The English Football Thread

[LAM09 7,043]

Shock West Ham did us a favour. Two wins away from reclaiming the title.

[Johnnyeye 7,501]

wow West Ham just wow, who would have imagined this ? out of all teams, thank you so much, we can pratically clinch the title on Monday, cant get over excited of course, now its up to Conte and the lads to deliver. Cheers

[Johnnyeye 7,501]

2 hours ago, bluephoenix said:

More than ever we need to keep our head in it. All this result has done is reduce the number of finals from 3 to 2. We can't take it lightly.

 

exactly, we cant get overconfident, specially now that we´re reaching the finish line, just mantain the same focus and intensity, and we will be rewarded. Cheers

[Johnnyeye 7,501]

2 hours ago, petre.ispirescu said:

Championeeee, Championeeeee, ole ole oleeeeeeeeeeeee  

too soon mate, i still prefer to keep my feet on the ground, its not over until its over, i just want us to get the job done as fast as possible, many props to Spurs for pushing us to the edge. Cheers

[Johnnyeye 7,501]

3 hours ago, Dahnald said:

People please, don't celebrate yet.

 

We can celebrate if we beat Middlesbrough nice and easily.

exactly mate, no fireworks yet, we need to get the job done first. Cheers

[BlueLyon 9,359]

Great result, now our boys need to win against boro first before we can celebrate.

On paper we have easy games, but I bet everyone expected Spurs to roll over West ham too. 

We need to win our games regardless of what spurs do.

[RoyalBlues 4,050]

For sure the players still have jobs to do and must not get carried away with this. But that's the advantage of being fans, we can enjoy every single moment of it.

One thing I'm sure is not that we could beat Boro and WBA easily, but I'm not so sure Spurs will get 6 points from the match against MU and Leicester now.

[BlueStorm1003 539]

39 minutes ago, RoyalBlues said:

For sure the players still have jobs to do and must not get carried away with this. But that's the advantage of being fans, we can enjoy every single moment of it.

One thing I'm sure is not that we could beat Boro and WBA easily, but I'm not so sure Spurs will get 6 points from the match against MU and Leicester now.

WBA could be tricky, but I have full confidence we´ll get the 3 points off from Boro.

[xPetrCechx 13,570]

[Jase 43,479]

10 hours ago, Clockwork said:

With that loss pretty much secures the title for us.

Disagree with the bottle narrative though, I do not believe Spurs bottled anything. They had won like 9 straight PL games before this loss. They made it a title race when a few months ago no one believed they were in the title race and made some Chelsea fans nervous.

Even if they were completely perfect down the stretch they still needed us to lose one game and draw one game. This is not a bottle job imho.

Kinda disagree with that TBH. Spurs didn't throw the title away (because they never led the league) but do think they bottled it.

They may have won 9 straight games before yesterday but in how many of those games were the spotlight really on them? We would likely win the title in the end anyway but it was crunch time yesterday. Many were expecting them to beat West Ham and it was a huge opportunity to put some serious pressure on us, to cut down that gap to 1 point but instead, they cracked under it. It's similar to the FA Cup semi-final last month. Big spotlight on them, a lot of people were predicting them to deal a psychological blow to us but they didn't produce the goods on that day to win it.

[Tautvix 1,321]

Even if I hate Spurs but saying they threw the title away or even bottled it is false. First of all, they were never that much in the title race but they were the only ones that made it interesting. It was Sky that wanted to let us all believe the title race... for views. I prefer WE WON IT, not SPURS BOTTLED IT! You can't bottle anything if you are not in it. We were too far away from any team in March I suppose. Fuck Tottenham anyway   

[BlueLyon 9,359]

2 hours ago, Jason said:

Kinda disagree with that TBH. Spurs didn't throw the title away (because they never led the league) but do think they bottled it.

They may have won 9 straight games before yesterday but in how many of those games were the spotlight really on them? We would likely win the title in the end anyway but it was crunch time yesterday. Many were expecting them to beat West Ham and it was a huge opportunity to put some serious pressure on us, to cut down that gap to 1 point but instead, they cracked under it. It's similar to the FA Cup semi-final last month. Big spotlight on them, a lot of people were predicting them to deal a psychological blow to us but they didn't produce the goods on that day to win it.

IMO they did great job chasing us from  what at first looked impossible. 

To win 9 games in row, surely they had to lose at some point. Its not like they have world class squad. 

IMO someone bottling it means when you are first, and you have on paper such advantage that it looks impossible to be caught. Yet you lose all that advantage and someone else beats you to it. 

To bottle it means its all up to you to win something with great odds, but you fuck it up. Spurs were never first and were always chasing us, despite they were over 10 points behind us at one point. The title was ours to lose.

We will bottle it if we wont win the title after such lead.

After all they have young squad and rather inexperienced. Who knows how will these failures over past two years reflect on Alli, Kane and others.

That said, Im more than happy Spuds lost yesterday giving us some space, which makes our run in a bit easier.

 

[Special Juan 28,100]

Can't fault Spurs for what they have done, they have been very good, but last night was brilliant

Also, look at the empty seats at Etihad.

[11Drogba 2,000]

Under pressure they always choke.

[Jase 43,479]

58 minutes ago, BlueLyon said:

IMO they did great job chasing us from  what at first looked impossible. 

To win 9 games in row, surely they had to lose at some point. Its not like they have world class squad. 

IMO someone bottling it means when you are first, and you have on paper such advantage that it looks impossible to be caught. Yet you lose all that advantage and someone else beats you to it. 

To bottle it means its all up to you to win something with great odds, but you fuck it up. Spurs were never first and were always chasing us, despite they were over 10 points behind us at one point. The title was ours to lose.

We will bottle it if we wont win the title after such lead.

The title was definitely ours to lose but Spurs had the slimmest of chances to win it, however realistic that was. They were in the title race. Yesterday was their big moment, their opportunity to ramp up the pressure and everyone was expecting them to beat West Ham but they failed.

Even if they didn't bottle the league for you, can you really argue they didn't bottle under pressure? They did well to win 9 games in a row but in some ways, they did that without much spotlight on them as most of it was on us. Yesterday was the first time it's on them in the run-in, to cut the gap to 1 point and they blew it. I guess I\if this season has told us anything about Spurs, it's that they still don't do very well when the pressure is actually on - they screwed up in the Champions League, Europa League, FA Cup semi-final and then at West Ham.

1 hour ago, BlueLyon said:

After all they have young squad and rather inexperienced. Who knows how will these failures over past two years reflect on Alli, Kane and others.

I take your point about them being inexperienced but at some point, they're going have to make that final step to win something, don't they? Yet for their all progress, for getting far into competitions, they don't seem to have learned anything from it. And you gotta wonder if Pochettino is the right manager to instill that winning mentality.