2017 Season - Will we make the top 4?

[Topdog]

Swans when they were crap

North narrowly

Lions (hammered us in the first half)

Richmond narrowly

Saints

Great record.

I dont get it. How does this change that they were wins?

How does it mean that a game vs the Eagles at Etihad with no Kennedy is a 50/50 game.

Why would a game vs Essendon be a loss instead of a 50/50?

Giants have played 2 games this year at Etihad and lost both (one against the Saints who we beat), yet you have that listed as a loss, again why not 50/50?

Gold Coast game is an outright loss.

Melbourne who have probably been worse than us in terms of patchiness, again an outright loss?

You seem to basically have us rated as a bottom 2 side and said every other team is a premiership favourite.

[Ozza]

Think it will come right down to the wire for top 4. I think we will win 13-15 matches - 15 will get you in this year, 14 makes it borderline.

We will get our opportunities to make it harder for Melbourne, Essendon, West Coast and Port to make top 4. We already won our "potential 8 point game" v Richmond.

I'm not going to be losing faith in this group any time soon. A week is a long time in footy.

[hujsh]

I'm 70-80% sure we make the 8

Top 4 will depend on other teams so 15-30%.

Champion Data have got us 37% to make top 4 and 86% to make top 8. I can't seem to copy and paste

Their twitter link is:

https://twitter.com/championdata

Geez this statistician gig is easy

[KT31]

Haven't lost complete faith yet but can only see us scraping into the eight and not a top four spot.

[bulldogsthru&thru]

Looks a bit interesting that DryRot was labelled hysterical last week. Today's game has proven he was spot on. No joy in being proven right but just goes to show the hysterical calls were harsh. We're a bottom 4 side this year.

[westdog54]

What I saw tonight wasn't lack of effort. It was a lack of composure, leadership and execution.

[bulldogtragic]

What I saw tonight wasn't lack of effort. It was a lack of composure, leadership and execution.

And skill. Don't forget skill.

[bulldogsthru&thru]

There's effort in that. We are outnumbered all over the ground and beaten in contested makes continuously. We're in a lot of strife. This might be the biggest test of Bevos career.

[westdog54]

Part of the outnumbering was that Melbourne knew (not believed, knew) we were about to cough up the ball and had already started to spread in anticipation.

It was a calculated risk and more often than not it came off.

There's a question of tactics I've come out of that game with, but it deserves its own thread.

I'll have more on that once the kids are home and in bed.

[Dry Rot]

What I saw tonight wasn't lack of effort. It was a lack of composure, leadership and execution.

Great.

That should get us into the finals. We have no worries.

[Eastdog]

Need to get some confidence back desperately and get a run of wins. Top 4 now seems pretty much of out of reach at the moment and even making the top 8 this year will be a challenge. The good thing is that we are 6-6 and not say 4-8 then we would really be in big strife. Our percentage took a battering today which doesn't help being such a close season so need some big wins to get that back up.

[MrMahatma]

I think we've dug too much of a hole to contend this year. The optimist in me looks at the math and says we can turn it around, but would I bet on it? No way. Fwd line still a rabble. Defence now undermanned. Leadership waning. No players have really improved on last season. The competition is passing us by in 2017.

[SonofScray]

Feel like we are shot. No top 4 and now the margin for error to make the Top 8 feels very slim. The team has lost my trust with their poor goal conversion, slow starts, inconsistent intensity and horrific defence at the centre bounce. Hung on OK early in the year in the face of these things but the arse has just dropped out of our season.

[1eyedog]

And skill. Don't forget skill.

And belief.

[westdog54]

Great.

That should get us into the finals. We have no worries.

DR, I owe you an apology. I seriously didn't think it had become so bad.

What makes me stick with my view that we can still make the 8 is that so many are nowhere near what should be expected in terms of output.

The issues I saw yesterday are entirely fixable in a short space of time.