Now I know it's all about winning, footballs a results based business blah blah blah! and whilst we all want to see us win week in week out! the thought of being back amongst the multi millionaires, glory supporters and the gulf between the top five and rest truly turns me off prmotion. So answer honestly do you want to go up this season?
yep bolton and fulham have both played in europe in recent years..i dont see any reason why with a few hard years work, that couldnt be city one day..those 2 clubs arent massively bigger then us..
Assuming Bullard, Olofinjana, Ghilas, and McShane are going to be offloaded if at all possible, to have a decent squad we need to add about 10 players this summer regardless of what division we're in. Mannone, Hobbs, Gerrard, and Evans need replacing/making permanent, plus we need: a 2nd keeper a left back a right back a left winger (Stewart then who?) a right winger or two (maybe Garcia and Belaid) a midfield general (Danns) a big man up front probably another defender or midfield tackler (Chester can't cover Danns and 'Gerrard' being suspended at the same time) To be honest in that situation I'd rather be recruiting in the PL with players having relegation wage reduction clauses in their contracts than be recruiting in the Championship. The additional money we'll get as a PL club will allow the 4 players above to be on the payroll without causing us too many problems. We'll be able to recruit better players, which in the event of relegation we'll be able to retain some of this time as their wages will drop. If we recruit in the Championship then they're all going to be on 2 or 3 year contracts. If we get promoted next season half the players will need replacing with PL players but we'll have a huge number of them on contract for the following year on PL wages, look at Cardiff's problem with Gerrard if they get promoted and stretch it to about 10 players. Best bet for me is to take advantage, go up this year and capitalise on the fact we've so few of our own players contracted for next season, have a good young PL squad gaining experiance that we can afford to keep if/when we come down to bounce back again, a bit like WBA when they came down time before last and all they really lost was their keeper to Man U.
Got to say yes, despite the many downsides of the Premiership, (plastic glory hunting fans, away fans like the Arsenal ones who showed up on our board on 606, the impossibility of seeing matches if you don't have a season ticket) the coverage makes up for it all, good for the club and the area.
I have to say yes and for one reason, that feeling of winning at Wembley, nothing will beat that and i can gurantee you i will not be at work that day if we are at Wembley! If we do go up i hope we recruit younger, hungrier players alongside a couple of old heads, and spend wisely. Whats the point of going up and spending all that money, if we do come down what have we lost then? Nothing! If we go up and do what we do last time then i would rather stay down. If we can build on what we have though and build something meaningful in the PL it would be brilliant.
Yes, not only should we aspire to play in the most highly regarded league in the world, but we now have a set-up capable of putting together a team capable of competing in that league.
But an extra 60 million or however much it is, is that really going to do us any harm? Surely we can make 10 extra signings, give it a real fight and come down and make a massive profit like Blackpool and Burnley are likely to do?
Mr.Allam, Mr.Pearson, Mr.Pearson, Mr.Shakespear, Mr.Walsh, all the plaing staff and all the backroom staff are all busting a gut to get us promoted this seaon. Why on earth would any fan not want to be a part of that? There are 100m reasons why we MUST get back into the Prem asap. The sooner we start the sooner we can establish ourselves there and wash away decades of underachievement.
With Adam at the helm we won't blow the coin next time around, promotion would immediately result in a new training ground/academy/centre of excellence. For that reason alone Mussie, I would have thought you'd have wanted it, despite the undoubted downside that goes with Premier League football.
actually i reckon that is the biggest disappointment from our premiership adventure: that we dont have a new training complex. however i still think that this year would be too early. mt allam needs the ground for us to be even mildly competitive and another year or two is not a problem for me
Sounds like a plan....calm heads this time round though.....A Pearson won't let the train come off the rails 'IF' we go up. One game at a time.....the Smoggies won't roll over for us next weekend.
I think the only issue if we go up is that we'd only be allowed 2 domestic loans where we can currently have pretty much as many as we want (with max 5 in a match day squad) so we'd have to make more of the signings permanent ones. On the flip side of that though I think we'd be able to talk Mannone into joining permanently rather than just on loan (so that's one space saved) and we'd certainly get a few more of the younger players from the big clubs interested in signing if they knew there was no pressure to stay up and if we went down and a PL club came in we'd let them go with minimal profit if they wanted to. As a Championship club we couldn't offer them the PL experiance or offer them that PL release as we'd be forever losing our squad while we were building it.
Yes. I'd love to see us back up there giving it another go and the whole area benefiting from the attention. Having said that, I still think a top 10 finish this season would be a real achievement, all things considered.
