All I know is that City will be playing in The Premier League next season - FACT ! 1p5wich will be playing in The Championship - FACT ! Let's worry about the season after that in a year's time eh boys and girls ?
I for one don't care if you come on here with your opinions. Sometimes I think why you'd want to come on here to be negative, when our club is clearly in a very positive state. You won't bring us down, no matter how hard you try.
JWM, Guru, Hampy et al - you're welcome to come over here for respite and fun, a bit of baiting or whatever you choose! Don't be surprised when Supers,Carra, Beefy or anyone else makes a stand on behalf of the club we all love!
Dave all of us Townies accept the rough and tumble and I would be very surprised and a tad disappointed if they didn't put up a spirited defence! Its the same for us on our board
Let's look at this way: All the sides in the top eight, plus Villa can all feel pretty comfortable of their places. Fulham have been established for a while now too. West Ham bother the Premier League more often than not. Since its inauguration then Coventry were there for a decade, Bolton have been up there for a while. You get your Stokes and your Wigans who can hold out for five years but every year is pretty much a battle. You have Blackburn who are only now coming to the end of their tenure. What this means is that there are probably at most 8 Premier League spots to play around with. That's over 20 years: 60 teams have been promoted and relegated. Most of them only last a season or two and if like Stoke hold out for four years then we start to think of them as established because most sides - Hull, Blackpool, Birmingham, Burnley, Swindon, ourselves, yourselves, Bradford, Reading, Watford... it's really a massive list - don't survive that long. It's a well established pattern that most sides won't survive two seasons and many don't even survive the first. All the evidence suggests that Norwich are not going to be an exception to this. The plays not great, the forms not great, the first season league position is not great. It doesn't make any statistical sense to go back more than a decade, because it would take at least four years to clear out half of the clubs.
Ask any Villa fan if they feel comfortable of their place. If we finish 14th, tell me the last time any newly promoted finished that high, and then tell me how many have done that in the past ten years.
Lets look at it a different way. Some teams have managed to stay up for more than two seasons and become more established. It is important to look at the reasons that account for success/failure and not simply the statistics. The most obvious reason is that the teams that come down have been unable to strengthen their squad, typically because they have one or two high profile/quality players that get injured or bought and they have not replaced them. If we don't strenghten our team over the summer, we will be vulnerable, even if we do strenghten the team, we will of course still be vulnerable. But I think most folk are of the view that we will retain the players we want to retain and make very useful addtions to the squad. In addition, the team can be galvanised by their experience of playing in the premier league. There are new additions who are still bedding into the team. All these factors seem to add up to being a better side. Finally, we have a very high quality manager, something a lot of the relegated teams did not have. There is no way that Lambert or the team will rest on their laurels and think survival will be a walk in the park, but recognising this and doing something about it can only bode well.
Tell me which high profile players have got injured? QPR have gone out and signed some real quality! Same problem hit Town a decade a go... strengthening doesn't necessarily mean you'll be stronger. Also please tell me what proves that Paul Lambert is a higher quality manager than any of the others?
So none of the teams that have been relegated lost some of their key players in the second, third, fourht season? Let's take Bolton, who are in the position because they lost three -four key players, or teams that lost their manager. Should we go through the list in detail of each side?
............i get the impression it is more mental fatigue than physical. they have to be on top of their game for the full 90 minutes in this league unlike in the lower echelons where they could afford to coast for parts of each match. though, having said that, they are having to work much harder to get the ball than they ever have before, remember stats say that city players have run further than any other team in matches this season.
It depends how you strenghten, you buy to compliment and improve the team, something he has done each season. It's very simple.
Yep bad example, just trying to illustrate that the loss of key players has a big influence, I will endeavour to do better!!
If you have the belief that if you go 1 down you can fight back to get a win or a draw then that will give you impetus to go out and do that, newly promoted sides have that. after a season of not always being able to get that back or a few games where you have been totally out played then as soon as that 1st goal goes in the 2nd and 3rd will soon follow. Ipswich have been guilty of this over the last 2 years and gone on horrible runs of defeats. believe me if you get a hammering at arsenal and then lose to villa, doubts will be in the minds of players, perhaps they will look more favourably at offers from established clubs as a more secure option and if these offers are turned down by the club unrest could settle in.
Nigel Adkins has become only the second manager since the 90's to gain two successive promotions to the Premier League. Answers on a postcard as to who the other one was. That takes real quality and as you know, Lambert is arguably the best young manager in the country.
Again that assumes that there are no proposed changes, players sign contracts based on the ambitions and plans a club has. Every player at the club is aware of that too many goals have been leaked, but is there a sense that can be turned around, I'd like to think so, The team is also aware that they have had a very unsettled defence throughout the season. There are so many factors that need to be considered, but you keep hammering away at the same point. Yes it can have an influence, but there are so many other issues that can completely negate your point about momentum
