Wswilly3 sent Vital Manchester City the following:
So was the result against Arsenal a point gained or two points that we desperately needed lost, or more accurately, was it two points that we did not fully contest.
Unfortunately I have come to the latter conclusion and fear that we may well rue not having been more aggressive in a game that we might need to have won in order to have secured the elusive fourth spot.
Mathematically the one point gained on Saturday will in all probability only be of importance if we are to beat Tottenham by dint of a better goal difference. Otherwise I fear it could well be irrelevant, as I believe we have now put ourselves in the unenviable position of needing to win our last three games to take fourth spot. If this is indeed true then the one point we gained yesterday would indeed be irrelevant.
The logic for the above is based on the fact that I strongly believe that Spurs will beat both Bolton and Burnley handsomely and thus, without considering our home game against them, they will end up with 70 points and an improved goal difference. If they did this and in addition either drew or beat City, then we would have lost our chance for fourth and the weekend’s point would be irrelevant. Conversely if we beat Spurs and Villa then a draw at West Ham would only get us to 70 points. In these circumstances the team with the best goal difference would take 4th spot and this would be the only situation in which the point at Arsenal would be key.
Other than this we would need to beat West Ham, as well as Villa and Spurs and thus would end up with 72 points, which would make Saturday’s point irrelevant as 71 would have been enough anyway, to have more points than Spurs, Villa and Liverpool.
So my logic is that it has to be 9 points out of 9 and that surely must mean as attacking an outlook as we dare because more draws are of no use to us, unless we beat Spurs at home and believe we can achieve a better goal difference than them. However on the last day of the season they are at newly relegated Burnley, who we hit for six and I wouldn’t like to bet on them not repeating this!
We now have a mountain to climb and whilst I still have not given up hope, it is clear that the Arsenal result has given us no room for manoeuvre, whatsoever. Let’s hope it wasn’t akin to a certain Alan Ball telling Stevie Lomas to hold the ball in the corner rather than attack against Liverpool.
Regrettably my reading of the situation is that Spurs now have a good chance of 4th place even if they lose to us, which is NOT good news!
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