top six finish just as i said at the end of last season....nothings changed my mind.... infact il stick my neck out and say we will finish 4th...
You think he'll score the same amount of goals next season, as he's scored in the past three season combined?
I'd expect Fryatt to be in double figures, the others depend on apperarances as I think Matty will get the most starts.. hopefully Simpson will net around 10, Brady might pop a few in.. Adebola to be fair might get 5, I don't see him as a scorer but a nuisance and knock-down man.. Last season we had help from midfield Koren 6 and defence Gerrard 5..(off the top of my head) Barmby got 6 from the bench didn't he?
We know it won't because Ehab said NP's budget didn't include the big earning players from the previous regime because they didn't want them to hold the club back. It's largely irrelevent because I was pointing out the contradiction in your posts. If NP's budget is restricted by the previous financial decisions then when we remove the expenses (ie offloading Kilbane and Ghilas) it should free up money. If NP's budget isn't restricted by those players still being here, because the Allams are paying their wages, then there's no reason the squad shouldn't have suitable cover for everybody. (even more so when you consider those players outside the budget are providing extra cover on top of what the budget provides)
Adebola won't score more than 6 goals, Barmby was absolute quality last season, 6 goals from the bench pretty much
I reckon we can realistically end up anywhere between 3rd and 15th depending on injuries etc. We have a good starting 11 and the squad players should cope with the odd injury lasting a few weeks. As far as goals are concerned I reckon Matty will get around 20 with Simpson chipping in between 10 and 15 and McLean getting close to 10. Adebola will be lucky to get more than 5 but thats not why he's here he's in the team to cause problems for the back 4 and create chances for others like Simpson's goal on Saturday. Brady, Koren, Barmby and Stewart should get around 15 between them at least with the odd goal from the rest of the team I reckon we'll be fine and a play-off challenge looks in the offing and possibly a push to automatic promotion if lady luck is on our side. Bring Blackpool on I can't wait for the season to start.
Goals have never been a city forte, but this years set up looks to be the most promising for a long time; Matty 15ish, Simpson <10, Mclean and Dele 5 each, midfielders 15-20 between them all and <10 for all defenders? seems rather optimistic in retrospect, but thats 65 goals roughly 10 more than last year, 1.4 goals a game. Satisfied?
VERY MUCH SO. Another factor to be mentioned is that i dont see many if any teams scoring more than 2 against us in any one game. Think we shall have the scroogiest defence in the championship. That in itself is a massive plus.
I wouldn't expect Matty to bag as many as everyone else seems to think. Watching the Liverpool game again first half he seemed to get doubled up on a fair bit by their (ok inexperienced) defence, so he was trying to play Mclean in or setting up midfielders that made a surge. I wouldn't be surprised if he got more assists than he got goals this season, not that i'm bothered who scores them or how they go in! 65-70 goals should see us in the play-offs if the defence does ok. I don't think the lack of cover is a huge issue because in this division there's usually a loan window open so we'd have to be unlucky to really suffer. I'm feeling pretty damn good about this season, my only concern is with most of our expected starting 11 being so young a good start is going to be important.
Watching the Liverpool game, the players look hungry 2 succeed! Will be interesting to see how fired up we are 4 Bradford & Chesterfield! If indeed we look interested in these games and subsequently play well, I think the Blackpool game will be fantastic and theres no reason why we cannot get a good start
Thing is if you look the emergency loans we did last season (when I think NP knew there weren't many good players available, but wanted to throw everything at our slim chances of the playoffs, fair play to him) they weren't anything special. Amoo, Akpan, etc. come to mind. Most of the good loans we did were earlier on in the season such as Ayala, Gerrard, Mannone, Guzan, Stewart. I don't think we need anything more than another centre back, but it'd be lovely if we could get that sorted in the first few weeks of the season. So we can go into the most part of the season with a full squad with no gaps. It'd be nice to get to January thinking we don't really need anyone new in that window.
We will not face a relegation battle, our home form will improve, the transition will continue and a platform will be built for an extended stay in the championship. From that point on, all things are possible.
You see the paragraph after the one you've highlighted? That's the situation if it doesn't. Just to use some random numbers, lets say our target budget that the Allams wanted NP to have was £6M. If those players (for example earning about £2M) are restricting the budget it would mean NP had less than the £6M to spend on the rest of the squad, ie he'd only have £4M left. If the players then left then it would free up the funds to the same amount. Now, if those players aren't restricting NP's budget because their wages are seperate, and if we sell them it won't increase the budget that should mean NP had the full £6M to spend in the first place, because that's the budget they want him to have, and those players aren't considered as part of the budget. Granted there may be a situation where they want him to have £6M, we have £2M tied up with them so they say he can have £5M for now. But in that case the budget is paying half their wages and the Allams the other half, so if they leave he should get half the savings back. I'm sure on half of Kilbane and Ghilas' wages we could get the CB and winger even if it meant both being loans rather than a permanent and a loan. The biggest issue though is we've got 7 first team defenders and we're trying to offload 2 of them (McShane and Kilbane). If we don't have at least one more defender in then even if we get an offer we can't afford to accept it because we won't have any cover at all. If we're talking about someone coming in for McShane it's going to be a once only offer, and our lack of depth will mean we have to turn it down.
Some pretty accurate presdictions on this thread. Makes me wonder why so many seem dissapointed with our current position.
Indeed. Many should be in total raptures after there pre-season predictions. Surely what has happened so far is a case for mass reJoicing ? but alas the neg heads appear to have it for now. Just saying like.
Why would anybody rejoice that concerns about obvious weaknesses with the squad weren't addressed by the club and it's resulted in the season falling apart as soon as there was a run of lots of games in a short space of time? EDIT: I should point out, when I say the season is falling apart I'm talking from your point of view Tickler, the people you're talking about don't view it as falling apart because they never allowed it to be built up in the first place.
