One other thing I did this weekend was wake up at 7am to catch the Bluebirds match.
7am?! My god that's early!
Sure it was early. I figured that I'd set my alarm for 6:55am, fire up the iPad, watch Cardiff City dominate Sunderland, and maybe we'd be so far ahead by the half I could go back to bed. Triumphant escape from the relegation zone completed, right?
Hold your nose...
Sunderland 4 - Cardiff City 0
- Wickham (SUN) 26'
- Borini (SUN) 45'
- Giaccherini (SUN) 76'
- Wickham (SUN) 86'
There are no words to describe the disappointment that was this match. Sunderland were literally the worst club in the league. And the Bluebirds had supposedly found their best starting XI.
The feeling I had when Sunderland's Connor Wickham scored his first goal was akin to watching a carefully balanced Jenga tower fall over. Only this Jenga tower was built with pieces of my fragile heart.
There's honestly no point in walking you through the match summary. It was a nightmare you'd only expect to see after spending one week naked in the lotus position solving Pinhead's puzzlebox.
Cardiff City got spanked, end of story. Time to dust ourselves off.
With this loss, the Bluebirds move down to 20th place with 7 wins, 9 draws, and 20 losses. The table below captures the full Premier League standings as of 05/01/14. The table columns are: Current Position (POS), Last Position (LP), Club Name (CLUB), Matches Played (P), Wins (W), Draws (D), Losses (L), Goals Fielded (GF), Goals Allowed (GA), Goal Differential (GD), and Rankings Points (PTS).
It's very tough to digest that Cardiff City are sitting in 20th place with only two matches remaining (Newcastle United and Chelsea). But if you look closely at the righthand column you'll see that all is not yet lost. Here's the situation.
These are the 12 clubs that cannot be relegated:
- Liverpool
- Chelsea
- Manchester City
- Arsenal
- Everton
- Tottenham Hotspur
- Manchester United
- Southampton
- Newcastle United
- Stoke City
- Crystal Palace
- Swansea City
This means that there are still 8 clubs that can be relegated. Let's take a look at the standings of the bottom 5 clubs
- Aston Villa - 35 pts
- Sunderland - 32 points
- Norwich City - 32 points
- Fulham - 31 points
- Cardiff City - 30 points
Cardiff City need at least 3 points out of their remaining 2 matches or they WILL be relegated.
My predictions last week were again mediocre. I picked 2 matches correctly out of 4. Let's try this again...
Here is what I believe are the most likely outcomes for everyone in the bottom 5 except Cardiff City...
- AVL pick up 3 more points (win against HUL)
- SUN pick up 1 more point (draw against WBA)
- NOR pick up 0 more points
- FUL pick up 0 more points
This would lead to a bottom table of:
- AVL - 38 points
- SUN - 33 points
- NOR - 32 points
- FUL - 31 points
- CAR - 30 points (not accounting for the remaining 2 matches)
Based on these outcomes, Cardiff City need at least 4 points. But Probably 6 points to be safe. A win against Newcastle United this week is acheivable. Stealing a point from Chelsea will really depend on their position in the title race.
Regretably, no interview this week. I hope to locate one or two more US Bluebirds before the end of the season. If you're reading this and have a friend who might be interested, please sent me a tweet (@dragon_bluebird).
In Fantasy news, I'm really no better of a manager than Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. The Cardiff'rent Strokes are diving worse than Luis Suarez...
- Rank (Last Week): 1,086,221
- Rank (This Week): 1,168,101
- Total Players: 3,215,774
Cardiff City's next match is on May 3rd away against Newcastle United. This may very well be the Bluebirds' last weekend of meaningful Premier League play, so be sure to tune in via the NBC Sports Live Extra app.
Thank you as always for reading. You can follow me on Twitter @dragon_bluebird. And feel free to leave some comments on my posts via Twitter or Blogger. See you next week!
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