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Please use this thread for all posts relating to our UEFA Conference League match against Panathinaikos at the Athens Olympic Stadium before, during and after the game. The match is scheduled to kick off at 17:45 hours on Thursday, 24th October 2024 (Local UK time/date) (Live on TNT Sports)

Martin said we have gone from 11th best defence to 5th best. That is correct. We averaged 1.66 goals against last season. We currently sit at 1.14. A circa 45% improvement, but still early days, granted The equivalent games last season, we conceded 13 goals. 8 This season. In other areas, we are the PL 2nd top scorers behind City (+1). We are averaging 2.28 goals per game, versus 2.02 last. Equivalent games last season we scored 12, and we have 16 this season (despite a -4 swing against City) We will know a lot more after the next 4 league games; games in which last season we picked up 4 points, whilst scoring 7 goals and conceding 10.

Pretty obvious really, we had the 11th best defence last season now we have the 5th. And before anyone goes on at me about how we were tthe3rd or 4th best team from January, It's irrelevant because in that same time we lost 4-1 at Liverpool, 5-0 at Arsenal and 4-2 at home to Wolves. All three of those were absolutely shocking. So was the 4-3 win against United. The 2-2 draws with Brentford, Burnley and Sheffield Unites also came in this 'run', which were some of the worst performances I have ever seen. We also lost City in the FA cup Semi, Middlesbrough and Liverpool in the League Cup final. So, this incredible run people always want to bring up includes 6 loses and 3 draws which were completely and utterly embarrassing and the United win which we scraped but we're atrocious, so 10 games when we were an embarrassment. And that's before I even look at games like Leicester and Leeds, Forest away, Brighton away off the top of my head. We may have won those games but we were rubbish. If people can't see the difference between this year and last, don't want to remember how truly awful we were for the vast majority of the season, including lots of games during our apparent 'good run' then there really is no help for them. Hanging on to a statistic rather than seeing what actually happened is a pretty desperate way to try and make a point.

this is a very good read - apologies if posted already.

Nice goal, nonetheless. Wish he’d do that for us. Still have faith in him, but it’s being tested … sadly tested