Doing it the other way around this season?
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I'm being far from negative here, just presenting a stat which you can take as you wish simply because I was curious enough to research it!
Cardiff City's record over the second half of last season against teams which were in the top half when we played them.
Played 9
Won 4
Drew 1
Lost 4
Our record over the first half of the season was
Played 10
Won 7
Drew 1
Lost 2
That seems to go with my feeling that we played better football in the first few months of last season than we did to get over the line.
Needless to say, if we found it harder going against top half teams in the Championship in 2018 than we did in 2017 (during the same season), then the step up to top flight football is going to be that bit harder.
Doing it the other way around this season?
Look, we've already seen that Huddersfield and Newcastle are shittier than us. We will start picking up points soon, I hope, and keep away from bottom 3.
Fingers crossed
I've just noticed, looking at the table, that our only points have been ground out 0-0 draws against teams in the bottom 3 who both had players sent off (we were lucky to get 2 points from those 2 games with Newcastle missing a penalty), while our 3 defeats are against teams that are doing well - Bournemouth have got off to a flyer, Arsenal have recovered from 2 tough opening fixtures while Chelsea have a deserved 100% record.
The lowest number of wins achieved by teams that have stayed up is 9 on average, though West Brom in 2004/5 stayed up with only 6 wins, while some have needed 11 to survive.