impossible to tell , but Villa are just awful and probably without a fit Benteke till the Jan window - that alone could cause them massive transfer headaches in the summer
Pearson does not have the experience to compete in the top flight. I predict he will be sacked by December followed by a mad scuffle to sign another manager, which will ultimately fail and they will finish 20th with De Canio as manager
20 goals in the Championship (including 9 penalties) isn't particularly relevant - the 64 previous appearances in the Premier League for 9 goals and 4 assists might suggest that he's not quite up to it.
Leicester have obviously done very well this season and fully deserve their promotion, though they will need to strengthen significantly if they're to stay up. If they're going to rely on the likes of Nugent, they're ****ed already.
Jakupovic and Fryatt weren't the spine of our team last year, they played less than 9 whole games between them all season. We had Stockdale in goal for most of our season and Aluko/Simpson up front. Looking at the spine of your team this season (and I've seen a lot of Leicester games both this season and last), I'd have said only Kasper, Drinkwater, James, Knockaert and Mahrez would cut it. I think Wes Morgan could, but I can never work out how quick he is and if he's too slow, he'll end up just like Wayne Brown did. You've got to be kidding if you think Jamie Vardy or Chris Wood will be solid PL strikers.
I've not wanted him out of the side, no. There have been games where he's been ineffective but that's because he's played about every game, he's looked tired so I've called fr changed but Nigel has a reluctancy to change winning sides (we've only had 14 players start 10 games or more). One thing every fans gets wrong about Nugent is that he's a goalscorer. He's definitely not. In fact, Vardy is a better goalscorer than him and goalscoring isn't his big asset. Nugent misses 1/2 big chances every game but his passing is phenomenal. He sets up 4/5 chances every game which often goes unnoticed. Him and Vardy have been lethal with something like 35 goals between them and about 20 assists.
Point is though that this is in the Championship - the transition to the Premier League is particularly difficult for strikers. The lower leagues are littered with proven scorers who were just a bit short of the the combination of abilities needed for success in the Premier League. The 4 assists in 64 Premier League games doesn't do much to strengthen the argument that he creates a great deal at that level. Nugent may be a useful squad member next year but I'd hate to have to rely on him as a regular first teamer. Vardy, on the other hand, could develop into a decent performer in the Prem. - he's strong and quick with a good eye for goal. However, just as he took a while to acclimatise to the higher standard in the Championship it may also be that he'll need a few games under his belt before he finds his feet in the Prem. In some respects I would liken him to Sagbo - he's improving steadily and could well be a big contributor to the team but we'd have been in trouble if we'd had to rely on him as a key performer this year. (BTW in answer to the Jelavic question - he's scored 19 Premier League goals in about the same number of games as Nugent took to score his 9)
I agree - an excellent all-rounder, Our old Jay Simpson was an excellent team player as well without enough of the end product
We didn't only sign 6 players. Since you've included Harper, McGregor, and Elmo as 3 of our "6", we also signed Figueroa, Davies, Huddlestone, Livermore, and Sagbo bringing us up to 8, and it would have been 9 had Long signed in August when WBA pulled the plug at the last minute. 16 PL goals in 41 starts and 18 sub appearances. Taking the average sub appearance as being introduced around the 60 minute mark it's the equivalent of a 1 in 3 strike rate.
Another peach of a thread http://www.foxestalk.co.uk/forums/topic/94079-where-realistically-can-we-finish-in-the-prem/ "i think you have to think who are we as good as in the prem based on the table at the minute if sunderland ,cardiff and fulham take the drop i would say we are equal to or better positioned than the following the 2 that come up with us and norwich,west brom,palace hull and stoke with maybe 3 quality signings then i would add swansea,villa and west ham to that mix"
So based on the table at the moment they're as good as us and even Stoke, but not as good as Villa or Swansea? What table is he or she looking at?
I don't know but I suspect a bandwagon jumper, he hasn't been registered on foxes talk very long. Stinks of some plastic who hasn't a clue what they're on about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013–14_Hull_City_A.F.C._season#Players_in I went by that, which says you signed 6 players (although 7 if you include that Henderson who I've not heard of) in the summer. I didn't include the loanees. Boyd, Sagbo, McGregor, Huddlestone, Davies and Harper. I was more interested in the year in which he didn't score a goal. They signed absolute **** and are a club in turmoil. It's hardly a fair comparison. I don't think that's as far off the mark as you're making out. I could probably dig out similar predictions from yourselves from last season when you were promoted from a worse position than ourselves. Just shows that if you buy the right players in the right positions then you can be okay. You've also picked and chosen your quotes to make it sound like the majority opinion of the thread. What about this one? "I agree that Hull are the model, and see no reason why we can't emulate their achievements. This team is better than the Hull side that got promoted last season, they finished with ten points less than we have now with six games to go, and with Walsh and Shakey's scouting I can see us buying well. We need fringe players of other more established Premier League clubs, as Hull have done very successfully with Jelavic, Long and Huddlestone, and we do seem to be good at unearthing gems like those players as with Drinkwater and James. I personally don't see us going straight back down. Our team is one of the best to go up from the Championship for a long time, we're certainly better than Cardiff and Reading were in recent years, and we tend to buy very well too. I'd be disappointed to see us in a massive relegation battle all season because we can do better given the funding, talent and scouting available to us. I'd say that somewhere between 10th and 14th is realistic, from which we can kick on in the future."
I think all this 2nd guessing is irrelevant and largely ridiculous. Everyone wrote us off for this season and we've proved them wrong. Indeed most 'experts' seemed to think Cardiff, as champions and moneyed, would do the best and it would be us and Palace who would go down. You can never tell which players will step up to the plate or otherwise, so let's not get all cocky eh after one season back in the top flight? Lester and other promoted teams might do amazingly, they might do terribley, with the likelihood is it will be somehwere in-between and they, like us, will be involved in the relegation shake-up for 95% of the season.
Although saying that, we havnt dropped below 14th all season. Always got a win every couple of games, and have never been spanked (does southampton class as a spanking?) all season. I wouldnt say we've been in the relegation shake up at all this season, we have been very close to being involved but always seemed to get that valuable win to keep our heads above water. I think Leicester, like us, are based on a strong, organised defensive team. We know what NP is like, defence comes first. We've proven this season that even without the best team and poor strikers (before the january window) you can do enough to win games by being organised at the back. So as long as Leicester keep that same approach to the prem, and with a few quality additions, they'll most probably stay up next season.
