No-one specifically. It just seems rare these days for an "established" PL side to finish bottom. It's almost always now either a newly promoted side, or one in their second season.
I don't have massive expectations for us this year, but that's okay. This is a transitional year, and a comfortable 12-14th as we integrate the younger players and shift on the non-performers is fine by me.
I think if we manage to fnd a striker as profilic as Ings, And a playmaker type, Similar to Lallana/Tadic then we could easily get top 10.
I guess another related question is if we were to finish 15-17th does Ralph survive? If we go down I assume the answer to that is a resounding no
I'd like to see a big improvement in the defence in particular, the goals against column needs to be much lower. I've read that the new assistant coach's remit is to make us more organised at the back but it also needs someone on the pitch to marshall them as well. Trying to cut out errors and staying switched on would help us to win a few more points a season. If we can get the defence right then I believe confidence will grow and we'll have more freedom to play.
I think that the owners, much like the fans will see this as a transitional season and as long as we stay pretty much safe like last season then Ralph will stay. The style of football concerns me though, the fans will turn if we are served up the tripe that was on offer in the final third of last season.
If somebody offered me 15th with never really flirting with relegation now I’d 100% take it. As you say this is a year where we give a lot of our young signings a go and hope they grow and progress. If this is our model going forward then every summer is a going to be a huge gamble with spotting 18/19 year olds who we think can play and be successful in the PL. If we are **** hot at spotting those players then it’s not going to take long for other teams to notice and either copy who we go for or the selling club might be like “hang on, they have a knack for finding Broja/Livramentos maybe we should hold onto this kid rather than sell him for effectively **** all to us”
I don't think that we'll need to take on nearly as much risk in future years. This is a bit of a special case, given that we needed to overhaul so much of the squad, and owing to the frailties of the team they are coming into, we need at least a couple of those kids to be pretty good right away. But if this year goes to plan, the degree of difficulty should decrease, given that we'll at least have the spine of a team to build on.
But the problem (if you consider it a problem) is if Livramento had a good season this year in his second year then the offers would start coming in for him next summer and there’s a good chance he’d leave. I know this won’t happen with him now because of injury but I think you get my point. If we get back to the glory days of having a really good team then it won’t be long before they leave and we are replacing them, hopefully we can have a more sustained period of success or a longer record of not spunking the large amounts of money we do get from selling top players.
I've clicked avoid relegation because at the moment we've not addressed the problems of last season let alone improved. I hope to change my vote to be more mid table before the window closes.
Does any team really improve and grow over a longish period of time in this league? It seems to be either you have a good season and it’s a one off, you have a couple of good seasons and your players move on and you struggle/do nothing, or you just do nothing and stay up/go down. It’s quite cyclical but the peak of the cycle is still generally pretty ****
True to some extent, but at least from my perspective, a lot of it was wishful thinking in the past (which is why I tended to be one of the least optimistic people entering most years). Now there is at least a pretty obvious plan, rather than just throwing things at the wall as we have seemingly done at times, and it's a plan that has been utilized successfully by a number of teams on the continent. But that won't happen overnight.
Certainly, though having to sell Livramento for 40m or something is a better problem to have than our problem of years past, which is that we had to pay people to take our non-performers (or simply play them for want of other options). If we can demonstrate that we're the right place to be as a young starlet, that 40m goes a long way to finding more Livramentos.
Yeah pretty much. We seem to have been in a transitional cycle since forever, post Koeman, Post Puel, Post PellegriUGH, early Ralph, mid Gao now post Gao. Our Koeman seasons were the only consistent seasons but the team changed heaps so not so consistent in that regard.
That Ralph is still with us come Xmas. I lost some faith in him last year but the new investments seem to bode for a better future & if he’s still with us, all will be good regardless of where we finish (17th or above that is). First 10 games will be tough & key tho.
