Harry approached this season in a selfish way and not for the best interests of the club. Knew he probably had two years left in his career so tried to get us up this year based on expensive loans and short term contracts so he could have one last year in the Prem and another promotion on his small list of achievments. Even if that did mean the squad was in no state for premiership football as the loans go back and the old players get older. But as he has said so often it is rare for a team to go straight back up. The point he deliberately ignores for his own selfish ambition is that this year needed to be a consolidation year. Which is a process which should really have begun in January 2013. Remy, Samba nearly also Mvilla should instead have been Austin, Cresswell, Birdcutt etc. Will we get playoffs- probably not. Depends how quickly Charlie returns. If we get in the play offs we have as much a chance as anyone. But our squad is so terrible that we would be in for another awful season. But if we turf out Harry and think longer term we can make it into a medium/long term positive even if we come straight back down which would be very very likely.
Sadly, I don't Jeff. I was hoping for some crumbs form the Kings table but alas I will soldier on in my current job!
Excluding Leicester and Burnley Oddschecker still have us as favourites to go up across all bookies. If we go up can't see us lasting without a Pulis figure to motivate the usual suspects, if we fail we could be in the Championship for years due to our ground capacity and FFP rules. Rock and a hard place although at least we aren't Chelsea: http://metro.co.uk/2014/03/17/john-...ilway-worker-and-hurled-racist-slurs-4629856/
Leicester City first won at Wembley on our seventh attempt - four losing post war FA Cup finals and the two play-off finals ... I think you will be in the play-offs and actually have a very good chance of winning them ... this is the 'squeaky bum' time to the season when you can get some bizarre results and alarming dips in form ... Forest haven't won in seven and play Derby soon ... Wigan, after a phenomenal run and after leading against Yeovil were 5 minutes away from losing, turned that around to be winning, but then threw that away to draw in injury time .... the pressure is immense.. As I've posted on here before, the gap we forged earlier, at a time when there was less pressure on all, has proved a mountain for all but Burnley to climb ... not just because we continue to play well (have scored 3 in each of our last 4 games) but more so because everyone else is taking points off each other ... Good luck.
...and the bad news is that the game on Saturday is on Swedish tv, so they'll be streams for you all outside of Scandinavia. My apologies for the depressing news.
Is it really only 6 or so weeks ago that we drew 3-3 with Burnley in a cracking game and we sat 2nd 3 points clear of them....seems like a lifetime ago. Ok Austin was injured for that game but we still had a decent enough side out that day....we've had a few injuries but we are continually told that we have a strong squad, yet since that game what is it 8 or 9 points out of 27.....something is wrong within.....that is almost relegation form. Last night once Dunne was sent off (harshly) there was no urgency, no closing down from the front or midfield, we were pedestrian in the way we moved the ball, it was almost walking pace at times.....in comparison Weds applied pressure always harrying the ball carrier, no time to settle, in fact they showed us how we should have been playing even with 10..... It is on the back of our good form up until the Leicester game that should be enough to get us into the play offs and if by some miracle we can get up a head of steam going into them, then who knows we could do well and win it......now re-builing in the PL is certainly not ideal but i think that the Board will only be looking at the money involved, for us fans it could be even more depressing than last time......
That clean sheet run put us in a false position, we have been lower mid table without those 8 games. Its been bad all season with a positive blip rather than good all season with a bad blip like the manager would lime us to think. Still he doesn't even care enough to know what position we are in.
Me neither. Give me getting tonked every single week in the Prem rather than slugging it out in this God-awful league, any day of the week.
And you would find that enjoyable would you Swordsie? I watch football for pleasure and would get absolutely no pleasure in watching the R's getting tonked each week......
I watch football for pleasure and don't even get much of that even if we win under redknapp. Its mind numbing to watch. Its actually more enjoyable to scoreboard watch than it is to be at the game.
Whilst this current season is awful and boring to watch, nothing can match the boring football under Paulo Sousa. That was by far the worst. However, with the money spent on this squad you would think we wouldn't even be in a position where we need to compare the two.
At least we'd be around though you know? The FL does not exist outside England. Once you drop out of the Prem you might as well have vanished in a puff of smoke never to be mentioned again.
TBH it doesn't bother me if people in Far East see us, know who we are etc, they only follow big 4 teams, they don't know anything about us......we know who we are, we know our history, we know the flair that we were associated with, we know that we were a decent side...... If it meant a couple of seasons in Championship re-building a side that can compete at the top level in a few years that to me is worthwhile, I'd still go over a few times a year to watch a game, still follow the games on live streams when available, it would be enjoyable watching the R's win more games than they lose.......If we do somehow manage to go up this year I fear that Derby's all time low points total could be at risk...... Will add that Brian Murphy looked decent last night despite conceeding 3....at least we will get coverage in the press over here if he continues to play....
You'll make the play-offs imo, but then its a lottery. Wigan could come storming in though the last few games and then get beaten by Forest in the semi finals.
Look at Sousas team and then look at the money redknapp has spent. Ultimately Sousas may have been worse but thats like comparing a Pre money man city to the current one. They wouldn't accept a team playing only slightly better football than the one that was in L1.
I see it, you see it but there are still a lot of people that think its ok to spend like the man city of the championship and be mid table and to employ a manager on more than world cup winners yet he couldn't manage his way out of a wet paper bag. I'd be ok with where we are if we hadn't spent more than the entire bottom half of the champ combined.
Additional to that is the collapse we have had. Before the season I would have been happy with a playoff place, but from where we were - 42 points from 20 games, to now 63 points from 36 games is a terrible collapse. We had the momentum, but that has gone now.
