Well yeh, i'd rather lose one game than 3+ games.
If I were to lose 5 games all season, i'd rather they were against non top 6 teams.
Games against fellow Top 4 teams are potential 6 point games.
Anyway, will agree, our defence is poor. The fact we lost that game is disappointing. But that game alone, will not cost us anything this season. Plenty of games to go.
The Championship Chronicles - The Jetstream's review of the 2007/08 season. www.newcastlefootball.net/chronicles
Chelsea are about 2 injuries away from a crisis at any point this year. They don't have the depth that they had last year. They are playing well and deserve to be top but not many people would call them as champions elect for a few months yet. Don't forget they got spanked by Arsenal 3-0 not too long ago, They will actually have a pretty strong test this week against West Brom. West Brom won't come at them all guns blazing and have been playing well lately, definitely a potential banana-skin fixture after they have had a great run.
Liverpool basically need Matip back and to buy a CB in January. Tell Klopp to throw 10 million pounds at Southampton for Fonte who is unhappy with the club and would be a great fold for Matip. If they can convince him to come to the club.
You make some good points. I think Costa has been phenomenal for them this season and suspect they would have a few less points without him. Also I'm not sure how well their new 3-4-3 would function with, as you said, a few players missing. Wing backs can be hard to replace, as well as their star players. Think Chelsea will be too good for Brom, but for sure it will be harder for them without being able to freely counter attack an aggressive team.
If we Lose costa and hazard it would hurt us but willian/pedro and batshsuyai would all do a great job. Not as good but enough to keep us winning games. And that argument could be made for Arsenal with Ozil and Sanchez and Liverpool with Coutinho (who is out) and Mane/Firminho and city with Aguero (suspended 4 games) and KDB. Also we played arsenal when we were in a bad system and had out of form players playing. Man city are better than Arsenal and we just beat them.
we do more then counter attack. weve played games where we dominate possesion and weve destroyed teams by scoreline/performance. Im looking at the Hull Lesciester Middlesbrogh Southhampton and Everton games. Only games where we needed to maybe counter attack and sit deep were Man U (we ****ed them) Spurs and City (we beat them both)
I know you can do more than counter attack, otherwise I would have said playing against Brom is going to be really tough. But I maintain that you excel at counter attacking and punishing mistakes from teams such as the performances you listed at the end. Nothing wrong with being a good counter attacking team, Real Madrid I would class as one too and even Barca have added that to their arsenal in the last couple of years. Doesn't mean you can't play possession football as well / instead, but you have that capability.
In any case I think the season has a long way to go yet, Chelsea look hard to stop at the moment but it wasn't that long ago that people were wondering if anyone could take points off City.
Good physical derby this morning.
Lucky to end with 11 v 11. Referee did a reasonable job of allowing some physicality. Still the tackle on Henderson was not nice. A better view and a bit more speed and he was probabaly sent off.
Coleman was tearing shreds down our left.
Draw probably fair.
Not complaining though.
8 minutes of added time. Haven't seen that since man united trailing with Howard Webb in control.
Wait.
Did Liverpool just win a home game against a shitty opponent that it really needed to win to keep pace with the leaders?
It'll happen when Chelsea drop points and a win would narrow the gap.
Promising that we do pretty well post Christmas. And lack of international breaks could help us get some momentum.