It has to be one of the most repeated statements ever since the team walked off the pitch against Liverpool, but how much Will it effect us if at all? Surely every season in the premier league is equally perilous as the second,especially for the smaller clubs like swansea,so why do so many people wish to make this point.if we stay in the prem league 1 yr or 8yrs its still extremly hard to maintain status. My view is that if a team gets promoted and stays up it tends to Get raped of its assets by bigger teams,that is a point many fail to make. Another thing that people mention is that teams work you out,really? In the age of pro sone and video tech nobody bothered to have a look at us until the summer?! That doesnt make any sense to me either. What about us working out other teams then? Therefore the 2 cancel each other out. Personally i Think its a media line that gets used to paper over the cracks of the high finance that usually dictates where a team can finish,and if it cant finish higher than the plucky underdog then take their players or manager instead. Spend until the problem is solved or you out finance the teams below by making wage demands too high for a smaller club to sign or keep players. Make no mistake this is going to take a massive effort by the swans this season to survive,it always was,maybe brenden knew this too and cashed in when his stock was high? I Think the change Will work to our advantage though,There were times when we refused to change under buck Even when most of us had a feeling it was futile to stay the same,it cost us dearly at times but it was countered by the manager signing siggy,we never sailed close to relegation as a result..luck or judgement?? Plenty to be positive about this season guys,i put our chances down as being preget good,second season syndrome is the same everyseason! Lets not buy into it too much ,laudrup thinks he can keep us up otherwise he wouldnt take the job,fresh ideas fresh approach and some fresh players Will make us a new team with old experienced premiership heads,we Are in fact alot more prepared this season than we were last season!! Gonna be tough but bring it on i say ! STID
Well im pretty sure we wont finish 5th ! But it does show you that shrewd investment can pay off. im under no illusions but a few før er signings can make all the difference to how you do, the problem is keeping hold of them! Newcastle is big enough to cope with Poaching clubs but Even you guys Will face a battle to keep cisse,ba and others ,the reason for this is because you have done tremendous work on getting a financial plan in place and have a wage structure with sound buisness leadership,love or hate ashley the club is in a good financial position and it spends what it can now afford, like us it leaves you open to other clubs to unsettle players with stupid wages etc.
It's a meaningless cliche. If teams can be "worked out" then we wouldn't have scored more points in the second half of last season than we did in the first. As long as we continue to add quality to the team as and when required, keep a tight control on finances and avoid thinking that we've got it sussed then there's no reason why we can't survive year on year.
Agree, none of us beleive its going to be easy but having that year of experience Will be a massive help to us, laudrup and his coaches Will add something to uæs as well so it s gonna be an intresting season to say the least . It Will be an intresting time for villa,Norwich,wba,Liverpool and us in terms of seeing how the new managers cope. Southampton,west ham and reading Will IMO make less of an impact that the 3 teams did last year so There Will be alot in the mi er thats for sure
I fancy Norwich to be in the mire next season. Lambert got some stellar performance out of some ordinary players last year. Hughton's good, but perhaps not that good. If I had to pick a dark horse to be down there I'd say Fulham.
My dark horse Will be villa, just Think they need major surgery and a bad start Will heap trouble on lambert,some strong personalities up at villa and i can see some fall outs. Norich could be in trouble if they Get a poor start, they have had the same manager for a few seasons and may well Get a hangover from that ,we have been use to change at swansea so dont see the same problem,though it Will be a hard job for laudrup too!
underestimate second season syndrome at your peril, thank god your not the manager thats all i can say, luckily laudrup have already said that we have to beware of second syndrome as like he said it happens in every league all over the world and i would think he would know...wouldn't you..
I think what Norway is getting at, Dai, is that the Premier League had long enough to take a look at us last season and we still finished 11th and it could, should, have been higher. Take Liverpool. They had 37 games to study us including our fixture at Anfield. Didn't do them much good at the Liberty. We are good enough to hold our own at this level and I believe that our players learned more about playing the opposition than they learned about us. We gained experience and we gained confidence. We gained the belief that we belonged at this level and could give the best teams in the Division a game and take points off them. Next time out, we won't be feeling our way at this level, we will know what it's about from game one - and there are three teams coming up who will find it a culture shock. We were successful because our game was markedly different to how most PL teams played, whereas the promoted clubs play the usual British game. The trouble with that is, this is a Division full of other teams who play the same way but are better at it. So long as ML can take our style and make it better, I think we are going to be comfortable. We won't be taking the Division by storm but I'm sure that we will easily stay in lower mid table and cement another season at the top level.
Norway, to assist your fantastic article with some hard facts, I've done some research on your behalf at no extra cost to yourself I've looked at all the promoted sides from the Championship over the last 11 seasons and worked out how many seasons they lasted in the Premier League. 2000/2001 Fulham 11+ (the plus means still there and ongoing) Blackburn 11 (relegated last season) Bolton 11 (relegated last season) 2001/2002 Manchester City 10+ WBA 1 Birmingham 4 2002/2003 Portsmouth 7 Leicester 1 Wolves 1 2003/2004 Norwich 1 WBA 2 Crystal Palace 1 2004/2005 Sunderland 1 Wigan 7+ West Ham 6 2005/2006 Reading 2 Sheff Utd 1 Watford 1 2006/2007 Sunderland 5+ Birmingham 1 Derby 1 2007/2008 WBA 1 Stoke 4+ Hull 2 2008/2009 Wolves 3 Birmingham 2 Burnley 1 2009/2010 Newcastle 2+ WBA 2+ Blackpool 1 2010/2011 QPR 1+ Norwich 1+ Swansea 1+ To summarise: 13 clubs went straight back down after 1 season 4 clubs survived for 2 seasons 1 club survived for 3 seasons 1 club survived for 4 seasons 9 clubs have survived for 5 or more seasons So the good news is that if you survive the first season then you may well be around for a long time
Its the same in every league in the world. 11th last season was brilliant but it flattered us a bit. it could have gone either way for most of the season . we were lucky that a few teams were worse than us in that they could not buy a win for love or money. 11th looked good and it was but there was not many points in it in the end and could quite easily have gone wrong if the teams who were relegated did not last out the good run they were on, they left it to late and only wigan and qpr on the last game made it...
I guess you never read or underfulle the article dai,not for the first time i might add! Dont listen to the hype dai!! Its going to be mighty toughto stay up make no mistake but look at the evidence aswan kindly provided and it shows the second season syndrome to be a bit of a myth !! Maybe we should call it first season syndrome ??
Aswan- thanks for the input with the stats,was going to trawl through and Find out myself, when i got to a pc! Very i tresting reading aswell,
Every season is unique you can go down in the first season or 21st , all that matters are getting the points needed to stay up
We need to invest wisely, people will be saying that we will do a "Hull" rather than a "Blackpool" which is why I will not be too disappointed if Gylfi does not sign because Hull spent all their money on Bullard to keep them up and he was injured early and it buggered them.
If we manage to stay up this year, and it`s a pretty big if. Will they then be going on about third year syndrome for us?
Yes - it is indeed a load of bollocks. Just because it's happened 4 times in the last 11 seasons doesn't make it a 'syndrome' - just 4 teams ( out of 33 newcomers) who didn't get enough point to stay up. I'd never heard of this 'syndrome' until Hull got relegated on their second season.
Wasn't there a `2nd half of the 1st season syndrom' also? When clubs `worked out' how we play and could stop us? But we got stronger as the season went on. Second Seasonn Syndrom is a phrase people repeat parrot fashion. Urban Myth.
Going by those figures, if you survive the 1st year, then you're twice as likely to survive for 5+ years than be relagated in year 2
we are a small club and we must get it right or we will struggle. the fact is if it was not for vorm and siggs last season we would have been relegated without any shadow of a doubt because if we had to rely on danny's finishing then it would have been curtains.....3 awards for vorm, top 3 player for siggs and not a mention for danny tells a story whether you like it or not......we need to improve a hell of a lot on our finishing this season or we will struggle and i believe that is laudrups main concern and he will bring in a better more all round striker that wont waste chances as much as danny did last season. sinclair would rather go for goal himself than pass to danny so he did not have much confidence in him,
