I keep hearing we are short of goals, goalscorers, we have the worst strike force in the top 7 of the PL...
But if you look at the stats for the season so far, they tell you something quite different.
Firstly, after 25 games last season (bear in mind we had 8 more points and had won more games) we had scored 49 goals. That's 7 more than we currently have.
I keep hearing we are woefully out of form. How do you measure form? 4 games, 8 games, 12 games??
The last 13 games is a nice point to work from. The NLD was a low point of the season... Since then, we have been the 2nd best team in the PL.
Many of you will find that hard to believe or refute it.
Well here is the top 7 form table:
1. Man Utd P13 W11 D2 L0 GF:31 GA:14 PTS:35/39
2. Spurs P13 W7 D4 L1 GF:22 GA:8 PTS:28/39
3. Man Cty P13 W7 D4 L2 GF:22 GA:11 PTS:25/39
4. Chelsea P13 W6 D4 L3 GF:27 GA:14 PTS:22/39
5. Arsenal P13 W6 D4 L3 GF:26 GA:16 PTS:22/39
6. Everton P13 W5 D7 L1 GF:18 GA:14 PTS:22/39
7. Liverpool P13 W6 D3 L4 GF:27 GA:16 PTS:21/39
Interesting to look at the goals scored...4 goals less than "free-scoring" Arsenal.
However, we have the same as Man City over the last 13 games and they have Aguero, Tevez, Dzeko, had Balotelli and Y Toure, Silva and yet can't score more than us over the last 13..
Look at the goals conceded column...
You might just see that we have conceded less than everyone... 8 less than Arsenal, giving us a better goal difference..
We have managed to score the same and concede less (3) than the current PL Champions over the last 13 games.
And some say we have no chance of top 4...
Strange... if the next 13 games play the same way as the last 13 (and depending on the CFC/TH game) we will finish 3rd.
So rather than moan and whinge "we are rubbish" or "we need more strikers" or "we are sh*t in defence" please take a moment to look and see how the team/manager have evolved as the season has gone on...
Here is the same table (I had to include 8th because we started slowly) for the first 12 games of the season:
1. Man Cty P12 W8 D4 L0 GF:25 GA:10 PTS:28/36
2. Man Utd P12 W9 D0 L3 GF:29 GA:17 PTS:27/36
3. Chelsea P12 W7 D3 L2 GF:24 GA:13 PTS:24/36
4. W B A P12 W7 D2 L3 GF:19 GA:13 PTS:23/36
5. Everton P12 W5 D5 L2 GF:22 GA:16 PTS:20/36
6. Arsenal P12 W5 D4 L3 GF:23 GA:13 PTS:19/36
7. WHam P12 W5 D4 L3 GF:15 GA:12 PTS:19/36
8. Spurs P12 W5 D2 L5 GF:20 GA:21 PTS:17/36
Only 2 goals more (granted), but defensively we improved dramatically over the last 13 games. Having said that we are not miles behind our rivals, except for Man Utd, but are worse off defensively by some big margins...
Today's game was huge for us. In fact the next week is huge. We had 2 PL games to play before any of our rivals play again... A massive opportunity to put pressure on them all. Today's win has closed the gap to Chelsea, maintained the gap to Arsenal and moved us away from Everton.
Everton and Chelsea slipped up yesterday and Liverpool got a point at Man City.
COYS
PS: For what it's worth, yes we could have done with another striker, however, we have options, we have goals from other areas and we are defensively so much stronger than we were...
I don't think we actually look like losing games, even when we go behind...
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