Lfc 4 a while, heres something for you, mr. statto, read up on 'ceteris parabus' - all else equal. Your reasoning is so juvenile, its like a fucking child studying gcse's saying that a and b occur together, so therefore a must imply b, without taking into account any extenuating factors, in this case - team form, other injuries, time of the season, pressure the squad is under etc. Seriously, for a man with such an affinity for statistics, your knowledge of sample sizes and mitigating circumstances from a mathematical standpoint make you sound like an 8 year old.
Here's something to consider - football is a team game, just because we did well in 10 games without Suarez doesn't mean that he doesn't add to the side. Sure, our PPG is better without him in the side, but you fail to account for an adequate sample size, mitigating circumstances etc. So far this season, we've faced 3 sides that will likely finish in the top 10 (Southampton, United, Swansea). Only 1 of them will be top 6, that's a dead cert.
At the back end of last season (the games Suarez missed), we faced Newcastle, Everton, Fulham and QPR. 1 of them was a top 10 side. You see the quality of opposition over this 10 game stretch you harp on about? Now over the course of a 38 game season, you play every team twice, so you play Arsenal twice, Tottenham twice, Chelsea twice, United twice and City twice. We've had one out of those ten games over this period that you've been talking about. See what I'm getting at?
The only assumption I've made here is that Palace, Villa, Sunderland and Stoke will finish in the bottom half this season. Its a fairly reasonable one to make I think.
Post Rafa, we're clearly a team (at least in the league) that does well without pressure. There have been countless occasions in the last 3 years when our so called challengers for 4th have dropped points on a Saturday, and we've had the chance to close the gap, only to fuck up time after time when the opportunity presented itself. The pressure was off at the tail end of last season, further skewing your sample size and putting into question your apparent 'inference' from this. Or the fact that the managers philosophy took time to be understood by the players and it was natural for results to be better later on in the season than in the beginning?
Sometimes I wonder what team you support. And please, when you bring up stats, stop twisting them to suit what you want, cause you know they don't ever tell the whole story. If they did, Downing and Carroll would have torn the league up and Mr. Comolli would still be our Director of Football after getting a pay raise mind you.