Was last seasonâs slump a blessing in disguise? We all suffered more than our fair share of anguish with player after player dropping to the treatment room. To many games thrown away because of poor second half performance, Bents diffection and Hendersons slump in form. Add to that the expected but still worrying squad depelitiation with the loss of our loan players and we started our end of season review with a top ten finish but a disppondant set of fans wondering what will happen next. Without some or all of the above we could be now adding one or two players and papering over the cracks, instead a total rebuild and one that so far is actually address the problems we all could see. Bent and Gyan did not work so his leaving forced our hand. If Hendo had shown better form his loss would have hurt badly. If we had not had the injuries we would not be restructuring the backroom staff. Without the second half slump we may be looking at more flair and less guts. Without the loan players we would not have needed the rebuild.. Maybe it was written in the stars all along.
Not for me. We had an opportunity to challenge for a top 6 place and Europe. Judas leaving (and no replacement brought in) destroyed that chance and the injuries simply compounded it. Had we finished in Europe and lets face it, in January (Pre-Judas going) we were 7 points clear of 7th place and flying, would that not have opened more doors to players that really would help us take off. I'm not saying the ones we have signed are not good players but we maybe missed and opportunity when some more established clubs were struggling for form, to stamp our authority a bit for the first time in 10 years, on the EPL. That may not happen again this season.
It certainly focussed some minds at the the top.If we had qualified for Europe we would have struggled with the squad that we had-let's get a good CB and CF in for starters and we can be optimistic about next season IMO
Was last season’s slump a blessing in disguise? No way!!! Had maintained our pre new year form we'd be looking forward to Europe now. Any team playing in Europe has far more clout in the transfer market, so I can't see any way that it was a blessing in disguise.
But if we had qualified for Europe would we have been ready or would we have continued to paper over the cracks?
Europe would have been nice as i've never seen us there, last season we blew it big style by not replacing bent, let's hope we can do it this season
Birmingham and Fulham have qualified for Europe, and I dont think they have any more clout for us, and the top 5-6 clubs can only have so many players, they cant buy them all, so that leaves good-great players coming to the next ones down, which is us hopefully.
Qualifying the league is slightly different to getting there through fair play or one of the cups. Any team can have a good cup run and besides. Fulham and Birmingham haven't got our resources to go and buy. Had we got Europe last season their's no doubt we would have been far from ready. That could have been rectified during this window with Brucey having a nice big European carrot to wave at players. It certainly couldn't have hurt.
any sort of half decent form after new year and we'd have been fishing out the phrase books, think maybe not have got too far but the experience would have been fantastic for the club and made us hungry for more. Think maybe 2-3 more players and better injury luck and hopefully we'll be knocking on the door this time
If we had qualified for Europe, why would there have been cracks? We didnt qualify because there were cracks, well huge gaping holes actually and Bruce is looking to fill those gaps in now. Hopefully, before I leave this earth in my current body, I will see SAFC play in Europe in a competitive game and wherever it may be, against whichever oppostion, I'll be there with the lads - and I might even take my little girl for the experience. Knowing my luck though, it would be against friggin Motherwell. Lol
TBH we won a game or two last season, first half, that we should not have. The derby games. just two cracks that would have been covered. Still. I'm just asking the question.
I put a thread up last year asking 'are we ready?' and i honestly do believe it was a blessing in disguise. I would much rather consolidate our top 10 status than say do an ipswich. In my eyes we still need to replace Mensah, Nedum, Muntari, Welbeck, Bent, Hendo, Zenden and even Cana to some extent before we can improve. By adding Wickham (in place of Welbeck), Gardner (for Muntari), Larrson (for Henderson) we still have to get 2 defenders, 2 more midfielders and a forward before we can even progress.
To qualify for europe we would have had to finish 5th that was never going to happen. the very best we could have finished is 7th I think. That would have been a cracking effort, usualy around the late 50points mark. Which I think will be the aim for next season I feel.
To be honest our first 11 was top 6 quality, in fact our first 14 probably were is was our first 22 that were not, add to that losing judas and what happened was bound to happen. I am glad Bruce did not panic buy or we could have Fuller on a long term contract and he probably would not have dine any better than Sess did. There were no strikers to buy in January, Bruce did the best he could in an impossible situation.
SO , what Ive read so far is poolie likes a full turn around of personel. .....rose coloured glasses and all, we were ****e after xmas, absolute ****e, we didnt get europe because we didnt have a manager who could manage, seems like the same scenario everywhere he goes, so we buy almost another new team, how does that work out in terms of a stable team, and why do we have to buy from Man U, the disgarded, and past it brigade, on class money, just to warm benches, Brucie hows about sale or return?
Agree with lostinvegas.Bill,we all know you dislike Bruce,but he's our manager and is here to stay.Which other team would have finished better than tenth after our injury jinx??Judas leaving ****ed everything up,not Brucie.
My point about replacing players was simply to state how can we move forward when at this time in present we are no were near as strong as we were last year. The loan system has comepletly ****ed us and we now need to replace all the loan players (plus others leaving). How can we progress when currently we are in a worse position? We would be ****ed if we had gotten into europe.
