The reason he rubs people up the wrong way half the time is not simply the negativity all the time, but the fact that it is never justified. He just says "according to my analysis", or presents a small and incomplete snapshot of stats. He consistently refused to share what his predictions were that saw us relegated so people made the obvious conclusion that he predicted us losing every game and other teams going on improbable runs. We all realise we might go down but at least other share their approaches in their thinking. For instance I don't think we will go down as our record against the teams we still have to play, and others of similar quality, is actually good and we should expect an average of 1.5 points a game (6 points). I think we'll get a win and 3 draws. Beat Leicester and draw the rest. Leicester have a disjointed dressing room and are just going through the motions. It was telling that Southampton, despite desperately needing a win, were pretty abject by all accounts last night. Their form, along with that of Stoke and the points deficit should be reason enough to make the current bottom 3 heavy favourites to go down.

The Championship is a much better league than when we were last in it. Clubs have more money (parachute payments have gone up a lot, and wealthy foreign owners have come in hoping to get into the PL - Wolves for instance). Better players are now playing in the Championship.

It's also not easy to acclimatise first season back so you get fewer and fewer clubs managing to return at the first time of asking.

It is however still the case that the clubs who are currently in the top 6 have all been in the PL relatively recently, with the exception of Millwall. In fact 4 of the top 6 we've played in the PL since coming up 5 years ago. Looking down the table there are only 4 other clubs in the Championship of which that is true, 3 of which (QPR, Sunderland and Hull) have had ownership issues. So it clearly does help to have recent PL experience (in the absence of mad owners) when it comes to trying to get promoted again.

Looking at the relegation picture all of the clubs down there appear to be reasonably well run and I'd think unlikely to do a Sunderland.

That's more like it, an intetesting, reasoned debate.personally I think if you go down, your chances of bouncing straight back up depends on how many of your premiership players you can keep. If you loose half thd team, it could take you longer to re-build and go up again.

It’s not that simple is it. Message boards are designed to engage. That is why it is so insidious. It does not just turn into those that are either for or against trolley, but then sets those for or against arguing with each other. It is deliberate.

We end up with the message board we deserve i guess.

It is true that we have been battling relegation all season, but that doesn't tell the whole story.
As we all know, we gave every other club 7 games start.
We then went on a great run under Roy taking us up the table, this run came to an end purely down to many key players getting injured at the same time and a run of difficult fixtures.
We have still even picked up 34 points in effectively 27 games, on that form with the games remaining and few injuries then we should pick up at least another 4 points taking us to 38 and safety.
To be where we are without a scoring striker all season,and giving everybody 7 games start is some sort of a miracle.
If we had got 7 points from our first 7 games then we would be sitting here today with 41 points.

Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles.

Or is it perhaps more a case of Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres?

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The Ferret
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