Yes - definitely. It's the type of thing we would be caught out by, but pretty confident Unai will have analysed the **** out of it.
Comfortable 2-0 win and up to 10th for a few minutes, before remaining in 11th forever.
No way we're getting 7th.
Probably 11th, maybe 10th and highly unlikely 9th.
Brighton, Brentford and Liverpool all have 4/5 points on us, better gd and games in hand. We can fight it out with Chelsea (and hope they keep Potter) and pray the one of the teams above collapses, but anything better is for the birds.
Exactly as expected. They were niggling to play against and took a while to break down, but comfortable in the end.
We needed the creativity of little Emi and you could see us growing back in confidence.
Downsides - big Emi getting another time wasting card and it's still really nerve-wracking watching them play out from the back.
Exactly. Reading this thread, I think the only player no-one has mentioned getting rid of is Kamara. We won't (and shouldn't) do a Forest/Chelsea this summer. A few significant additions (and then a couple of current first team move to back up) and 1 or 2 young prospects, I'd be fine with, .
I'm kind of fine either way. He'll only go if we get seriously big money and presumably if Unai thinks he's not going to fill the role he wants from a keeper - there's no reason to sell otherwise. If he stays, he's still the best keeper we've had in years and is right in his peak years. I still think he and the coaches should be able to keep improving his distribution from the back and with a couple of upgrades around him we'll get better in playing that way.
But, please, please, please cut out the time wasting and yellow cards.
Disappointing result but played really well at times. I think we'll be back to a decent run now those last 2 games have gone. Still positive overall - you can see the improvement coming, albeit slowly.
Sure. Apart from the 2 we did get.
Let's not throw everything out the pram after losing to the (2nd) best side in the league. We'll have another good run this season after these couple of games and this summer will significantly strengthen.
Sadly a fairly predictable result. We turned up when they had switched off.
Start Moreno and Duran next game, and let's fervently hope Mings is back.
See if we can scrape through the arsenal game and then get back on it.
Flip-flopping here. But I think hope and optimism are just about keeping ahead of long-ingrained doubt. 2-0 please - need to start improving the gola difference.
That'll be (hopefully) exciting to see.
If we get ahead, I'd like to see us cut out some of the extreme time-wasting. I don't mind a bit right at the end, but feel big Emi (in particular) is going to get himself a suspension at some point and we do not need that.
Mind - let's do the getting ahead bit first!
Outside the top 5, (and ignoring Palace and Forest floating around in no mans land), it's incredibly tight. 3 points across the bottom 6 and 3 points across our group of 6. There is likely to be a bit of a split in both groups before we get to the final run in. We aren't helped by a shit GD, but the gap does mean there are a few proper 6 pointers coming up so should keep things interesting for a while yet.
I think it's unlikely we will keep such momentum going, but equally a couple of others will likely drop away. 9-10th most likely - anything above that would be incredible.