Well it fairly obvious that this group of players is capable of better. I mean, pretty much the same group of players was better last season under a different manager.
I'm with you on Gabbi and Austin, they have the ability to score 10+ goals each. Beyond those two, Boufal has the ability to score cracking goals, but I don't see him being the type that is going to get 10 goals each season. He's only scored more than 5 goals in a season once in his career (albeit, he is still quite young). Redmond is the player I see as most likely to be able to hit 10 in a season, but again, the most he's scored in a season is 7 and that was with us last season. He's more a 5/7 goal a season man in my eyes. Really I don't think we are diverging much, I agree that we have not been playing in a way that would allow our more attacking players to get more goals, BUT I don't think the attacking players we do have would be regularly scoring enough anyway. Our attack needs a significant reshuffle imo. Looking beyond just staying up this season, if we are looking to regularly be best of the rest/get into Europe, do well in the domestic cups, I personally think we need 3 new attacking players. I guess that really depends on the new owners and our ambitions as a club now.
All this talk of goals, how many teams outside the top 6 have a few players scoring 10 or more goals?
Presumably we aspire to being in the top 6, or at least knocking on the door. We should be, because if you don't aim upwards you can pretty quickly find yourself looking down.
Agreed, but I’m just pointing out that hardly any teams have the mercurial 10 goal a season midfielder to go with 2 x 15 goal strikers. When you do get that. They get snapped up pretty damn quickly. It’s like the “we only need a 25 goal a season striker”
This squad of players is talented and should be capable of playing better football, but the thing I think fans overlook is that we aren’t alone in that situation. Every PL squad has talent and ours isn’t much/any better than the majority of the others. We are pretty average for a PL side and in poor form which is why we are slipping down the table
If MP is replaced we may need less. Certainly we are short of an attacking midfielder. If he stays it needs a bigger overhaul because too many of the players are not interested so he needs to bring players in who will buy into whatever it is he is trying to do - whatever that is
Perhaps but it is not significantly better than a fair few of the ones below I’d say. I’m sure if you asked fans of non top 6 sides how many of our players they’d want it would probably only be a couple (VVD and Bertrand)
Very easy to carry on sliding through the leagues once you start. Anyone who wants us in the Championship must also be hoping we finish outside the play-off places, so no danger of promotion.
Losing 2-0 at home to Rochdale still lingers in the memory. But if it's Tranmere-related nightmares we're talking about, think FA Cup...
My thinking is, the top 4-5 need to break away and form their Super league. Let's get back to the old days, where it's a level playing field, with Leeds, Sheff Weds, Forest, Etc. I would also like to see a salary cap brought in.
