Beware though, if you spend any of the millions you generate everyone will still berate you for trying to 'buy the league' not matter how much of a profit you make.
Fair enough really, not much of a level playing field when two of your most expensive players cost as much as the rest of the teams in the league squads combined. There's nothing wrong with doing it but it doesn't earn you respect.
He'll miss the start of the season. Without the preseason I expect him back to best around November, unless he comes back on fire and confidence and momentum speeds up his recovery. Healthy mind healthy body and all that jazz. Wouldn't surprise me if he finds form quickly.
I'd be happy if we "buy the league" to be honest fella! Just hope we don't cut it as close as your lot did and we come close to beating Reading's record!
Profit doesn't reflect in the team though, it reflects on nougats and ones on a piece of paper, it has never been relevant to the points being made. 50m spent on players to buy a league and struggled. Yes or No? Yes, That's reality.
We made hard work of it and opened up quite a gap at one point only to let it slip. Winning the league means nothing compared to just getting promoted. Chelsea were 7 points above 2nd place and were coasting it, we were 9 points above 3rd and many say we struggled (including most of our own fans btw). In the end it was comfortable (3 games to spare iirc) so I don't think we did struggle really, just compared to our expectations we were poor. Made a meal out of it.
Well I've heard more from Newcastle fans in terms of disappointing performances more than impressive performances, on the whole the opinion i've read suggests you made hard work of it so I'll go with the majoity of your own.
I saw a couple of Newcastle games on the telly and they looked pretty ordinary TBH. But they kept getting results, so who knows? Maybe the Championship is pretty dire, after all. Either way, we'll be starting below where they were, so unless we have the clear-out, get a manager and some solid replacements in p.d.q. we're going to struggle.
I'd entirely agree we made some opposition teams look a lot better than they were. We put in all our best performances against the teams at the top and let teams in the bottom half take points from us far too easily. It's an inconsistent league full of inconsistent teams. Too many of our fans thought we'd walk it in advance, I was always going to be happy with promotion of any sort - 6th place and play-off win would have been fine. Quite a few Brighton fans (and one or two ex-players) were trotting out "no-one remembers 2nd place" when it looked like they were nailed on to win - last time we went up West Brom came 2nd. They're a long way ahead of us now!
Like the Premiership there's some big divides in that league. Reading, Sheff Wed, Norwich, Fulham, Leeds and Derby were all impressive for parts of the season - Fulham in particular, on their day, looked the best team in the league and did the double over us deservedly. Villa were dire at first but got their act together. Add in the three relegated teams and you've got 10 there who with the correct tweaking could all be in the running next season. Lower down the league there's some properly dire teams and yet they are the ones who beat us! It will come down to heart. Against all those smaller teams (eg Burton Albion) you're a prize scalp and there's just a relentless stream of banana skins thrown at you. It was an enjoyable season in hindsight for us but we rarely ever actually dispatched teams, it was all "nip and tuck". It is an exciting league though!
