Dooooooooom
Let the doom and gloom begin. What we’re seeing at the moment is the result of a football league that has 2-3 outstanding teams at any given time, and a hatful of others who sometimes play well and sometimes don’t. Fulham, who a lot of people saw as relegation candidates before the season, are currently among the ‘not playing well’ group, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Is relegation a real possibility? Of course it is; few teams can have any certainty about these things. But I think we’ll survive.
So if not Fulham, who?
Charlton started awfully, but they have a new manager and may yet turn things around. Any team with Darren Bent up front should score some goals, after all. Will they survive? Maybe, it’ll be close.
Sheffield United are playing as well as they might have expected, but do seem to lack quality. They seem to be an honest team and will scrape out the odd good result here and there, but I have to think that they’re a smidge out of their depth in the Premiership. Chalk them up as one relegation team.
You could look at Watford and say the same thing. Again, the lack of quality might tell in the end, but this is just the sort of team that might string together a series of results when it’s needed most. That said, they’ve still only won one game and that is fairly damning. I expect a spirited fight, but they’ll drop as well.
The league table then feeds us Newcastle, Blackburn, West Ham, Man City, Middlesbrough and Fulham. There’s a points spread between these teams, but all have the same goal difference (-6), which is usually quite a good predictor of things to come. From the above you’d have to assume that Newcastle will worm out of things, and that Blackburn and West Ham will find themselves a few wins in the coming weeks. These are mid-table teams. Man City and Middlesbrough aren’t going to set the world on fire, but look to have squads of similarish quality to ours.
So what it would appear to come down to is assuming Sheffield Utd and Watford will drop, then relying on Charlton’s inability to dig themselves out of the hole they’re in now. I don’t rate Glenn Roeder, he’s had a good spell at West Ham then things (albeit with difficult circumstances) went into freefall. The same thing seems to be happening here, and if Newcastle pull themselves together it’ll be because they’ve spent a lot more money than teams in comparable positions. But I would make them next in line to drop, followed by one of Man City and ourselves. City have done ok in recent weeks but there remains a suspicion that, nice as he is, Stuart Pearce hasn’t quite cracked this management lark. And didn’t they go winless for a massive stretch at the end of last season? The same thing this year would doom them.
And Fulham? I expect some reinforcements in January, an improvement to the home form (it cannot get worse) and a few more good points on the road. It should be enough, but we’ll have a few nervous times before all is said and done.
