Just this morning I was looking at our fixture lists for the past few years and noticed that we really are, as Dan put rightly, becoming more ruthless. We are scoring more goals and have more points than we have had for a while in this stage of the season. You can see clearly here-
2009-2010- 23 goals and 26 points
2008-2009- 16 goals and 24 points
2007-2008- 18 goals and 16 points
We also have a game in hand this year so this really does show us that we are on the right track for improving on last year. We should also note that we have had a lot of games in the Europa League as well so players aren’t getting as much of a rest as other teams. In total we have scored 17 goals in 10 match and have only conceded 8 goals!
At the start of the season I was talking with someone saying that I would be happy with avoiding a relegation battle comfortably. Although this may have sounded quite pessimistic, I was worried that we really were punching above our weight but now we find ourselves with more points at this stage in the league than ever. Could we qualify for the Europa League again? How far can we really go this year?
Good spot as regards our goalscoring Lydia. Personally, I think how high will eventually go will come down to whether we can start doing a little better away from home. As you said a few weeks ago, we still aren’t getting enough wins on our travels as other sides.
Also, there are a lot more contenders for European spots than last season. Both Spurs and Man City have improved this year (though the latter not as much as we might have expected), so it’s going to be more difficult to repeat seventh place. Think we’ve just got to focus on these two games over Christmas first.
Agreed. There is far more compitition than last year especially as the likes of Villa, spurs and city are actually going for a top 4 spot. It will be interesting to see who is in the Champions legue and who is in the Europa league by the end of the season.
However, we must remember that Everton do not seem to be competing for Europe this year. They seem to be suffering from the Europa league rather than letting it improve them as Fulham are.