Some of you keep harping at 17th 17th 17th.
We are now 12th, could be 13th after loss to barcodes, 15th if Everton and Fulham do the unthinkable and win both their games.
We only reached 12th last season at MW 18, we are now only MW 13. We fell to this low 5 games earlier.
We only reached 15th last season at MW 22, we could reach 15th if games went against us, at MW 14. We could fell to this low 7 games earlier. That's almost a fifth of the season early in head start crashing down the abyss.
By MW 33 last season, all relegation candidates were confirmed. That's 5 games before the season ended. Even at MW 32, 32 or even 30, Ipswich had to win almost all their remaining games (probably impossible) and us almost losing all our games (probably impossible too but more probable than Ipswich's mission, I'll give it to that), so with almost 6-8 games to spare we had no danger of relegation at all no matter how some of you wish to spin it.
Now I don't even wish to compare our last manager vs Frank here. The above context is to illustrate how piss poor and more measurable of a danger we could really be of touching distance this season. The table doesn't lie. The earlier the season we were down at the bottom of the bottom half this season, the more probable relegation becomes than last season, because we are far too nearer in points to the bottom 3 than we ever were, ever will be, compared to last season.
Then to bring back at MW 33, we were at 16th, relegation safe, nothing to play for in the league, but ALL to play for in the Europa, any sane manager would have kept all eggs in the Europa basket. Logically any manager really would, Poch would, Conte would, Mourinho would. Frank, for all his extreme pragmatism, definitely would.
Getting 17th last season was almost by choice, a deliberate choice knowing a cup win could be the exchange. And you know the alarming thing of this whole scenario? Before we could even afford to make this choice at MW 13 last season, we were bad, but we are way worse now, all with much less hope of advancing far to any of the competitions we are in because now we can really lose to anyone.