... How would you like to see the club go forward ? I dont normally look to far ahead in football I certainly would love to see us carry on with the encouragement of younger players , try to promote more home nation players and get that sort of reputation where the club can be a great first rung into the big 6 teams starting XI . Im far less bothered about scraping through the premierleague by the skin of our teeth , sacking and flapping our way through a season in what is a pointless exercise of throwing good money after bad. Being one of those "yo-yo" clubs for me would be totally acceptable , provided the club ethic stays consistant and gives us something to be proud of. Lets not be a final pay cheque for the premier has beens!
Wage cap of £15k, perhaps rising to £20k if a special individual comes along. I'd take relegation if we can enjoy a season in the Premier League and raise a lot of cash in the process. As we've seen with West Brom, if you're a yo-yo team for long enough, you'll eventually build up enough cash in your stash to spend more and keep yourselves up there. A shame we don't still have Walsh really, he would be a major money maker. £300k signing of Chester and less than a year later, he's worth ten times the amount, assumming he gets better and better (he's still only 21, and centre-halves tend to peak in their late 20s) he could be worth even more. I was going to use Blackpool or Burnley as an example of how money should be handled in the Premier League, but neither have managed to keep the yo-yo moving since relegation. I think we'd need to find a happy medium. Spend more than Burnley/Blackpool, spend far less than what we did first time around.
I completely agree, we should just enjoy our time in the Premier League and put a financial system in place to keep us financially sound. Create a wage cap of 15,000p/w and invest in young upcoming players, foreign talents and possibly the better players of the Championship. That'll allow us to build up a strong squad whilst still ensuring relegation would not ruin us.
Only problem with being a yoyo club is you soon get stripped of your better players upon relegation from the premier league. You need a good scouting network and/or alot of depth in your squad.
Lessons will have been learnt from our first time there you would hope, better to be a yo-yo team than go crazy and be left with a shattered club with the likes of Bullard hanging about
Although it hurts to admit this I believe that we should take a leaf out of Stoke City book. They had the right idea
The sad fact of the matter is that it is virtually impossible to compete in the premier league without losing money. Stoke City have a chairman that owns on online betting company and is worth a fortune I believe, I cant see the Allams being happy spunking out 5 to 10 million quid a year to own a prem team. Of course I would be delighted to see us get promoted this season but you got to admit it really is a lot of fun watching City in the championship building a side of talented youngsters and developing a good style of attacking play, not to mention everyweek we get a good competetive exciting match to follow. I suppose you could call me under ambitious but I think the championship is a good level for us and I would'nt want a billionaire Chinese owner taking over spending 20 million on a player.The prem gets more like pro wrestling every year and the true heart of the game of football lies in the championship.
We have to aim for the Prem then hope we can make ourselves financially viable when we are there, the Championship is a nice league but we need to aim our sights higher otherwise whats the point
C'mon, that's a little harsh. Stoke do play very direct football; however, its exciting, they play the ball fast and have some talented players. Their style of football receives far too much criticism than it deserves.
I agree that the Prem is absolutely boring compared to the Championship, but there's no point in building a good young team unless it's tested against the best opposition. The truth is that even if we do have an exciting team that is highly competitive in this division it is still mediocre at best in global terms if we can't at least achieve promotion.
If you look at how Norwich and Swansea are doing so far this season you don't need to spend a lot to make a decent fight of surviving, much like we saw up until Christmas of our first premier league season. This may however vary between seasons as the likes of Bolton, Blackburn, Wigan and Wolves have been poor this season and the 3 promoted sides are taking advantage of that.
The point is to go see your team play football every week and enjoy the day out without having to get a second mortgage on your house to afford to take your son to the emirates to get cheated out of the game by dodgy refs even if you are lucky enough to get a ticket. It's the matchday experience that counts and I'm sure there are people on here that will tell you they had a great time at Yeovil when we won promotion and at Sheffield Wednesday the night we all know we had something special going on at city. Of course them first couple of months in the prem when we were doing so well was great as well but if we do go up I bet you will not enjoy next season like you are enjoying this season.It seems like it's a lot more fun getting to the prem than actually being there in my opinion
Sorry John I'm not picking an argument with you but I do think that is the 'happy to be a big fish in a small pond' sindrome. The onus has to be to progress to the highest level possible so future generations of City fans don't have to put up with the 'We're a big club and you're a tinpot team' insult.
You might be right, I just hope we do'nt end up with 8 points in the prem next christmas and the crowd yelling Barmby out and all our best players sold in January to other prem clubs. We would have to start out all over again then and we might not be so lucky next time around
So do I but I hope the club have learnt from their mistakes and have a plan for failure as well as success.
the thing is the club is promotion candidates playing mostly good football whilst working within its means . for me thats a winning strategy . It might not get us promotion but i reckon this season will end a happily memorable one for all the right reasons. i feel like im talking like a happy drunk propping up the bar right now
a lot of people say, they prefer the championship and wouldnt want to get promoted...i find it really difficult to get my head round, loving been in the championship and wanting to stay here.. the reason its so good, is its evenly matched and most have an even chance of getting promoted, ..its great watching us play well and win football matches, then watching our rivals lose etc, because it pushes us up the league, if you dont wana go up at the end of it, it would soon become rubbish because the whole excitement of the competitiveness becomes redundant, hope that makes sense, it does in my head but not sure how to get across what i mean clearly
I almost don't want to think about it! Enjoyed most of the experience last time but the ending brought so much anger and controversy it's almost better to stay where we are. But not quite, there are models that work (almost) Stoke being one (Coates has got a lot more money though than people think) Wigan and Bolton have managed a long stint. Maybe we should be able to learn from experience and if it's a one year trip, ok enjoy it.
