No it wasn’t a novelty - again we won away at Liverpool, Woolwich, City, in comparison we have won away at City, Chelsea and United under Poch ( 2 of which have come in the last 6 months). He also won 2 home games against Woolwich, 2 against Chelsea and 2 against Liverpool. So why on earth are you trying to claim that it is only now that we are beginning to beat such sides ? And again we finished 4th twice in his 4 year tenure - we finished above City, Liverpool and Chelsea during that time as well. Genuinely bizarre claim to make .
Above who exactly? It’s varied cover the course of those years and you don’t need to be equals to beat sides in a cup tournament - it doesn’t work that way in that format. Woolwich haven’t competed for the league in years but yet beat both City and Chelsea in the semi final and final.They did this despite being below those teams in the league. United have been woeful in recent years but have managed to win an FA cup and league cup. How do you account for this then? Oh and what’s you excuse for our continued failure in the UEFA cup? Are the elite clubs to blame for this as well?
Bit of luck with the draw - are you on a wind up? We didn’t play a single PL side in either campaign prior to the Semi final. The first decent side we played we got knocked out. We had a massive opportunity in 2016 but blew this by losing at home to an Alan Pardew managed Palace who hadn’t won a game in months.
I havent actually said were not good enough to challenge for the league I actually said we haven’t done this so far. Finishing 12 points behind Leicester, 7 behind Chelsea and 23 behind City backs that up. We have the players to compete absolutely just not the coach. That’s the whole point here - he can’t deliver on the talent that he has available to him.
Our head to head record against the so-called big 6 is very, very poor. It's black and white, irrefutable and factual. There is no point claiming anything other than this. Under our recent steady improvement as a team we have picked up some results. During this time, before Poch, we have always been the underdogs going into those games. Since Poch we have begun to be considered as favourites in a few of these games. I do not recall a single game against a top 6 club that we have faced before Poch were we were considered favourites, if we were please state the game(s), genuinely interested to know. (Probably City, before the real billions, came in, City +10yrs ago is not the City today, so does that really count to include them were that to be the case?).
I say also that since Poch our record against the top 6 is very good, he's the only manager that we've had that has given us consistently good results against them. Under him, he's broken the Stamford Bridge curse, we now outplay Woolwich, rather than hang on and scrap for something. This is the very cornerstone of my argument I have with you. You are consistently saying Poch is shit and has us underachieving, I'm totally refuting that claim. So many thanks for highlighting Poch's wins over the big six!!
Love the way how you brushed aside that all these clubs collected a trophy against Stoke, Wigan, Hull, Palace and Villa. Whilst equally dismissing the fact that we lost to the best team in the country twice and the runners-up in the other.
So what we lost to Palace? City lost to Wigan? Neither of these games were semi-finals or finals. We will lose another quali round to another side ranked below us at some point in the near future, we will not get to a semi or a final in every single cup competition every single year, it simply doesn't work like that. We will be more consistent in making more appearances in them though and this is already evident in Poch taking us to x2 semi's and a final in 4yrs.
As for Europa League, we haven't competed, we've binned it off. It's also interesting to think what we would have done had the CL spot given to the winner would have done to our attitude towards the competition, we will never know because in all the years we competed in it, that incentive was never available to us.
This whole thing has you in knots. Left half of your brain thinks we are miles and miles away from the top 6 clubs right half thinks we are brilliant and should be winning trophies which includes beating the same teams that you think are better than us. Time to make your mind up.
