We will probably concede quite a few goals early on, given our lack of fully-fit centre-backs and Sandro's slow return to full fitness. Mainly from set-pieces, and I certainly expect most of our early games to be end-to-end affairs, with uncertain outcomes. However, once Sandro feels comfortable enough to start going to 50-50 tackles again, once Verts comes back from injury, once players like Rose and the new CB (whoever he may be) adapt to AVB's tactics and once Kaboul reaches full fitness, we should see the defence shore up. After that, we'll probably go through some games similar to the early part of last season, where our quick transitions and relentless pressing proved too much for a lot of teams to handle, and we'll pick up a lot of points during this period. We'll probably hit a peak sometime around mid-January, once Soldado, Paulinho and Chadli fully adapt to the PL, and we'll then proceed to stay at that peak until probably the beginning of March. After that, it's just a case of slogging it out, grinding out results with a tiring team and staying one step ahead of whoever our challengers for fourth may be, and we'll probably revert to our early-season form.
We'll probably hit the 75 point mark, but no further. There, I predicted it.
All this is assuming Bale stays and no one major (Lloris, Sandro, Paulinho, Bale, Soldado) gets injured for a great length of time. If Bale goes, I expect us to show mid-table form until around February, by when hopefully the new signings we get with the Bale money will finally have adapted to our tactics and the PL, allowing us to have a storming last few months but still narrowly miss out on the CL.
In this case, we'll probably finish on somewhere between 65 and 70 points, not enough for the CL.
