I'm with you Joby. I'm one who sees this season as a massive success - we've survived.

Do I dream we can kick on and launch an assault on the FA Cupmand European football over the next 3 years? Yes. Do I expect it? Absolutely not!!

I'm very realistic about our club and what we can achieve. It also frustrates me when I hear fans moaning about what we haven't got rather than celebrating what we do.

I do think this is a minority though. Most around me in the stadium have said that this season is one of their most favourite ever. Why? Because we achieved after it look like we were doomed. I went bonkers after some of our goals, literally and I've not done that for a long time.

The problem comes that now, as fans we expect to stay up, and just "staying up" doesn't become enough. It gets boring and we want more. This is natural, we want the buzz back. We want more "unexpected" success to go bonkers to.

How do we get this? Well, by getting worse and coming good again or building further. That will be tough. Worst case is we just get dull and "stay up" each year like Villa and then as fans we just get bored.

I'm just happy with sticking around in the premier league whilst the ludicrous money is sloshing around so we don't get left behind, but I accept and understand that fans want that buzz every year.

That's tough. We've waited 10 years to feel like this. I'm just going to savour it a little while longer.

Excellent post Joby !

The obvious counter to your realism is the argument about how our owners are prepared to fund a top end finish but also how quickly they expect that.

The second question is then whether Pearson is the right man to spend the amounts that would require, the money would only be there once to spend so the owners have to be 100% confident they have the right man.

Let's hope Sven doesn't make a return

There may ultimately be a point of stagnation, at least without investment on a grand scale. We'd need more fans, a bigger stadium, lots of money - things that are not achievable on the pitch.

With what we have right now, I think some things are achievable though: Being an established Premier League side; top-10 finishes; maybe a Europe League finish and that massive goal: An FA Cup win. That's not to say that these things are easy of course - just that they are achievable whereby a top 4 finish almost certainly isn't.

There are other factors as well: Quality training facilities, a powerful and successful academy, a recognised Premier League identity - these are ways that our club can succeed and improve, and this would need to happen at the same time as improvements on the pitch. And this I think is reflected in some of the comments that Pearson has made since our safety was guaranteed, particularly when talking about how the club is a year further ahead than it was last season.

So there is the opportunity for continued progress, but it is incredibly difficult.

TB,

You raise a good point. I believe that, despite our regular debates on here, our ultimate aspirations are much more likely to be defined by the ambitions of our owners, rather than the limitations of any manager. But I'm probably preaching to the converted with you on that one.


We have also all witnessed the dangers of big transfer budgets in the hands of maverick owners or managers. So bold ambition is also dangerous!

Joby, most well-thought out post I've read in a long time 👍🏻

Golly, one of the more depressing articles I've read on here, Joby. I cannot bear to think that this car crash of a season might equate to us being close to our pinnacle.

You suggest that this season's targets have surely been met and, arguably, exceeded. Not mine they haven't! I expected a respectable season, with no managerial embarrassments, effectively safe by end-January, and finishing maybe 12th. Instead we have been defeated week-in week out, for months on end, periodically made a national laughing stock by our loopy manager, and but for a heroic, freakish adrenalin-crazed eleventh hour dash, we would now be toast. We may yet finish 17th. Did all that really correspond to your expectations, Joby? Surely not.

Dunge's response here has steadied my nerve, thank goodness. We have decent owners with decent resources, we have a small core of very effective players and we have a large number of loyal and noisy fans. If we can get it right, we surely CAN become an established Premier League side, with top-10 finishes, maybe some European nights, and maybe another FA Cup final appearance before too much longer. Those should be our expectations, starting now.
All my digits are crossed.

Made the end of the season utterly brilliant though Malling didn't it

I wouldn't change the way this season has gone for anything. It's like the play-offs. You want to avoid then at all costs and get automatic, but the drama of winning them is by far the best feeling of going up.

The intense pressure and elation of a 90 minute winner takes all game. I feel like we've had 8 of those.

Brilliant.

Malling,

The intention of the article really wasn't to be depressing, but to stimulate some debate on what we can achieve and what we'd need to get there.

You're right that much of this season has been hard to stomach, but I think you do everyone at the club a disservice by simply writing the recovery off as a freak. It's also not wrong to have hoped for and expected more.

Personally I would have hoped for 12 as well, but would have taken survival on goal difference. Even though evidence over some 130 odd years of history suggests that 12th is at the higher end of what we might expect.

When I consider that we started the 08/09 season in League One I'm immensely satisfied about the position that we now sit in and excited about the season to come. This has largely been achieved by the current owners and manager.

The question is how much further we can expect to go and what it would take to get us there and whether our aims are realistic in the current football climate.

Malling. I absolutely would have taken 17th at the start of the season, staying up on goal difference due to a 94th minute goal scored in the last match. I also said as much after we beat Man U.

That's all this year was about - staying up somehow - which we've done with a game to spare.

I'm still on a high from last weekend and looking very much forward to Sunday's party. I'll worry about the future in due course but it will be based on staying up again with year-on-year progression rather than any unrealistic expectations.

!7th for me was my only aim this season. but to say its been our best season is absurd imo the last four weeks have been the best maybe in our history but the middle was as another poster put a car crash.

The facts our our mini league here in the prem has been crap if they had not of been we would be dead and buried that,s the reality.

Going forward its what the owners can affford. to have a less dramatic season must be their first aim. a top ten finish would not be out fo the question maybe the season after. But we don't have the minerals of some of the top 5.
But enjoy thank NP and the boys. If we do get a bit bored with mid-table mediocrity we can always have a go at getting relegated again

Another way of looking at this:

Imagine if we were managed by Jose Mourinho instead of Nigel Pearson. Would we achieve more next season with the same transfer budget?

If we had Man City's owners could we be Man City? Or would we be limited by our infrastructure or fan base?

We arguably already have what we need to be the club that Dungeon describes above, but what are the biggest limiting factors in terms of us being able to get there?

FFP probably stops us ever doing a Man City now Joby although I'm not sure if want my club purely dependant on a single wealthy owner. Big risks if anything ever happened to them.

Could we do more with another manager and the same budget. I'm a Pearson fan so my answer is no. We need to build from the foundations laid down and he is the best person to do that for me.

One thing you can't level at him is he's a risk in the transfer market. His record is fairly impeccable.

Ignoring the way we achieved it for a moment if we finish 14th then that would be about what I expected and hoped for. I thought we could finish lower mid-table - I just never expect to have such a dreadful mid-season in terms of results and need (and get) title winning form to stay up.

Realistically as a club I think it is reasonable to be aiming for mid table mediocrity in the Premier League with a real go at both cups. I would love it, love it to win the FA Cup one day.

I think the current owners and manager are more than capable of delivering on these expectations.

To achieve more than this is effectively aiming at Europa League places in years to come. I think this is probably out of our reach but not completely unattainable if we had a ludicrously fortuitous season with the rub of the green, the luck of the Irish and a mountain of lucky heather behind us. Southampton and Swansea have come close although they are a few years ahead of us in terms of development and Premiership experience. But they are no bigger clubs than us so may give us hope.

Striving for anything higher than this i.e. breaking into the top 5, is never going to happen and not worth thinking about. The days of Derby, Forest, Ipswich and clubs of that size battling for the League Title are long gone.

Can we attract the right players though while we are a National laughing stock with a loopy Manager in charge to progress ?

comment by True Blue (U9486)
posted 2 hours, 1 minute ago
Can we attract the right players though while we are a National laughing stock with a loopy Manager in charge to progress ?
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Ahhh… TB, I think that you’re being deliberately provocative there. It’s a good job Blackstarr isn’t here to take you to task.

My own view is that we can progress as a national laughing stock and with a loopy manager. Progress will, however, be steady and considered. I think our owners decided upon a fundamental change of strategy when they sacked Sven and went for Pearson. NP fits the mould of the current approach really well, which is why I believe they were reluctant to sack him. A new incumbent would surely want more resources to build a side in his own image.

Next season my aspiration would be survival again, but perhaps more comfortably than this year even if, as Mersey stated, it was exciting. I think 12th, or above, would be an incredible achievement, which I hope our supporters would recognise. If we finish between 13th and 17th next year I’m convinced that many will moan. I would urge a sense of perspective of where we’ve come from, who we’re competing against and how much we’ve invested. The more we progress the more we will see diminishing returns, which is not always something that keeps football fans happy.

Yes but can Pearson attract the type of quality players we need is the question or at this stage does he become a hindrance.

Provocative maybe but you can see the mindset of some who seem to want to be depressed.

I don't think Pearson would block any arrival. Money and club speak far far higher than any manager in this day and age an my understanding is that our set up, and Pearson, are highlighted as a very good professional structure to work under.

I actually think he's a benefit in that respect.

A whole raft of postings to be addressed from last couple of days.

Don’t any of you have employment –or if you have – don’t you have work to do!

Thank goodness for a raft of new employment laws coming giving firms more power to fire as well as hire.

CAMBIASSO
To be unworthy of the shirt is a feature of a man’s character not his wages or value ….. for instance Simpson is unworthy of the shirt- Cambiasso record is unblemished and professional-

In terms of his value to the team I am not one of those who fall under his spell of walking on water.

In the first half of the season – while he adjusted to Premiership demands- he patently was not worth the wages as he only played just 55% of the match time.

In the second half he clearly was – and contributed substantially to the team. The team also adjusted to him and people like James contributed legs and stamina to his performance.

Overall I am like the team in terms of team contribution…….. whilst Cambiasso used his considerable talent and experience to be able to be often well positioned and even when just off the pace his first touch and often first time pass were excellent –those around him were always available and prepared to provide pressure and challenge to the opposition and this some did throughout the game.

I saw games where the game activity and frenetics passed him by for long periods and he was restricted to a series of cameos – all of which contained high skill content – but overall others contributed more. Not a criticism – a fact.

If you look at the winner and nominees of the players own award for player of the year – you see players who were completely selfless in terms of effort and offering a run to a beleaguered colleague and with Ulloa besides being top goalscorer was always prepared to put his body between a defender and the relieving high ball from defence and allow team mates time to regroup. These players contributions are often not headline grabbers –but appreciated by the team.

In terms of Jobyfox rather depressing article about the limitations and a low expectancy of potential for our club – which he masquerades as realism- I will reply when I return from business Friday as it is the sort of defeatism which sometimes pervades our region and often leads to decline.

It is not inevitable … and should not be accepted

I think top 10 is well achievable, I'm not sure Southampton, Swansea and West Ham are that much better than us, they've been more consistent that's all.

I fancy us to win the FA Cup sometime soon.

I wasn't happy with finishing 17th, I mean yeah it's better than 18th but we're better than that so I would have been disappointed, 11th - 15th is what I was happy with at be start of the season and it still is now 😊

JG,

I await your considered response with much interest. The irony, for me, is that you find my article depressing, which is exactly how I view 99% of your contributions to this forum.

If I may respectfully request that you might consider what the expectation of our current manager should be operating within the current budgetary restraints and with consideration to the level of funding given to our rivals. Even you must agree that there are certain limitations to what we can realistically achieve without the onus of responsibility falling back onto the ambitions of our owners.

It’s not intended to be defeatist, but to promote a frank discussion about what it would take to break certain thresholds. I still dream that one day we will operate in a climate whereby it’s possible for us to win the league and qualify for Europe, but I’m not going to hold our owners or manager to account if we fail to do so next season.

I’ll be honest in saying that I have a contention that you, and many other posters like you with similar views, have a dissatisfaction with Pearson that is built on an expectation that is entirely unrealistic. You probably feel that we would have progressed further and faster under a different manager whereas I believe that is extremely unlikely.

We have the 19th highest wage bill in the league. Finishing 14th (hopefully) would suggest to me we are doing something right.

Any side promoted to the premierships sole aim in the first couple of seasons is to survive. It's all to easy to get relegated and disappear all together

From the outside looking in, you've done exceptionally well to stay up

At the start of every season 12/13 clubs first aim will be to get to 40points as quickly as possible. Once you get that you can start thinking about more

OOA - I think there's a lot of truth in that, obtaining 40 points was always Martin O'Neill's primary aim in his reign here, and we managed 5 consecutive top 10 finishes and two League Cups during that time so it wasn't doing us any harm.

JG - have you just accused people posting on this board as unemployed or slackers? Even by your standards that's pretty low.

I hope I read that wrong.

Secondly. Can you just not accept you were wrong about Cambiasso. No matter how much you post on the matter, it doesn't change the fact you called it incorrectly.

The fans player of the year has not come about purely because he's been professional. He's offered a quality to our team I don't think I've ever witnessed before. I wish you would give him credit for that.

As for your views on Pearson and ambition. I respect your views and that we'll have to agree to disagree on that.

Enjoy your work trip. Don't burn out by not taking any breaks or time to yourself

Sorry Mersey - feeble humour attempt which didn't come out in print!!