If that better squad leaves you in line to challenge for 4th in the future then it is a huge fucking improvement you giant pleb. We are building for tomorrow, not today. Get fucking used to it.
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If that better squad leaves you in line to challenge for 4th in the future then it is a huge fucking improvement you giant pleb. We are building for tomorrow, not today. Get fucking used to it.
IMO 6th is par this season. Liverpool have every advantage over us, they should be finishing above us. If we don't finish 6th, then questions need to be asked, unless we have a great season in the cups.
Because you did. You said 8th-10th. If you're backing down from that then that's fine, just say so, but if you think we can finish 10th that means 9 teams will finish above us.
Again, table position is entirely relative to others' successes. We could buy three superstars which undeniably improve our team but if the top four other teams buy four each then we'll not improve by table standards.
Improvement within our squad can either be judged against our same team last season, or against all other teams in the league. We can certainly improve relative to ourselves but still fall back relative to the rest of the league.
That's never been something I've said, and I haven't used it as an excuse (for something that hasn't even happened yet, I'll add). I pointed out that other teams actions in the transfer window can mean we finish below them, even though we've improved our squad still.
6th is below 5th no matter what the spin
Of course it is but in terms of where we are as a club 6th would not be a failure.
There's no doubting we've gone backwards since then. The sooner we accept it and move on, the better.
Not if our targets keep getting lower and lower, no
Regression, perhaps yeah. But we have slipped at most 1 place down the table.
More stagnation if anything. At the point at which we have stagnated (battling for 4th) is probably the hardest place to improve on, especially considering our infrastructure improvements that are in work / been completed recently and the fact the teams we need to break are either minted or much better than us and always have been. We have surpassed teams like Aston Villa, Everton, Leeds, Newcastle, Blackburn and even Bolton who were better than us in the early 2000's.
Now look at them and look at us.
3 are not in the league, Newcastle have been yoyoing and toying with relegation, Villa will be down there again. Only Everton have maintained a decent finish, yet even they have falling off.
Did we miss opportunities to capitalise, yeah, does Levy make wank decisions, yeah, but it is not like we have regressed to 12th place. We still fight for the top 4, we have consistently finished above high spending Liverpool despite them being a much bigger club than us.
I am more that happy to have Levy in charge when we are trying to balance league position and improving the clubs stature and infrastructure. Once the stadium is built and income increases, then we can see what his end game is with us.
All my opinion of course, in which you are entitled to yours. This is not a dig at people who would prefer levy out.
They might do. We will probably lose Lloris in the summer, for instance. We don't seem to be spending as much on wages as we used to, relative to other clubs, and the players we are targetting seem to be less proven and cheaper. It goes back to Levy...and if we try and get rid of him, the question of who else would we have? To a certain extent his hands are tied due to the new stadium...but then again he does things that make me sick, like his own pay rise, and the ticket prices being so high. But I still maintain that we could have someone much worse.
In terms of Poch. I think he is doing a good job if he is able to tread water for the next few years and keep us in the top 6. A lot will depend also on the scouting network and how well the young players do (the current lot and in the future). We need to sign more Bale's, Modric's and Berbatov's...but it is hard because they need to be players bigger sides have overlooked.
Found a piece which puts TAG into context...
Venables and Sugar: a match made in heav…hell
Venables and Sugar: a match made in heav…hell
If you're going to claim we've regressed, you need to show how our peaks were not one-offs. I think they were. We pay 5-6th place wage bills, and generally finish 1-2 places above the wage bill. That's about as good as anyone can expect, and claiming otherwise would mean that everyone else in football has been doing it wrong, every year, for all time.
Premier League wage bills mean<br> top-four finishes, but not always
We got lucky with richer clubs collapsing in our peak years. Unless we can grow the club to the point it can sustain top 4 wages every year, we can't really expect to sustain top 4 results.
We have stagnated at a level of performance which fits our resources. If you want to say we should be better than that, you're going to need to make a hell of an argument.
Premier League wage bills mean<br> top-four finishes, but not always
We got lucky with richer clubs collapsing in our peak years. Unless we can grow the club to the point it can sustain top 4 wages every year, we can't really expect to sustain top 4 results.
We have stagnated at a level of performance which fits our resources. If you want to say we should be better than that, you're going to need to make a hell of an argument.
It's too early to call it yet. The other teams going for 4th have dropped points too. And Utd were lucky to get 3 from us.
I think it's obvious we are better than last season as a team, I do think Poch will find a way to fuck it up but that is another thread.
I didn't say that sammy, but thanks for playing.
Ah Sammy, so much anger and emotion.
I haven't ignored anything. United was better then, we all know that. Woolwich, not so much. They were losing players year after year to other clubs as players got sick of the stadium hangover.
Chelsea were the same, except they weren't, were they? Within those two years, the club had a managerial melt-down, and suffered the result in the league. We took advantage. If Chelsea didn't melt-down, would we have gotten in? Well, that depends on how much you felt Harry Redknapp fucked up. Did he piss away a 9 point lead on Woolwich because he was too busy campaigning for the England job?
In 2009, if City weren't an overpaid mess, would we have made it? No. After 2010, were they simply too rich, and in possession of too deep a squad for us to overhaul them over a season? Yes.
We were in the right place at the right time. Those were great years, but they were also best case scenarios.
Money enables consistency. We don't have the resources to build a Champion's League quality squad right now. We need to buy younger players, have them grow into stars and then have things go our way with bigger rivals cocking up. Years when that last part doesn't happen, we finish 5th. (2010-11 and 2012-13). Years when we don't have our shit together with the squad and the manager (2007-08, 2008-09, 2013-14 and 2014-15) we finish 5th or worse.
If you want consistent Champion's League football you need to be able to pay for and retain Champion's League talent, and then replace losses with equivalent players when they depart.
We can't do that. We never have been able to do that either in the Premier League era.
You don't have to like that argument, but screaming fuck you at me doesn't change that you haven't been able to rebut it either...
It's not just about league position.
It's having a club that can actually win trophies not accountancy spreadsheets .
It's having a club that can actually win trophies not accountancy spreadsheets .
I think we've had a team that can for at least a decade. It's a question of which trophies matter to the coach and the club versus the fans though. Can Spurs win the League/FA Cups or the Europa League? Yes. Did the club or the managers want to actually put that effort into the competitions? Some did, some didn't.
I have rebutted it.
Only City are better than they were back then....however they still won the fucking PL the second time we made 4th though.
Utd were better then, and so were Woolwich, despite you waffling on about their stadium for some odd reason.
Pool were about the same and so were Chelsea.
I rebutted it because we earned our position by playing well.
I could just as well say we were shit and lucky last year, and should have finished 7th but Pool and Southampton bottled it. Its exactly the same stupid argument.
You say we threw away a 9pt lead over Scum.......but claim they were weaker then.
We had a stronger squad back then? But we are better now? How does that work?
You keep banging on about money. How much money did we need last year to beat Stoke and WBA at home, and draw away at Stoke instead of getting smashed 3-0, or even drawn at Palace...or beat them at home?
Those points would have seen us finish 4th. Above a fairly piss poor Utd, and right now we could be in the CL.
This money thing is absolute bollocks....we have fans claiming the signs are all good and we dominated Utd away, and there is nothing between the teams, and woolwich are weak (haha they only signed Cech), but then saying its impossible to overtake them.
Liverpool and their "scattergun" transfer policy........but we shouldnt expect to finish above them because of their mighty spending power and signings.
You go around in circles.....then you pop up in the fucking transfer thread drooling about signings you just claimed we cant sign.
T
he two are inextricably joined
I'm sorry you get so confused you can't follow what I' saying Sammy, but I think if you spent less time stewing in your own anger, you'd have an easier time of it.
Yes, we were lucky to get fourth twice as we didn't have the ability to do that without someone else under performing. We had that happen both years we finished fourth. Still was a good achievement from us, but wasn't something that should be expected to happen every year.
Money is the thing that matters because it lets you buy more high quality players. We can't buy as many high quality players as richer clubs. That means we can't replace stars when they leave, and need to take bigger risks when signing players. It doesn't mean we can't reach the Champion's League, but it does mean that the odds are against it. Every year.
Since it would appear you didn't read the article, which isn't a surprise, I won't recap it for you. The reality is what it is. We got lucky in our best years. We also can't sustain those performances over time right now as we don't have the ability to pay for that kind of talent in their peak years, every year, and can't replace them with other players at the same level when they leave.
We were actually lucky to finish better than 9th last year, given our underlying numbers. This year, things look very different, the team are playing differently and the underlying numbers look a good deal more promising. It would still be a hell of a lucky achievement to finish better than 5th, as that would be a clear over-achievement based on the wage bill.
We made some very good signings this summer. We didn't get everyone we needed, but we got a lot of what we did need. That doesn't change the fact that we're playing in a league where 5 clubs have much more money than we do, and can outpay for talent, both in terms of transfer fees and wages. That means they can get the players we can't, and can sign enough of them that when one gets injured, it's less of an issue.
That doesn't mean they can't fuck it all up either by having no real plan to what they're doing (Liverpool and Man Utd), or a really poorly managed squad (Chelsea's too small squad and their fatigue problems). It just means that most of the time, we're not going to make the top 4, until we have enough money to pay for a squad of consistent Champion's League quality.
The money spent doesn't change that anything can happen in any given game. The money spent didn't matter when we beat Chelsea, lost to Stoke, beat WBA, or lost to Villa. It also didn't matter when Barcelona lost to Celta fucking Vigo last year. Stuff can happen. But more money means more consistency. And we're consistently finishing at or just above the amount of money we're spending. If you think we should be consistently finishing better than that, you're saying that literally everyone in the footballing world is doing it wrong.