But where will the 9 come from ?
Home:
Blackburn
Boro
Fulham
Villa
West Ham
Newcastle
Wigan
Reading
Sheff U
are all 'potential' wins alone.
we also have Liverpool and Spurs, who can be debatable on the road. Only Chelsea is a write-off to me.
Away
Sheff U
Boro
Watford
Pompey
Bolton
Man City
Blackburn
Everton
They are hardly dread fixtures ?
Only really write off L'pool and Arsenal.
Can others see positives there ? I can't see us winning any games at present, but once we do, these fixtures won't look half as daunting.
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Comments
Still feel hammered from last night - which is some doing even by my standards!
Absolutely agree. It is going to be the Championship next season I am afraid. A sad way for our spell at the top to come to an end. Unless we get some miracle results before the New Year I think we have to sell D.Bent & the others ASAP to get us ready for next year.
I was more pessimistic before Saturday than I am now. It is still in our own hands and I think Les Reed is a good enough coach and sufficiently tactically astute to make a decent attempt at getting us out of it. Everton are no mugs and we had them rattled for the last 20 minutes or so.
If we can reproduce anything like that on saturday then we should come back with something and maybe with a bit more confidence and a positive crowd we can win on Tuesday against Blackburn.
As others have said if we win our home games we will go close. Man Utd and Arsenal have been played already so we only have Chelsea as a completely unwinnable home game.
If we DO go down it will have taken Dowie just 12 Premiership matches to undo 15 years hard graft by the board and Curbs.
It just shows the fragile line between failure and relative success in football.
Well done mate, well done. I just wish I could agree with you on this one. It may sound silly, but I fear we've already gone. It's too much of an ask to pull it around now.
I can believe people are down and miserable. But I can't believe people are giving up and accepting relegation! First taste of miserable failure in a long time are we've all gone doolaly! Retreat I hear you call. Run for the hills.
Where is you're spirit?
In my mind, we can't criticise the players for a lack of fight when we're giving up the moment our backs are to the wall. If you give up now, then you give up on the right to moan about what's going wrong.
As mere supporters, we can't kick the ball on the pitch come Saturday (Sunday, Monday or Tuesday night, or whenever it is we're now playing) but we can do something, even if that something is merely making it known that we'll fight and believe till the end.
Or is this one of those ploys where we all say how we won't ever win again just to tempt the heavens above into proving us so mortally wrong and oh so insignificant? If so, then no, I don't think we'll win again ;-)
Things though have obviously not been normal behind the scenes and it was only the second game for Les and his first full week with the players.
We started badly, Mc Fadden was excellent for 20 minutes or so, but gradually gained in confidence. Hopefully we can build on that.
consider myself revigorated and ready for battle, SIR !
:-)
LookOut - I really admire those who can be so positive. Unfortunately I am too much of a realist. Some may call me a pessimist but I honestly believe that, looking at the facts, we are not going to survive this season.
What facts? Well, the fact that we have not won an away game for more than a year, the fact that nobody who has been bottom of the Premiership at the end of November has ever survived, the fact that the bookies rarely get it wrong (and we are long odds on to get relegated), the fact that we have a brand new inexperienced manager, the fact that there is/has been a serious level of unrest at the club in recent months, the fact that we have won only one of our last eleven Premiership games, the fact that we have already spent a large part of next season's transfer budget (meaning that there will be very little to spend in January) and the fact that we have a serious lack of Premiership quality in our squad. OK, the last one is my opinion rather than a fact.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to be proved wrong and I will support the team with everything that I have, always and forever (to quote one of my favourite songs from the 70s). I love my team and they are a major part of my life. However, if you are not realistic about the situation we are in then you are only going to be more disappointed when the inevitable happens.
Come on you reds!!
You say it's not pessimism but realism. I don't think so. You've listed a few reasons to justify your take on reality, but I could just as easily put forward a set of reasonable counter arguments. None of us can cut through all of the crud to accurately guage the state of the Club and the team in this turmultous time. And, in truth, no one knows what is in store. Given that, I'd rather the Club, team and supporters fight for every opportunity they get from here on in to ensure our Premiership survival.
People do great things when they don't accept the prevailing and accepted view that others have of them and what they can accomplish. So, I don't care about the bookies and the media or anyother onlooking bystander.
And finally, football is never as straight forward as it appears on paper, so whilst looking ahead at the fixtures can be helpful, it's certainly not the most accurate guage of a team's destiny.
what i will add is there is always a side who's fans think they are doomed, yet always claw out of it. It was Pompey last year, it could be us this one.
never seen us as a "glass half empty" bunch of fans.
Get the Valley back, Target 10000 etc
I hope this season doesn't prove me wrong- i genuinely believe in our board and that we have better players than at least 5 of the teams in our league.
I do, however, believe that Saturday is a must win game-
The fact about the team bottom in november always going down isn't true. I don't have the stats, but other always trotted out stat is that the team bottom at Christmas always goes down. Pompey proved that one wrong last year, and when Ipswich went down, yes they were bottom at Christmas, but they actually pulled themselves out of the bottom three then relaxed and tumbled back in. So it's not impossible to survive when bottom. Personally I think Watford will be bottom at Christmas with us (if we beat Shef Utd Saturday) third or fourth from bottom.
Keep the faith .....
Sorry but Pompey were not bottom at Xmas. The only team to stay up when bottom at Xmas was West Brom the season before last.