Planning for the Championship

I am waving the white flag and as a supporter who lives and breathes all things Sundelrand I officially give up on our Premiership status. I have come round to actually now believing it is in our best interests to be relegated. Just my opinion, which some will very much disagree with. Financially relegation will be a disaster, and I just hope that we can cope with falling out of the premier league, but if we can, then it would be good to once again be in a league where we have a chance of being competitive and to start to better use our academy to blood some of the young lads. The great escapes over the last couple of years has been amazing, and almost equaled out having to endure some pretty poor football at times, but I am now tired of the team I love being in a league where the best we could ever hope for was a top half finish. There are just a handful of teams able to compete in this league and sadly Sunderland are not one of them. We seem incapable of signing the kind of players who can take the club forward, despite many managers trying, and I desperately miss getting behind players who, whilst have less talent, have hearts that mean they fight for everything.where are our Kay's, Bennetts, Balls in our current team ! This is the year we will finally be relegated, and we may as well start to plan now for life in the Championship next season now as that would be the smart thing to do in my view. If we can get some cash for Defoe then I think we should, and sell on anyone elsewho is worth anything apart from any of our younger players. We then use that cash to bring in some younger, hungry players who can help push the club forward over the next few years. I am of the view Moyes is the right man to get behind and to trust him to build us a new team. He showed at Everton he can identify a few rough diamonds from the lower leagues, and that is where we now need to be looking. Anyway, mini rant over. Two options for our beloved team right now in my eyes. We give up in the short term for the benefit of the longer term, or we keep trying to compete, get relegated and find ourselves in disarray at the end of the season with anyone half decent being poached for peanuts. Let's get ahead of the curve and put a proper plan in place for rebuilding our great club.

 

I've never understood the whole " it's better to get relegated and we can rebuild" .
****e, we can stay up and rebuild and attract better players as we are in the premiership rather than the championship.

 

Good point, but I genuinely don't believe we can stay up this season. Very negative I know, but I do think we should just aim to make the best of what is a bad situation and start planning now. Would love us to stay up, spend some money and attract some further decent players to the club, but I can't see it happening. The last few years have shown us that we could escape once again by the skin of our teeth, but would that be a springboard to doing better the year after - so far it hasn't, and not seeing a lot to suggest it would be any different next year. I personally just want to see something a bit different from Sunderland. Going down might not be the answer, but what is ?

 

I fear if we go down we will do a Portsmouth or Leeds and not a Newcastle.
We need 3 points against Pool, a massive highly unlikely I know,and we will all be thinking we can get out of this again.
Its half a season gone now and we need an absolutely massive improvement in form and a lot of luck with our walking wounded getting back and showing heart and fight.
I was in utter despair last night but we are SAFC we dont do things easy.

PS, Ellis and the players should chip in and refund every SAFC supporter who went down Burnley yesterday and had to watch that shambles.

 

If we get relegated our money problems will not just disappear. We will still owe this £140 million or whatever it is.
The difference is we would, parachute payments apart, be looking at a huge loss of income.
Even selling the complete first team squad would still leave us about £70 million in debt.
We need to stay in the premier league, going down is not the answer although it looks like it's going to happen this year.
What a mess.

 

'What a mess' sums it up pretty neatly. I guess my heart is very much dictating my views right now rather than my head, but it is hurting being a Sunderland supporter right now. You all know that it is not as easy as saying, right I give up, I am just not going to bother with the club any more, as this isn't an option. We will support this club till we die. I have just got the point where I want something different. Scrapping around at the bottom of a league we have absolutely no chance of ever really competing in isn't fun any more, and even a further great escape which is starting to look unlikely, may only just precipitate a further year of the same. Right now, playing in a lower league with a chance to get behind some of our youngsters and to be able to compete in a league which, if we could sort ourselves out is winnable, feels very attractive right now. This isn't guaranteed I know as history has shown that many clubs struggle, and financially it could be disastrous. No easy answers, but I would swap a tilt at just getting into the playoffs in the championship right now to playing teams in the premiership where often the objective is to try and just defend.

 

I love the championship I even love league 1 more than watching the ****e we dish up every week in the prem so to be honest stay up or go down doesn't bother me one jot I just like watching us win some bloody games.

 

Hey we're not down yet we're only one win away from safety as it stands.

 

Thats always the way to look at it Nacho we only need one more point than the team above us to stay up.

 

You keep your white flag as I for one would like to see the back of your type of "supporter". we have had dark days with less games to go than now so giving up now is cowardice.

Come to think of it - stick your white flag up your arse.

 

Pissy knickers

We're ****e, but **** this giving up lark already.

 

And i said on another thread, my glass is always half full and i'm very optimistic for SAFC, but i fear this is the season where lady luck runs out for us. That said, we can never ever give up or just roll over and die as you are suggesting. We need to fight to the bitter end.

 

In American Football - it's the players that get relegated - not the clubs. "What does NFL stand for? Not For Long, if you keep playing like that!" The League administration strives for parity. The clubs draft from the available pool of new talent, in the inverse order of last season's performance. This incentivizes teams in the ascendency to spend in the veteran free agent market, while teams in decline become the sellers and let the fans know that they are rebuilding. For statistically normal teams, this variable ratio rewards schedule keeps the fan base happy enough. Ofcoarse, there are a few perennial contenders and losers, outliers, which seem to avoid this cycle, at least in the medium run, but just like empires, sports dynasties come and go.

To an American, relegation is an intriging concept. Accepting that we are on the brink of it, I can see the merit in discopants argument - and we will see soon enough if the club agrees with him. In hindsight we may come to regret it, but I say, "damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead!"

 

Give up at Xmas a point from safety, NO, NO, NO, we must keep the pressure on as best we can, until it is mathematically impossible to retain our Premiership status, we can reach mid table, which is our only realistic objective anyway, a lot quicker this way imo. Nil Desperandum.

 

But we're English mate and we play in the EPL not NFL.

 

There's a lot to be said for a winning mentality that a club like Sunderland will always struggle to achieve in the Prem.
Think Leicester or Newcastle's first season back. Not exactly world class players, but we finished mid-table purely off the back of championship momentum.

Having said that, we now 906 players at our club, and about 2 of them are good enough for the Prem

 

The US and china get interested in football, and they naturally see the Premier League as the shining example; but this appears to be a thread about how SAFC should approach the January transfer window, given the current relegation threat, I was just sharing how we contend with a similar dilemma, albeit in a much different sporting landscape.

 

Nah mate, the thread is about some one tossing the towel in and while your ideas might work in the NFL, you can't apply them to the EPL.

To put it bluntly, we have no money to spend in January, we can't even do any loan business due to the fact we are almost at saturation point with the FFP rules.

 

Smells like mag bullshit to me.

 

"damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead!" = Nil Desperandum

We need to fight to the bitter end = "damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead!"