I think at the moment we've ironically pulled some Irons out the fire no pun intended re. Cockneys, I feel we can get some unexpected points in the weeks ahead. Villa away difficult fixture winnable; yet I'd take a point now. I'm down for the City match, not expecting much , yet said that prior to the Man United match and West Ham...."Funny old Game" as Greaves would say at home I think we can beat anyone on our day..... point against City achievable, they'll start as heavy favourites, understandable given their array of talent, however chasing down Liverpool though, where realistically they can't afford any slip ups does funny things to sides.

Our defenders could of scored double figures themselves by then.

Villa (A) - 3pt
City (H) - 0pt
Sheff U (A) - 0pt
Southampton (H) - 3pt
Burnley (A) - 3pt
Palace (H) - 3pt
Man U (A) - 1pt
Everton (H) - 3pt

I'd be happy with the above.

For me Clark needs to be starting. His goals make him vital for a team that rarely scores. Add Schar to that for similar reasons and then it’s Lascelles/Lejeune battling for the central spot in the back five.

We suit the counter attack, so away games and teams like Bournemouth definitely work for us, but I'd like to think that as the front three get a bit more co-ordinated we can attack better when we need to at home. Even more so if the Longstaffs can get established so we can start to play a bit more possession football in midfield.

Really looking forward to the headache caused by Schar and Lejeune coming back, god knows what the first choice back 3 will be. Clark did really well in the middle yesterday and that's the one we struggle to fill, with Lejeune left and Schar/Fernandez right that's a good ball playing defense.

For us I don’t think it really matters to an extent if the games are against teams who finished higher up the league (stupid as it sounds). We seem to raise our game / be better suited to those matches rather than when we play a Brighton / Watford etc.

Having seen the Sheffield Utd game yesterday I wouldn’t be surprised at all if we lost there, we could easily lose our next three games and we could equally maybe pick up 4 points - it’s hard to call.

9 of our first 11 games were against the top 11 from last season. Pretty much the hardest start in the league (again). If we’re able to create some consistency over the next 10 games then we’ll have some real momentum behind us for a top half finish. Big if though

When you consider that 4 of the 5 games we've lost have been against Liverpool, Leicester, Chelsea and Arsenal, i.e. 3 of the top 4 and another decent side, I think we are doing pretty well so far. I think 25 pts wouldn't be unrealistic.

Think we will lose to Sheff and/or Burnley but that will still be 23 24 points before the new year, decent haul. Much better than I expected even a few weeks ago

So our run till Christmas is:

Villa (A) - 1pt
City (H) - 0pt
Sheff U (A) - 1pt
Southampton (H) - 3pt
Burnley (A) - 1pt
Palace (H) - 3pt
Man U (A) - 0pt
Everton (H) - 1pt

That would be 25pts from 19 games - with opportunities to surpass that at Villa, Sheff U, Burnley and at home to Everton. In my opinion that would be a really strong first half to the season - and just short of 2/3 of the way to safety.

What are everyone else’s expectations?