Liverpool FC Forum

by **JC_81** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 12:39 pm

Owzat wrote:Beating the teams you should is the sign of champions

Funny that. Considering that in every other season under Benitez it is our form against our rivals that has been blamed for us not mounting a challenge.

by **justyna** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 11:37 pm

john craig wrote:
Owzat wrote:Beating the teams you should is the sign of champions

Funny that. Considering that in every other season under Benitez it is our form against our rivals that has been blamed for us not mounting a challenge.

good remark!

by **Owzat** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 8:42 am

john craig wrote:
Owzat wrote:Beating the teams you should is the sign of champions

Funny that. Considering that in every other season under Benitez it is our form against our rivals that has been blamed for us not mounting a challenge.

Depends who you listen to. There are plenty of misconceptions floating around in the media and cyberspace, one of the daftest is people saying teams can only afford to lose two or three games in a season - the mancs lost FIVE games last season.

We play for 18 points against "our rivals", 96 against the rest of the league. Yes, we could conceivably lose the league title by virtue of one or two results against rivals, and indeed if we'd won both games against Man Utd last season instead of losing them both, then we'd have finished above them - still wouldn't have been champions though. They picked up 13 points in the mini-table between the 'big four', we picked up four points - that doesn't make an ELEVEN point difference though does it - doh! Sometimes the two correlate, they're bound to from time to time. Just like the team that loses fewest is bound by common sense to win the league from time to time - doesn't mean it's a given

If we'd have won the games we should have then points dropped against rivals wouldn't have mattered, we finished 11 points behind the mancs and TEN of those were by virtue of the difference in home form

07/08 home form

Man Utd P19 W17 D1 L1 PTS 52
Liverpool P19 W12 D6 L1 PTS 42

So your observation as to what someone else said (funny that, a case of you choosing who to believe) would be irrelevant if we'd picked up points dropped in silly games eg brum (relegated) home and away, Reading away, Wigan at home, spudz (when they were playing badly) home - there's eleven points for starters carelessly dropped. Maybe our form against the big guns could have been better, but the "bread and butter" results come against the other 16 teams in the Premiership. They are easier to win, and make all the difference.

"Funny that" the mancs are a point ahead of us and they picked up six points against Stoke to our two - if only we'd beaten the side we should have then we'd still be top - by three points

by **Owzat** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 8:51 am

oh and to dispel the myth that blames our form against rivals for not mounting a title challenge, only takes one piece of evidence to disprove it

06/07 Points against 'Big Four' vs Points against rest

Liverpool 6 vs 62
Chelsea 7 vs 76
Man Utd 8 vs 81
Arsenal 11 vs 57

So Man Utd won the league by virtue of picking up more points against the rest of the league than their rivals. Arsenal won the mini-league, we finished NINETEEN points behind the mancs and picked up only two less points in the 'big four' head to heads

Also that theory falls flat on its face in 04/05 when we lost FOURTEEN games of which only five were to 'big four' rivals - we finished more points behind Chelsea (37) than the EIGHTEEN points we could have picked up had we beaten all of our rivals.

Well JC, good try. You got at least one idiot to support you

by **Judge** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 11:42 am

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