Thanks for introducing us to this...

and at this thread...

 

Krul

 

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First of all congrats to the mackems on finally getting a win today, Wigan are one of teams I want to see relegated along with Blackburn and Wolves, so I'm half happy half sad

The lads are right though this thread is a bit of a fail when we're still above you and we're a newly promoted team.... we still have the upper hand for the moment

Come back after next weekend you will probably have more reason to hoy some banter around then I'd imagine cos Liverpool will thump us rotten.

 

Cheers GBB. I think some of our lads have been waiting weeks for an excuse to invade your board with these stupid dancers, because every weekend nearly all of the threads on our board were full of them from your guys.

I don't get this "newly promoted" quote that you and others have posted. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't the majority of your current squad, the same squad that went down and came back up? My point is that you haven't come back up from the Championship with a host of Championship standard players that requires a complete rebuild of the first team. You've come back up with quality PL standard players, so I don't buy this newly promoted argument.

 

I hate that dancing git, whoever invented it should have it parcelled, and bunged up his jacksie, anyway fingers crossed, we have got our world cup twice next season. happy easter all, roll on the derbies.

 

---------------Harper---------------
Beye --- S.Taylor --- Colo --- Enrique
Jonas --- Butt --- Guthrie --- Duff
Owen --- Martins

So, there's only four players from the relegation squad who still feature regularly.

It's a fair argument really. Only one season ago this squad wasn't good enough to stay in the EPL. It's fought it's way back up from the Championship and dealt with being stripped of its major assets whilst having to re-build with a shoestring budget and no more EPL income. Bar those four, we have more or less re-built the team. It looks very different now to how it was only last season.

Relegation does that to any team. Any newly promoted club will be in a far weaker position compared to existing EPL teams, and no one really ever expects a newly promoted team to do very well, do they? We might have been promoted, but so were Blackpool and West Brom. They managed to do it almost as well as we did.

Once a newly promoted team starts getting that EPL income and exposure again, then it can start to build and possibly secure itself in the EPL. Until then though it's very vulnerable, and anything other than survival (i.e. high up the table) is a great achievement.

 

It is a great achievement and you lot have done far better than most people expected... but although plausible and with a certain logic your prognosis doesn't account for the fairly common phenomenon of 'second season syndrome' - aren't you the slightest bit concerned that next season could be tougher for you when you're not going to be a surprise package?

Also with Ashley at the purse strings I don't believe you've seen that last of the 'shafted-by-management-again' episodes.

 

You're right about Ashley but most of us are willing to accept that he does at least have some ambition to secure European football with a possible income from TV and sponsorships of around £60 million. I don't think he wants anything from us other than money but to secure any cash he needs to both sell players and acheive some success. Looking back no one will balme Ashley for selling Carroll because the amount of money was simply too high to turn down. I don't think we'll see all of the 35 million in the summer but I'd be happy if 20-25 mil was spent. On top of that, Jose looks like he'll be out the door and should bring in another 15 million or so. As long as he's replaced then I can't really complain, he'll get higher wages elsewhere and deserves Champions League football so let him go if he wants, he's served us for 3 seasons. I really hope he stays though.

Also, we will strengthen in the summer and our squad next season will be much better prepared now we know who can't cut it in this league ie; Perch, Smith, Ryan Taylor and we have the likes of Ben Arfa, Ireland and Leon Best who'll be fully fit by then.

If anything I think we'll be better equipped to aim for Europe than yourselves. You've spent a lot of money and took on loads of loan signings just to be in the same position as us and in all fairness I'd say your first team doesn't have the core players that ours has. We have six or seven top players we could build a team around, particularly in midfield, whereas your squad seems short on midfield and attacking options.

 

How can a team have a great spirit if 5 of them dont care if you go down because theyd just go back to their parent clubs.