There goes Julen!

[Tony Towner]

Here’s one where would you put our chances of survival as a percentage at this time?

Bet 365 have us at 10/11, slightly worse than 50/50 seems about right to me. If we can keep the gap to no worse than it currently is over the 3 Xmas games then I'd be fairly confident, presuming a professional will be running the recruitment as the needs are obvious and you'd have to believe the budget will be sufficient to fill them

 

[jd1981]

Bet 365 have us at 10/11, slight worse than 50/50 seems about right to me. If we can keep the gap to no worse than it currently is over the 3 Xmas games then I'd be fairly confident, presuming a professional will be running the recruitment as the needs are obvious and you'd have to believe the budget will be sufficient to fill them

The Everton game needs to yield points none of this “ I can see improvement” after a 3-2 defeat that time has long past.

 

[Tony Towner]

The Everton game needs to yield points none of this “ I can see improvement” after a 3-2 defeat that time has long past.

Given Everton are 4th favourites and we are 3rd then a defeat to them obviously skus the odds significantly, as it would do our realistic chances

 

[Alan]

The Everton game needs to yield points none of this “ I can see improvement” after a 3-2 defeat that time has long past.

The very first league game back?

Absolutely no chance we're anything close to Julen's finished product that quickly.

What do we expect managers to be, fucking seraphs?

 

[Alan]

Also, I know it's Cadiz and a training match and blah blah blah

We did win, which, you know, ain't nothing.

 

[Kenny]

- As a team that struggles to score

3 JL games in and almost matched our PL output already....those days are over my friend...

 

[Tony Towner]

The very first league game back?

Absolutely no chance we're anything close to Julen's finished product that quickly.

What do we expect managers to be, fucking seraphs?

That's not what he's saying. We are 5 points in real terms adrift of the team who are 4th from bottom who are Everton. We need a result not a performance against them.

 

[Alan]

That's not what he's saying. We are 5 points in real terms adrift of the team who are 4th from bottom who are Everton. We need a result not a performance against them.

That's fairer, I suppose, but even if we come out of that with nothing it's his first league match in charge and we'll have nothing but the same old players.

Sky ain't falling based on that one result, IMO (accepting that little bits and pieces of the sky have been slowly making their way to ground level over the past year-ish).

Obviously a draw or win would be very helpful to our cause. But the season ain't ending on Boxing Day.

 

[Tony Towner]

That's fairer, I suppose, but even if we come out of that with nothing it's his first league match in charge and we'll have nothing but the same old players.

Sky ain't falling based on that one result, IMO (accepting that little bits and pieces of the sky have been slowly making their way to ground level over the past year-ish).

It's the reality though, we aren't getting any new players until the West Ham game at the earliest so will have 20 games left at that point. Digging ourselves out of a 8 or 9 point hole by then is a tall order. For equivalence Chelsea are currently that far off the relegation zone so we'd need to go from the worst team in the league to the 8th best to stay up if we were to find ourselves in that kind of delta. That takes a 50% chance down to circa 20 imo. These next 3 league games are massive irrespective of them being the manager's first. Not letting the gap grow further is crucial.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Yep. As nice as it would be to say "you can't expect him to turn it around immediately, he needs time", we don't have time.

If we wanted time then we should have sacked Fuckface 7-8 months ago when he was obviously awful and the players hated him.

 

[Alan]

Personally can’t get that worked up when there’s a whole half a season left.

I’ve always felt that football culture over there is pretty impatient (which I do get comes from the very real punishment of relegation; stakes are high), so this surely isn’t news to y’all.

The next few matches are important but there’s still time afterward to rewrite the story of this season.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

It's all about direction of travel.

Which is why "we're 8th" was such a shit argument last season.

 

[Deano]

Personally can’t get that worked up when there’s a whole half a season left.

I’ve always felt that football culture over there is pretty impatient (which I do get comes from the very real punishment of relegation; stakes are high), so this surely isn’t news to y’all.

The next few matches are important but there’s still time afterward to rewrite the story of this season.

There really isn't time Alan. We are on 10 points. This is not some long term rebuilding project, Lopetegui probably wont want to stick around in the Championship and in any case he has been bought in to change things quickly and it needs to start with the Everton game as they looked dire before the break.

If we carry on losing games we can't write games off because people feel he hasn't had an arbitrary amount of time to get his ideas across as it will be much too late by then.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

It's also a very stark equation - if we go down then we are just a rich, ambitious Championship club again. All the good players will leave. It puts us straight back to 2017, and probably looking for a new manager who may or may not work out, needing the bulk of an entire new squad who may or may not work out.

 

[Tony Towner]

Personally can’t get that worked up when there’s a whole half a season left.

I’ve always felt that football culture over there is pretty impatient (which I do get comes from the very real punishment of relegation; stakes are high), so this surely isn’t news to y’all.

The next few matches are important but there’s still time afterward to rewrite the story of this season.

...but then hypothetically your new manager bounce has been none existent. Your players who have now spent the thick end of a year losing most weeks continue to do so, and the lack of confidence that brings, most of whom will still be in the starting 11 even post signings. Players who may be interested in coming to a team 5 points adrift may not to one who is 8 or 9. Feels like a similar nieve argument to the one constructed (not by you) in the Summer saying all of those defeats at the end of last year didn't matter

 

[jd1981]

It's also a very stark equation - if we go down then we are just a rich, ambitious Championship club again. All the good players will leave. It puts us straight back to 2017, and probably looking for a new manager who may or may not work out, needing the bulk of an entire new squad who may or may not work out.

This is it the product of allowing Bruno Saunders 3 transfer windows and the start of the season. I agree in fact I’d go as far it would put us back to the summer of 2016, unless we retain some quality. At least in 2017, we had some good players in place Cav, Saiss, Coady, Costa etc admittedly 2 were different specimens after the Nuno effect.
Basically relegation leaves us in an uncertain place we could bounce back and be fine.

 

[Alan]

I’d be curious to see some numbers on the “new manager bounce” thing. Gets raised a lot but I don’t know if I’ve actually seen data.

My point is that I’m not giving up on the season if we lose to Everton. But equally I don’t have a ton of confidence we pull out a win in Julen’s first match.

The situation is dire but IMO not so dire that I’ll be tuning out after the 26th if we lose. I just don’t think it would be cataclysmic for us.

Trust me, I don’t want to go back to the days of streaming our matches in 240p under a pile of pornography popups.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

I’d be curious to see some numbers on the “new manager bounce” thing. Gets raised a lot but I don’t know if I’ve actually seen data.

If it doesn't make a difference, why would anyone ever bother sacking the manager...

Look at Albion right now, got rid of one of the few managers who is actually worse than Lage, and they've won four on the spin since.

I don't think anyone's giving up if we lose on Boxing Day, just we don't have any breathing room at all, we can't write a single game off (bar maybe City and Arsenal). Because we already wrote off nearly half a season.

 

[Tony Towner]

Someone posted something along those lines on here previously. From memory in the very short term at the bottom of the PL it was a real thing, but over a longer period not in most instances because poor teams by and large are poor teams

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Think Allardyce, for all his reputation as a relegation saviour, is a bit of an outlier - he tended to start horribly but after 10+ games (typically when he'd had chance to sign players) they picked up. Not at Albion though as they were shite and he was obviously miles past it.