What gives us the right to demand that we are a Prem team? (Genuine question) There are 10-12 big clubs in this country, and then probably about 20-30 middle-sized clubs, (the group to which we belong). So you're kind of right in your assessment of my expectations. Won't deny that.
Nail. Head. Hit. On. Sadly, unless you're one of the big 6 clubs, you are always vulnerable to having a bad season and going down. It's the way it is and won't change unless some Middle East consortium takes a liking to you. Even Newcastle and Aston Villa - huge clubs - went down in the fairly recent past before they got taken over. And now the stupid PSR rules have made it even more difficult for clubs coming up from the Championship.
This is why the precedent of Kompany’s move to Bayern is bad for clubs like Saints. It suggests a future where developing managers can basically use clubs like us to demonstrate their style and not have to worry about results.
Big thanks to those of you trying to avoid this thread just becoming a ‘doom loop’ Anyone who compliments us is just patronising us apparently. Well that’s Pep, Foden, Bernardo Silva and everyone on MOTD, the bastards I love winning games, but I’m not interested in annual desperate scrambles to pluck enough points to avoid relegation until we eventually fail All our best managers had a ‘philosophy’ and I don’t want a succession of journeymen managers popping in to try and help us in a scramble to ‘survive’
1 point from 27 is amazing! What a brave, wonderful manager! This swashbuckling, beautiful possession style that draws teams onto us is working so well! I particularly love the way our wise, brilliant owners have discovered this new philosophy and injected it throughout the club. All of these players signed with one coherent strategy in place. All of them seamlessly slotting in to the well oiled machine. What a magnificent way to run a football club. Is that better? Is this the sort of post that’s allowed on here without being called a c*nt?
It's that kind of entitled thinking that leads to fans booing at games and unhelpful negativity from the crowd on match days generally. We Saints fans have no more right to expect to be a PL club than Plymouth or Bristol City fans ( both from larger conurbations). In fact we have a very proud record over the last 60 years and lest we forget we very nearly lost the club forever just 15 years ago. I'm happy to back the club wherever we happen to play.
OK forum police. From now on I will make sure to run any new posts past you, to make sure they’re acceptable. Mods, can we ask any new forum posters to DM him immediately if they wish to have an opinion on saints?
I know I've had more than my fair share of spats on here but Christ this is a dull. Can we not just not argue about the footy? Saying that the footy atm is dull itself so crack on chaps init - Che I heard that Os said your songs are ****.
I know I’m right. Basically the difference of opinions on here comes down to what we each expect. I expect better recruitment and decisions from the owners. Probably the only way to quantify whether they have been good owners is to compare the clubs’s performance vs. Net spend. If you do that, then you will see that I am also right about SR’s abysmal performance. Dragan has actually spent a lot of money on this team. We should be doing better than we are. Martin should be doing better than he is. For people to sit here and say we should expect less.. I disagree completely. We have every right to expect better. We have seen under Cortese what strong leadership can do for a medium sized club.
Let's hope we beat Stoke, Everton and Wolves and then we won't need to even worry about tough decisions!
Agree completely. Do you have any stats for £ spend and finishing position? Apart from the top 6, who are a protected cartel, nobody has any right to be in the PL. You have to take it. In 2012 we came up and took it, we made it happen. What gives Bournemouth the right to be an established PL club? Arguably smaller club, smaller stadium, smaller catchment area. It’s even more annoying that we’re not doing badly for financial reasons, it’s that the decision making has been poor.
Okay cool, some valid points. For me though, it's just too simplistic to say, 'because we spent a lot of money one season, we should now be successful'. You forget to mention that in the five or six seasons prior to that big spending summer, we'd spent very little. You fail to mention that the club was winning fewer and fewer points each season, and that the squad was rotting and falling apart. AND our recruitment prior to SR was absolutely shocking. Don't you remember? Djenepo, Salisu, f*cking Diallo ffs! Any neutral non-Saints fan reading this forum would think that before SR everything was going brilliantly; what a successfully-run club we must have been. Dude, we were a sh*t-show surviving by the skin of our teeth, and relegation was inevitable. (And after that, we'd have been truly f*cked). So yeah, I don't have a problem with your high expectations. But a bit of realism is necessary too. It's not a computer game. Running a consistently successful football club is obviously very difficult. No one is singing SR's praises; we all hated getting relegated. But it's happened. I just don't get the need to keep on complaining day to day about it. That's all. But whatever, let's move on. I apologise for the language on the other thread.
