Lillehamring

NO NO NO. Someone said that our form in 2024 has been poor, I pointed out that (at that time) it was the equivalent of 69 points which was good enough for 6th place, and that 6th place in the EFL, generally, isn't poor (i didn't say it was acceptable, just not 'poor'). And as of now our 2024 form is now up to 1.66 points per game, which is better than the 4th placed team last year. Again, simply stating that this is not 'poor'.

What! Wait! Where have i ever said that? This discussion is about how a high value squad is no guarantee of first place - I've total faith in us getting promoted, i've said countless times that i'm not panicking because we had a wobble. I think we'll go up because we play great football, that we've never really been out-played. I think we've missed ndidi and ricardo, and with them back, i think we'll pick up the form and improve confidence, you could see the improvement in the chelsea game, against a tough pair of teams in hull and sunderland. You do me wrong, sir - i think i've been as positive and optimistic as anyone on here.

Well it happened because leeds hit their best form and we hit our worst - what more do you expect me to say. We've had periods of dominance, Leeds have had periods of dominance We've had a bad run, they've had a bad run. That's why we're now neck and neck. If i have to 'argue down' people who can't understand that that's how sports works, it's not for pleasure, it's through frustration. How the hell did it happen -well ok, you asked. 1. Fixtures: leeds have had a run where the best four teams they've played were us preston norwich and cardiff; we've played leeds, ipswhich twice, cardiff, coventry, boro and hull 2. Injuries: yes all teams have them but crucially for us it has been to ricardo and ndidi - two key components in the spine of our team and the essence of our success earlier on. 3. psychology: there was no pressure on leeds they had nothing to lose, whilst we were there to be shot down. I'm sure there's more, i've not even discussed shitty refs and bad luck... But that's it, it's not just a case of us bottling it or being sussed out, it's just the natural ebb and flow of a looooooong season.

Yes, but he didn't replace the majority of the squad - only a few spots like hermansen and winks et al - the rest was what he'd inherited or what he could scrape together from loans and the academy. Makeshift.

Then you obviously had a lot more faith in maresca transforming a bunch of over paid underperforming relegated premier league stars, a smattering of jaded talent and a handful of unknowns than anyone else did.

Bookies, schmookies. Look at the threads on this forum - half the people thought we'd be in a relegation battle!

But we are not languishing in mid-table like chelsea, we're in 2nd place on GD, with a game in hand - people are talking like the season's over and we're done for, that the season has been a write off. We do have one of the best squads and that reflects in our position - it's getting tiring trying to explain to people that we're still doing incredibly well, yes we had a wobble, but we're back to seeing out games again. Well informed punters, probably didn't fully understand the shit that was happening. no one knew what would happen with maresca, certainly i'd bet no one expected us to have had such a lead.

What! We played 16 different teams - that two thirds of the league - we still had to beat them. We won TWELVE games. Twelve. And the only teams that got close to a win were: ipswich (twice), Coventry (with an extra man), and sheffield wednesday. I'm sorry, you can try to spin 12 wins from 16 as being a negative, but it's bollocks, that's genuine domination For what it's worth, go look at the teams leeds have played in their current run - other than us, they played only cardiff, preston and norwich in the top half.

Which is meaningless. We had more value and talent last year and got relegated. You think chelsea fans are happy with the 'value and talent' in their squad? Sometimes the burden of knowing how much value and talent is on display can be greater than the reward of actually having it. At the end of the day, assuming that we should finish higher than leeds, southampton or ipswich is the equivalent of 'we're too good to go down'.

You can get the 'current' points per game to be any figure from 0.8ppg if you take the last five games, to 1.7 if you take the last 10 games, to 2 if you take the last 2 games - so it doesn't really stand up as proof that we've bottled it. before our brief poor run we won 4 in a row. As for blowing a big lead - there is certainly an arrogance to believing that that only exists to show our superiority, the lead gave us breathing space to have got through a bad patch where things didn't go well, when we were missing two key members of the spine of our team. It's mental to think that people actually believed we might not have a little wobble, that fans assumed we'd just breeze through with a 13 point cushion. People need to get some perspective and look at the bigger picture rather than panicking because of the impact of losing 3 straight games. If we have 'bottled it' we only bottled it for 3 games - all of which we could easily have won, bottling it for me is giving up; it's not the same as having a tough run of games that didn't go our way but on another day could have easily been 3 wins.

You think we wanted to still have all the dead wood? To be taking players on Loan? If that's not makeshift i don't know what is - he's not had three years and an unlimited budget to assemble players like Casadei and Coady

Honestly, not knowing how well maresca and the team would work, would you have said that at the start of the season? Surely not. Would you have taken 6th? I think many would. Also, the point about 6th was simply that our form in 2024 (which was described as poor) was still good enough to have got us 69 points (which i do not think is poor) And Maresca did not get the squad he wanted, he didn't chose to have a DM playing as an #8, or a right footed FB playing as a left CB. It was to do with budget and not being able to offload players - pretty obvious i would have thought. As for Farke, seeing as he's actually doing exactly as well as Enzo, your prediction falls flat - he's no more promoted Leeds right now than Enzo has promoted us. Besides, Farke isn't a good bet to do well in the PL based on his track record at that level.

Keep on living in your fantasy world where everything you expect to happen actually happens. All those arguments why you think we 'should' be top 2 are blown out of the water by the fact that Ipswich have none of them and still achieving the same results. Based on your logic Chelsea shouldn't be 25 points off the top of the league, but they are because, guess what, big salaries don't always equal success, loads of internationals don't even equal success etc etc. Go back to the start of the season and look at people's predictions and expectations, not many people were saying automatic, quite a few said pushing for playoffs - but there were also mid-table and relegated predictions flying around. Besides, the 6th place thing was in reference to the standard of our performances in 2024 not an analysis of the season as a whole.

And even that game we hit the post and had the ball saved off the goal line.

The 'dominant position' was transitory - it doesn't matter how far ahead or behind you are at any point in the season, all that matters is what you get at the end. If we finish with 97 points and miss out, there's no shame in that, that's automatic most seasons - so you can't criticise the team if they manage that. 2.1 points per game would be a sensational return given where we were at at the start of the season and the standard of the competition.

Really? You can't understand the difference between capability and reality? Look at the run before we lost to boro - 1 loss in 16 games! - no one got near us, even that loss we had 10 men.

Pretty sure it was explained that this is where the parachute money will go, thus why we're still right on the edge (or just beyond) our spending limit.

You can say that about pretty much every game we've lost, except perhaps Coventry. Hull was particularly bad. This is why i still have faith in Maresca's tactics - when we execute it right it's almost unbeatable (at least at this level), it's only when we don't execute that it looks bad - and the naysayers all start bleating about plan B's and 'being found out'.

If you think play off form is bottling it, then you are destined to always be dissatisfied. What an horrendous and entitled attitude. And if you wouldn't have taken 6th given the mess we were in, with an unproven manager, a makeshift squad and the most negative home fans in britain then you are either very optimistic, a fantasist or supremely arrogant.

I think this season has proved that it absolutely isn't. Our best run of results came at the start of the season where we played some of our worst football. The games we've lost, have not generally been games where we've been outplayed, but where we've simply not taken our chances. I've no idea what spurs and arsenal fans were saying, but my thoughts aren't a 'coping mechanism' - i'm simply stepping back from a run of poor results to look at the bigger picture.

Our form is not 'poor' - even isolating it to just 2024 results - for a team in the mess we were in, with a rookie manager in a notoriously tough league, to be playing on form to get 69 points is not 'poor'. And realistically, it's only the most recent games where we've struggled, due to a combination of factors (injuries, referees, poor shooting) - and those recent games have been the difference. before that, from the end of november to the middle of february we took 39 points frpm a possible 48 - that's not 'poor'. That run has cost us for sure, but over a season, these things even out. If you look at the 17 game period before the 3 defeats, we have an almost identical record to leeds: LCFC W12 D3 L2 GD+24 P39 LUFC W12 D2 L3 GD+23 P38 So the difference between the two sides is that in the first 15 games we were significantly better than them, whilst in recent games they've been significantly better than us. You can't simply equate the change in points as us dropping points. It is also about the other teams improving significantly. The form we had upto game week 26 was so good that it would have been nigh on impossible to keep it up, even if we hadn't lost two of our best players. So, yes our form has dipped, others has peaked - this happens in every league, in every season - and is reason neither to slate the team/club or to panic.

Come on guys - we've had a few disappointing results, games we've got tactics right but where the application has been wrong. What Maresca has done to this team this quickly is sensational.

You are familiar with our record at stamford bridge, right?

Again, literally no idea what this means.

Sure, but for me the first 26 games we were massively overperforming - there's no way we could reasonably have expected to sustain 2.5ppg for the rest of the season (that's 115 points total); for the last 11 we're hitting playoff form. That's not bottling it, that just reverting to a reasonable norm - in fact, at the start of the season, i think most of us would have taken 6th place.