's just too much of a stretch now for promoted teams to have a chance of staying up.

The gap is definitely bigger than ever between a run of the mill PL side and the Championship, but if you assume the champions should stay up then last season you had Kompany with his purist bullshit and this Leicester lost their manager, best player and made a series of terrible decisions subsequent to that. If they go up Leeds have the pulling power and financial muscle to not be in that position next year, although I think it'll take an October managerial change first

 

[jd1981]

Brentford and Fulham will always be able to attract a player simply because they're in London. Yeah they're also well run, but they have a huge natural edge over ourselves, Leicester, Leeds etc

If you’re in easy distance of one of the major cities you generally don’t have a problem with location. Fact is you only need to be in commuting range of the training ground.

 

[sycophantia]

It'll be interesting to see how it pans out over the next few seasons.

 

[jd1981]

It'll be interesting to see how it pans out over the next few seasons.

Yeah if in 2 seasons time only 1/2 out of the 12 promoted clubs survive then we can begin to say the gap is almost too big.
Ipswich staying up or going down this season neither proves or disproves this theory.

 

[Carsy]

I realise teams coming up need to increase their squad but sometimes wonder if they should spend their money on quality rather than quantity. I suppose it's not easy to get decent quality players to go to promoted teams.

A lot of newly promoted teams bolster their squads we top end championship quality players ready for the following year. You can see the gap widening but you’d imagine 2 of the 3 that go down will be battling to come straight back up.

If we didn’t piss around for half the season the 3 would already be down

 

[C.L.D]

I thought Luton played it smart last season not going to crazy but they are on track to do a "Wolves" so I guess not.

Maybe Ipswich is on same track but hopefully not. I don't think it's a good thing the gulf appears wider.

 

[The Bear]

Well yeah of course but that was 3-4 years ago and Forest had a bit of help. It just seems to be getting harder.

Forest stayed up by blatantly ignoring the rules and then took the punishment on the chin.

It's the Anti-Shi approach.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

I thought Luton played it smart last season not going to crazy but they are on track to do a "Wolves" so I guess not.

Maybe Ipswich is on same track but hopefully not. I don't think it's a good thing the gulf appears wider.

It's not, but we shouldn't pretend it's an impossible task, because it really isn't.

Any of that bottom three had the chance to take advantage of us being managed by someone patently out of their depth, us building a ludicrously imbalanced squad and barely winning a game before Christmas and they didn't.

 

[Templeton Peck]

Well yeah of course but that was 3-4 years ago and Forest had a bit of help. It just seems to be getting harder.

Forest spent loads.

 

[Lupo]

Leicester losing

 

[Jinky]

 

[KiwiWolf61]

I’m sure if you added Wolves pts it would be the worst bottom 4.

 

[Tony Towner]

All 4 of those years being in the last 7 is quite telling. Doesn't even include Derby's year

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

Didn’t the other two in the derby year have reasonable totals

 

[Donegal Wolf]

Now points wise closer to Tottenham in 13th then Ipswich.

Now 12/1 to get relegated whilst Man City are 16/1.
(On betfair exchange Man City are actually shorter odds then us to get relegated)

 

[jd1981]

3 wins from 9 matches and you’re asking Ipswich to pick up over 2ppg.
Leicester not as much but considering they’ve still got City, Newcastle, Forest, Liverpool, Brighton and Bournemouth left to play it puts them on the back foot.
We will probably be getting below a PPG by the season end, it’s still a shocking season any club that can’t achieve equal points to matches played has a big problem.
Admittedly our problem is mainly down to having Gary Lage Saunders in charge until mid December.

 

[Lycan]

Time to start worrying about next season now. This summer is going to be so important.

 

[Jinky]

This is taking absolutely nothing away from the job that Vitor has done, but if you look at the points Ipswich, Leicester & Southampton were on when he joined - none of them have barely added anything to their totals since. It’s the absolute epitome of ‘getting lucky’ this season, because if any of them had put a little run together we’d still be in it.

I’m almost laughing while typing this, but I really hope this was the warning shot Jeff Shi & Fosun needed. As Lycan says, need to start worrying/preparing for next season now.

 

[Law's Bus]

I think a lot of the concerns are about the really wierd way the table is this season making things feel more nervous than they actually are.

If you take the same points and GD are we are right now, but plug it into this time last season's table (and removing ourselves), we'd be 15th. If we were 9 points above 18th at this point last season, we'd be sat in 13th.

This isn't to say that we haven't been shockingly poor this season, we absolutely have, and we definitely need a wake-up call, just an illustration of how strange the season is - or alternatively if you prefer your glasses half-empty, just how terrible the bottom 3 are!

 

[Sniffer]

This is taking absolutely nothing away from the job that Vitor has done, but if you look at the points Ipswich, Leicester & Southampton were on when he joined - none of them have barely added anything to their totals since. It’s the absolute epitome of ‘getting lucky’ this season, because if any of them had put a little run together we’d still be in it.

I’m almost laughing while typing this, but I really hope this was the warning shot Jeff Shi & Fosun needed. As Lycan says, need to start worrying/preparing for next season now.

He’s got a good ppg ratio since he took over and that’s including the reverse of the nightmare run of fixtures that the media let GON off with. We’ve also got a reasonable set of fixtures for our last 9 games which we can expect to pick up points from.
We’d have all snapped our hands off to be almost safe with 9 games to go so whilst the bottom 3 being crap has made that a reality, we shouldn’t devalue the excellent work that VP has done. Even if Leicester and Ipswich were still breathing down our necks now and still back us to stay above them.

Edit - replying to the getting lucky bit.