Chadli scores that absolute sitter yesterday and we would now be in 5th place, ahead of Arsenal, Man Utd and Liverpool with everyone ****ing over what a great job Poch is doing.
Please. Have some ****ing perspective on things.
We took just one point off the top 4 last season, we've already matched that now. We scored only two goals against them all year last season including in the cups, we've already matched that this season. If you can't see the difference between open games against City and Liverpool in which we created chances but lost out to individual mistakes and poor refereeing decisions, compared with the equivalent of a heavyweight boxer pounding a disabled child's corpse into the ground like last season's performances were, then I cannot convince you of anything.
Do people really think there's a chance we might finish below teams like West Ham, Swansea and Hull? I mean really? Over a 38 game season, when cup games and injuries come into play? Southampton have done brilliantly - no doubt, but they have only equalled the start that Paul Jewell's Wigan made in 2005, and are doing worse than Phil Brown's Hull were doing at this stage in 2008, just before they finished 17th. To hear Koeman saying that they have a chance of finishing above Arsenal or Liverpool today is really quite funny. If they're so good and we're so bad, how did we manage to deservedly beat them only a few weeks ago?
Levy is not stupid. He will have noticed that, instead of every player bar Bale under AVB and bar Adebayor under Sherwood, some of our players actually appear to be playing better than the previous year - with Rose, Chadli and Mason the obvious success stories. He will also have noticed that last season, the only chances we were creating even against some of the worst teams in the league were 30 yard Townsend pot shots because we had a complete lack of technical skill and movement in the final third, and because AVB and Sherwood were both really poor coaches. He will also have noticed that under Poch, we are moving the ball around quicker and creating far more clear goalscoring opportunities per game than before. Because whilst some of you last season expected those scrappy 1-0 wins to suddenly turn into us thrashing the smaller teams when all the new players "clicked", the smarter people amongst the fan base could see that we had nothing about us, and once the dodgy penalties that Soldado scored stopped getting awarded our way, there were some heavy defeats coming. Whereas now, given the number of proper chances we actually create every game, I think it's actually reasonable to expect that, if we carry on creating chances like this, eventually we're going to start battering teams. Villa just lost to QPR, their fans will expect them to come out and attack us at home, that would be a good place to start.
It's been said before, but Rodgers had the worst start a Liverpool manager has ever had, and oversaw their worst start to a season since 1911. Reason being? He was taking time to implement a new passing philosophy. It wasn't until the players got the hang of it and he'd added Sturrige and Coutinho that it all really clicked. Pellegrini also lost to Cardiff, Villa and Sunderland in his first few games at City. Van Gaal took five points from a start that featured games against Swansea, Burnley, Sunderland, QPR and Leicester, as well as losing 4-0 to MK Dons. That doesn't mean that starting badly is "acceptable", but it's nothing to panic about if there's clear progress being made. And Levy will have noticed that we're playing better football now than any time in the previous two seasons, bar when Bale had the ball.
