A good target for Premiership survival, as I have said before, is to get 4 points each off the other nine teams who will eventually share the bottom half of the table, by winning at home and drawing away. Then get 1 point each off the teams who will finish 5th - 10th by drawing at home. Expect no points off the top four.
It's difficult because you don't know where teams will finish until the end of the season. But you can take a view.
Where did West Brom fall down? Experts had been writing the team off. We were bottom for much of the season. We eventually missed my target by 10 points but only missed survival by 4.
In fact at the end of January, bottom with 22 points, we were only 3 points behind my target. We had played the majority of our difficult games in the first half of the season. By the end of March, 7 games later, we were 10 points adrift of target. From then until the end of the season, 7 more games, we did exactly as per my target.
So what happened in February and March? We did as we had expected to do away at Fulham and Everton and at home to Arsenal (nil points). We got a point away at West Ham - better than expected. It was losing at home to Stoke City and Newcastle United and drawing at home to Bolton that cost us. 1 point out of 9. Two games let us down. One more win and one more draw.
It was closer than it looked and it came down to details. Good luck Wolves, Brum and Burnley next season. Along with Stoke and Hull perm three from five for relegation. Portsmouth may be in the mix. Sunderland will depend on who they get as new manager.
3 comments:
Boing is all I can say. Back up in 2010? I guess it depends how many Premier Leagues we have by then.
Portsmouth may be in the mix...not a chance! It's a good job for Real Madrid that they snapped up Kaka and Ronaldo otherwise our new Arab owner would have bought them! Play up Pompey!
Dream on Gilbert
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