Yeah, because we're a Championship team now, and we're a Championship team because even our best XI wasn't good enough for the Premier League, heh. We played three regulars in defense, one of our regular CMs in Davis, and the rest of the squad consisted of rotation players and youth. In an away match against Arsenal in the quarter-finals of the competition.
Biggest disappointment tonight is the JWP news. We knew our squad was crap, hence the relegation, but losing our best player isn't going to help! Hope this is a wake up call to shift the deadwood and start rebuilding the squad as soon as possible. On to Norwich.
Personally, I don't agree with any of that. No-one belongs anywhere. When you get relegated, if anything, you "belong" in the championship because its where you ended up after not being good enough for the top division.
God, when JWP goes there are very few players in this squad that I actually like. “We are a premier league team..” **** off Bree. You and half this squad are not fit to wear the shirt. You had no part in any of our success. When prowsey goes that will be all of our true premier league squad gone.
LTL Not sure how to respond to this. I actually found this a depressing post. You have eli.inatwd any romance from the game Why can the Leicezter achievement never be repeated? Why can't a Championship club win. Gneiss league Cup, there have been some near misses I. The last 20 years. Why shod we solely aspire to be I. The premier league, just to have a year of struggle before relegation. Maybe Libby is the enlightened one. I just thi know we should pursue success where we can, but Sky has done it works so well, we just care about the Premier League and have forsaken all others
You can disagree with that opinion. I’m just saying I’ve see multiple people at Saints say similar since our relegation and nobody jumped down their throat for it. People are just having a wobble about the result tonight and jumping on Bree for comments that aren’t a big deal. All he’s saying is tonight isn’t good enough and our standards are and should be higher. Depends how you look at it. They were irrefutably PL players until we got relegated. Some are PL quality of varying levels, some not. We got relegated for a whole bunch of reasons built up over multiple seasons. Not just because of the quality or lack of, of our players. There’s fair arguments out there that we were one good striker away from survival given the amount of games we lost 1-0 having ‘dominated’.
We were perhaps one good striker away from what we'd been for most of the preceding few seasons: a team holding on to a place in the PL by our fingernails. We didn't have a particularly good squad by PL standards, which is why we so frequently found ourselves in that place.
Indeed. But I did say from survival not from being a good PL team. And there’s generally not a lot between the quality or points tally of the bottom half teams in the PL. One decent goal scorer can make all the difference. But anyway, the only point of my comments was to say that Brees post game comment really wasn’t outlandish or that bad and the reaction to it was OTT. Not wishing to get into another discussion on the reasons why we got relegated!
Indeed it would be depressing if that’s what I’d said. What I said was pretty much nothing to do with aspiring to be a PL team for a couple of struggling seasons before relegation. I was saying our ceiling is realistically our Poch/Koeman level, or what Brighton are doing now. That’s not depressing - it’s realistic, and being that team is exciting. Of course another Leicester is possible, but it’s hugely unlikely. Of course a Championship club could win the cup, but it’s an unlikely event. Us being that Brighton team again is achievable, and what we’re aiming for. That’s exciting, not depressing.
To put it in context, in the past 20 seasons of the League Cup there have been two non-PL sides in the final (Cardiff in 2012, Bradford in 2013). There have been two non-PL sides in the FA Cup final, as well. So the odds of any non-PL side reaching a major cup final in a given year are about 1 in 10. But those are the odds when playing the field of 72 teams. The odds of any specific non-PL side reaching a cup final are probably close to 1 in 100. And that's just to reach the final, not to win...none of those four non-PL finalists actually won, and indeed no non-PL side has won a cup competition since the Premier League came into being. It last happened in 1992, when Sheffield Wednesday won the League Cup. So while it's fun to dream, it's the lottery ticket to end all lottery tickets. Even with a full-strength side, playing at our peak performance, we could play and replay this year's cup competitions for decades and never sniff a semi, never mind win silverware. It just isn't a realistic thing to pour resources into chasing; you could make a good argument that winning a PL title from Brighton's current position is at least as realistic as us reaching a cup final from our current standing.
C'mon peeps, we won on opening day and this reminder that we are still the worst team in the EPL with a largely useless squad of senior players and about to lose the only good ones that we have shouldn't be enough to turn that opening day optimism around. Doctors hand out medication for that stuff so easily now. They really should send out a bottle with the season tickets. 3-1 to Gillingham
The biggest blame for last night is not any individual player. It's on Martin. He picked the team. He put Perraud at CB (wtf), he selected three teenage debutants. Was a bit of an arrogant team selection and hopefully this acts as a wake up call. Let's face it; better it happens in a cup game than a league one.
Well, not that we needed confirmation but RM now knows we’ve got a lot of squad dross & it needs sorting quickly. Unfortunately I don’t think they’ll be a lot / any takers & we’ll end up selling the silverware & retain this crap. Friday was great but down to a bump now. The next 3 weeks are going to be very interesting. Could go horribly wrong - hope not but I do worry.
I feel I jinxed it - I guess the Tom curse happens to everyone on a Tom thread? With Ralph anyone could seemingly play left back. Martin seems to think centre back is fair game. I wasn’t at hhe game to be able to comment on our performance, but it seems like the focus was very much on Friday and basically if you didn’t play on Friday you got a game last night and off you go lads.
