The race to make top four 2023/24 edition

Great weekend for Newcastle jumped above us and the two above them both dropped points.

Sadly for us looks like this season will fizzle out into 7th.

Hopefully another season of pay cuts due to no CL football might tempt some of these lads to finally leave and we can begin the rebuilding process all over again.
 
Think end of December will decide if we're in this race or not.

There seems to be quite a few head to head games between the top 6 or 7 over the Christmas period.
 
3 of the top 5 dropped points in this round of games.
 
Still fancy United’s chances of finishing in the top four. Fewer midweek games, more time on the training ground and a fresher squad will help United secure a place instead of Villa.
 
Still in with a chance just don’t see the team scoring enough goals to get over the line without new signings in Jan which are unlikely. Hard to see why they’d suddenly go from being so inconsistent to so consistent even with the first team players coming back.

Think we need to win the next 2 Forest (a) and Spurs (h) if they can do that then I think they’re in the hunt.

We need Villa and Spurs to really wobble in the second half of the season.
 
8 points behind villa, it's a difficult ask based on what we've seen so far.
But who knows, stranger things have happened.

Can't see it, but ask again after another 5 league games
 
United are too inconsistent at the moment put that right and maybe, depends on who gets back from injury and how they perform.

I would say unlikely from how they`ve played so far this season.
 
Yeah I can’t see you guys doing it. You are far too inconsistent and don’t score enough goals. The advantage you have is that you aren’t going to lose many players to AFCON whereas some of your rivals may.
 
The AfCON/Asia Cup players are only going to miss 2/3 league games because of the cup matches and break in January.
 
Mr C said:
8 points behind villa, it's a difficult ask based on what we've seen so far.
But who knows, stranger things have happened.

Can't see it, but ask again after another 5 league games
Click to expand...
Make that one game, not a chance
 
Well nothing about the first half of the season suggests there’s going to be a huge resurgance where Utd win a huge chunk of their remaining games.

As things stand the top 4 are all on track to get to around 80 points let’s say at least 1 drops their pace a little bit into the second half of the season and that it’ll probably end up being about 70 points that gets you 4th… you might even need that to get 5th.

utd need 39 points from 18 remaining games to hit 70 points.

so to get 39 points you are looking at something like 12 wins, 3 draws and 3 defeats in 18 games

I‘m all for being an optimist but you just can’t see a run like that coming.
 
Different squad and Manager obviously but at this point in the 98/99 season we were struggling in the League and looked totally out of sorts, if somebody had said on this date in 1998 that we'll win the treble this season you'd have had a queue of people round the block ready to cart you to the nearest secure unit - they then went undefeated for the rest of the season and the rest is history.
 
Justin Cider said:
Different squad and Manager obviously but at this point in the 98/99 season we were struggling in the League and looked totally out of sorts, if somebody had said on this date in 1998 that we'll win the treble this season you'd have had a queue of people round the block ready to cart you to the nearest secure unit - they then went undefeated for the rest of the season and the rest is history.
Click to expand...
We don’t just look out of sorts! Out of sorts is one or two iffy results, we look downright shocking!
 
That is true but i just don’t see it with this group. Where are the goals all of a sudden going to come from? That 98/99 side was scoring plenty of goals in the first half of that season just letting way to many in.

This squad have shown over recent history they really struggle for goals and we’ve tended to finish seasons weaker than we’ve started them.

The one glimmer of hope is Utd’s best spell last season came around this time of year after the World Cup break things seemed to settle down and for a couple of months we looked decent until the injuries piled up.
 
SuperRash said:
We don’t just look out of sorts! Out of sorts is one or two iffy results, we look downright shocking!
Click to expand...

As we did in 98/99, Arsenal who won the double the previous season beat us in the Charity Shield then showed us our backside at Highbury(3-0) and we looked broken down in 10th place, we recovered somewhat in the League to be top for a week then slipped back down to 4th on this date, oh yeah and Spurs battered us in the League Cup, it wasn't a happy camp .... we weren't a treble-winning squad that's for sure
 
After 20 games that season Utd were 4th level on points with Arsenal 4 points off the top and top scorers in the league.

By the end of January Utd we’re top of the table.

The difference that season was we turned draws into wins in the second half of the season this lot need to turn defeats into wins.
 
jsp said:
After 20 games that season Utd were 4th level on points with Arsenal 4 points off the top and top scorers in the league.

By the end of January Utd we’re top of the table.

The difference that season was we turned draws into wins in the second half of the season this lot need to turn defeats into wins.
Click to expand...

Yes, well aware how it played out thanks, what a quick goggle search won't tell you is how crap we played in most of the games in the first half of the season, which was the point of me mentioning it.
 
What the treble winning side had was character, which is severely lacking in the current squad. You need this to be able to put together the run that you are looking for. I wouldn't trust many of the current team in the trenches.
 
Entertaining 0-0 between West Ham and Brighton means United are 8th, or equal 7th(if you want to be positive!) with Brighton after 20 games, just 3 points behind West Ham(6th), and 8 points behind Spurs(5th), and 9 behind Arsenal(4th)

When I take my socks off later I'll try and work out how many points we are from top spot.
 
Yep we need Spurs/Villa to start dropping lots of points.

Both of them based on current form are on track for 74 points, still leaves Utd with a huge job to do in the remaining games to get anywhere near that.

They probably need to win the next 3 to really be in the hunt that's wolves (a), West Ham (h), Villa (a) as that actually takes points off the teams we are chasing.
 
Spurs are lucky they aren’t in Europe they look dead in the last 15 of games.
 
What stage of the European competitions do the English teams reach for it to become a top 5?
 
Sideshow Bob said:
What stage of the European competitions do the English teams reach for it to become a top 5?
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It is hard to say as it also depends on how well other nations do.

The two top performing nations from the 3 comps this year get the two spots with points awarded for winning games and progressing through rounds. So Utd and Newcastle going out of Europe early hurts our chances.

England I think still has 6 sides in Europe.

Arsenal/City
West Ham/Brighton/Liverpool
Aston Villa

If all of them make it to the quarter final stage you would expect that will give us one of the top 2 spots.

Spain will likely get the top spot it looks like England vs Germany for 2nd place. England probably need teams like Atletico Madrid, Real Sociedad, Leipzig and Dortmund to be knocked out of the CL in this round.
 

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