I asked the same question last year when personally I felt we would finish outside the top four due to being in transition. This year I believe we have to finish in the top four in order to be judged successful. We need to get to Champions League football. I think Man U will be less good than last year due to current uncertainties and also I have never rated David Moyes - unlike a lot of you. Man City I just regard as a flakey team - plenty of money and good players and capable of winning always but somehow they just are not Manchester --- United Chelsea - unfortunately I think they will improve with Mourinho back and expect them to be in the top two Ars*n*l I think will be a better side this year and wont be so far behind coming in to the last 3 months - I just have a feeling we can take them for once. Liverpool - will improve but not enough Everton - will go backwards There are no other teams in the league If we can get our balance right I think we can be at least - at least a top 3 side this year. Forget about Cups - unless we start badly enough to make my expectations worthless.
Top 4 is successful. If we make no more singings I expect us to come 5th. If we sign 1 more CB I expect us to come 4th. If we sign a couple CBs I expect us to get 3rd or a very close (within 1 point) 4th. If we sign a couple CBs and a creative midfielder / young striker I expect us to challenge for title. Sorry but trophies don't matter to me. Rather come 4th than win all 3 of the league cup, fa cup and Europa League.
We've still got only the sixth largest budget so anything above sixth is success after a fashion. But given the squad we've managed to assemble we should expect 4th plus a trophy.
If we relegate Stoke and West Ham in consecutive fixtures (both away), that's success. Not just for us, but football in general.
That is an insane thing to say. In 20yrs time you won't remember coming 4th, but you'll likely remember Spurs lifting a trophy. Heck, finishing 4th wasn't a great feeling when we did it (the time we were actually allowed in the CL), it was very good, but not great, i've almost forgotten it already. But the League Cup win a couple of years earlier against Chelsea, the 1999 League Cup win against Leicester and the '91 final against Forest (at which time i was just 10) will forever live in the memory. Ask Wigan fans if they'd swap the FA cup for remaining in the Premier league, which is a bigger financial reward than getting into the CL. Not many would swap i'd bet. Football is about glory, not about coming 3rd loser. As many have said, 4th is a necessary evil to get the funds to compete over time, but coming 4th is NOT a substitution for winning a trophy.
We're still trying to match what redknapp achieved, which was champions league football, and that's what we have to aim for. If we want to play it safe and think negative then we can make excuses about the budget etc yet the reality is each year we should start the season as one of the favourites for the top four. We have broken our transfer record twice, moan about Bale possibly going and fans keep saying how highly they rate our squad so if we finish 5th or below then both levy and Avb have failed, with it being a combination of bad planning and management.
4th, FA Cup or Europa League is the minimum we need for a good season next year. A successful year would include any two of those or finishing above 4th.
Yes I miss the feeling of winning trophies yet the trouble is these trophies have been devalued and simply don't have the same value, and ironically winning the Europa league or Fa Cup would make players like bale crave bigger success even more. So while I wouldn't turn down these trophies, sadly champions league football means more to the top players.
I agree with this. I would take winning the FA Cup or Europa league over finishing 4th. Not sure about the league cup though that is a more difficult choice. I of course want us to win something but a league cup over finishing 4th and our best players staying is better long term. For me success would definitely be top 4 and a really good cup run. It's about time we made a bloody FA Cup final. As long as we dont get involved in any penalty shoot outs we may have a chance. I was forced to go on a school trip on the 1991 cup final and my Mum said "dont worry there will be many more finals for you to watch!! Well Mum I'm still waiting! Thanks a lot!
To me, success will be finishing at least third, thus achieving automatic qualification to the CL. Maybe at the least to reach a Cup final too. But finishing 4th will be deemed successful (assuming we qualify through the Qualifying rounds), but ultimately, it's 3rd place for me.
For me, what I'd (realistically) love is top 4 and a trophy, but I'd take top 6 and a trophy, no danger and deem it a great success and praise ENIC accordingly even if we 'only' won the Lge Cup.
I think winning means more to the players than you might think. Yes, they want to play in the CL, but they are hardly climbing over each other to play for CL also-rans are they? Even our best pal Suarez wants to, reportedly, go to Real Madrid and not Arsenal. How many players want to play for Twente? Or even Ajax who feature every year? What about Porto/Benfica? They don't sign many big name stars, nobody seems to push for a move to them, in fact quite the opposite. Galatasaray/Fenebahce? There are loads more. The best players want to play for the clubs where they have a better _chance_ of winning the CL and other silverware, or that they think will have a chance soon (eg, City due to the wealth). What was our fave player Berba's reason for leaving? He wanted to win trophies. Same for Sheringham if i recall. They didn't mention the CL
I don't know what to say right now. Based on what we've spent, success should be 4th. But we're still missing key players IMO. It's all well and good collecting midfielders like Chelsea, but as I've said, it's about quality over quantity. regardless of who we've got, we need: LB (presuming benny is off.) CB - regardless Creative Mid - regardless another striker. (presuming ade is off) get those players and we could be in for a very interesting season.
Sandro, Bale, Vertonghen, Lloris, Paulinho, Soldado, Chadli, Kaboul, Walker aren't going to think "hey we won some minor trophies let's stay at Spurs and do it again." We will never progress as a squad and win the ~important~ trophies (league and Champions league) if we keep finishing 5th or below. For that reason I'd much rather we missed out on trophies in the short term but grow into a title challenging / champions league competing team than be able to say to my kids in the future "Yeah we are still finishing in the Europa League places but we won the Carling cup in 2014!" Although I had forgotten that soon the Europa League winners will be given Champions League qualification. When that comes in (is that this season or next?) I'd much rather finish 5th, win the EL and qualify for the champions league, than finish 4th, not win the EL and qualify for the champions league.
Sorry spurm I appreciate the romantic nature of wanting to win any trophy, yet the reality is players leave us because they want to win the league and champions league and that i'm afaid is jjust how it is. The FA Cup & Europa league(once the uefa cup) where once fabulous cups to win, regarded highly and top players viewed them as a superb medal to have, nowadays they are deemed second rate, maybe not so much by us (who have been starved of success) but to top players they are simply an Add-on, but the real success is the league or champions league. Of course clubs like wigan who have zero chance of being top four etc will view the FA Cup as their champions league, but if our ambitions are to keep players like Bale then winning any trophy won't help, we have to aim for the big ones.
The FA cup and the EL are not minor trophies. The FA cup is the most prestigious domestic cup competition in the world, that a the EL are watched all over the world. Just look at the recent winners of the FA cup, just 3 of the winners over the last 20 years have been from outside the top 4 (at that time). Look at the last bugger knows how many EL winners, all big clubs. Very, very few minnows win these competitions. And i think most of those players would think "yeah we won the FA/EL i'm gonna stay"
I think that in the eyes of the world, and perhaps most importantly the media, it has to be Cl football (whether 3rd place or 4th then qualifying, obviously preferable the former) to be considered a successful season. If we'd finished in the CL spots last time the whole Bale saga would be markedly less persistent, if we'd won a cup and come 5th we might have had some respite but not much. It goes without saying as well that as a fan I'd love to win the FA Cup or the EL, I'm a bit more indifferent about the League Cup but it IS a trophy and that can't be underestimated - I'd be over the moon if we won any of them in truth. Would I take a trophy over top 4 though this year? Not at this stage in our history for me - we need to be focussing on establishing ourselves as CL regulars, and then we can look seriously at targeting the domestic cups. I'm not saying don't take the cups seriously, especially in the latter stages (and more so in the case of the FA Cup) but if it came down to resting a few tired key players for a League Cup semi a few days before a crucial North London Derby...I'd rest the players every time for the next few years. Sounds cynical, and it does clash with the fact that I do really love the cups as they can produce some truly wonderful moments, but for the next few years I feel we have to look long-term and get ourselves established as CL regulars, to get more money, keep our best players and have a chance of getting the cream of the crop in incoming transfers. Needs must, sadly.
