Lillehamring

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.

i've no idea what that means.

Most be because of the blinkers you're wearing. Four games ago it looked like we were going to win it. there's 20% of the season left!

Or fortune and misfortune. We haven't played bad, or been outplayed in any of the last five games. so, whilst it does all come down to points, it's a meaningless statistic to gauge the team on as far as how they are playing.

Well, there are plenty on here who certainly give that impression.

Actually 6. We've taken 1.6 ppg in 2024, if we match that over the last 9 games, that's 97 points. No one deserves to criticise a team that amasses 97 points.

You have to remember that before the 3 game losing streak, we had a record of P16 W12 D3 L1 - and the one loss was coventry - we're more than capable of beating any team, we aren't suddenly a bad team, we just had a few games that didn't go our way. Also, in that stretch we dropped just 2 points at home, in the ipswich game.

For all those people saying we've bottled it or we're rubbish because we had a 17 point lead over leeds, it's worth noting that that 17 point gap appeared after GW26 LCFC W21 D2 L3 P65 ppg 2.5 LUFC W14 D6 L6 P48 ppg 1.8 since then LCFC W5 D2 L4 P17 ppg 1.5 LUFC W11 D1 L0 P34 ppg 2.8 So, yes our form has dipped (but still to a standard that was good enough for 6th place last year), but leeds' form has been off the scale, out-performing what we had achieved up to that point where we had the 17 point lead. We have to keep perspective that this isn't about us bottling it, this is about leeds playing better than anyone has ever played at this level.

Oddly, after 80% of the 15/16 season we were on 63, spurs were on 58 and arsenal were on 55. So, it was never even a two horse race, certainly not at this stage.

I love (hate?) how so many people on here can predict the future! It wasn't so long ago that this place was full of people predicting we'd be relegated this season. If we don't go up, there's no reason why we can't go up next year - it will certainly not be as strong a league as this season, and even if we have to sell our best players, we genuinely have a good crop of academy players to rebuild around.