Next seasons realistic aim

Unravel_Morrison said:
We aren't in touch with the play offs.

Why will we be stronger compared to this year when we are weaker compared to last year?

90ish points looks like top 2 form for the last few seasons. We are more than 20 points shy of that.
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“We aren't in touch with the play offs.”

Semantics.

“Why will we be stronger compared to this year when we are weaker compared to last year?”

This year was a rebuild. We have a season’s worth of bedding in. More players will hit the ground running and we’ll have significantly added to the strength of our first 11.

I’ve suggested play offs as a minimum but a bit of good luck with injuries and the right players and we can be in touch of the top two. There’s a lot of water to pass under the bridge yet so i certainly won’t be ruling it out.
 
Bruce said:
Base it on points. The most points we have managed in a season since relegation is 76 under Pulis. Our goal next season has to be a minimum of 80 points. That is something like 23 wins, 11 draws and 12 defeats. It will probably mean we end up around 4th. Realistically, that would represent a major improvement from this season and give us a decent chance at the playoffs.
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I said this in the fanzine yesterday. When we went up under Karanka we got 89 points and that was just enough to squeak promotion, 85 in the season we lost to Norwich. It's a slightly lopsided season in that there are big winners and big losers, but we're currently 27 points behind Leeds - that's 9 more wins this season we would have had to have found. We can't break 70 this season. I just can't see, starting from this base where we are now where we get 27, 28 wins in a season - we currently have 18. So I think we have to aim for the playoffs and maybe four or five more wins in a season that would get us in, and go in on a hot streak. Which is galling given Rotherham, Plymouth etc etc. this season.
 
The sale of Morgan Rogers for buttons really knocked the stuffing out of me to be honest.

It made me think what's the point if Carrick is not allowed to build anything.

This summer needs to restore some belief. You can't have the highest ticket prices and a mid table transfer budget whilst flogging your best players. It is not on.

if we keep Dieng, RVDB, Hackney, Mcgree, Jones, Latte Lath, Bangura, Forss and add to them with a top quality -for the champo- number 10 whilst also retaining the majority of our squad players then I'd back us to finish top 6. The problem is that I cannot see us hanging on to our best players, I really hope I am wrong.
 
We will naturally lose players as that's where we are. If we buy projects again like last year we will struggle again to get them jelled in to a unit again
 
We are going to be 10 points worse than we were last season and last season included a dreadful start and a change of manager. We were an automatic promotion quality team for 2/3rds of the season, probably looking at 85ish points at least over a full season. We're not even close to that now.

People cherry pick the couple of good runs we have had and assume we can do it for a full season but they ignore/excuse the bad runs. We are exactly where I thought we'd be this season given the investment in the squad last summer. There is a lot of work to be done / money to be spent to get anywhere near being as good as we were last season.

Scraping into the playoffs is not really a success. The 5th/6th place teams lose most years. It's either promotion or not promotion and if we don't get promoted then it isn't a success. The teams that are comfortably in the playoffs but fail to go up are the ones that usually do well the next year because they have a solid foundation to build on. That was us last year and we ended up being a shambles. Success is fairly easy to measure. It's promotion or as a minimum challenging for the automatics and giving a platform to build on. A platform starting at midtable is one that can go either way.
 
Humpty said:
Crowds are going to be down on this season which is a shame. Might impact our start to the season. Having said that, we had good crowds at the start of this season and that made no difference :LOL:
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The crowds might not be down actually. Depending on signings etc.
 
Unravel_Morrison said:
We literally aren't in touch with the play offs. It's not semantics.

If that's not the case then I would say that everybody down to 11th is in touch with the play offs, which is silly.
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The best we can do is 69 points which is the same as Blackburn last season and one point more than Millwall.

We are currently closer to Huddersfield's points total than we are to Southampton's....
 
Nano said:
We are going to be 10 points worse than we were last season and last season included a dreadful start and a change of manager. We were an automatic promotion quality team for 2/3rds of the season, probably looking at 85ish points at least over a full season. We're not even close to that now.

People cherry pick the couple of good runs we have had and assume we can do it for a full season but they ignore/excuse the bad runs. We are exactly where I thought we'd be this season given the investment in the squad last summer. There is a lot of work to be done / money to be spent to get anywhere near being as good as we were last season.

Scraping into the playoffs is not really a success. The 5th/6th place teams lose most years. It's either promotion or not promotion and if we don't get promoted then it isn't a success. The teams that are comfortably in the playoffs but fail to go up are the ones that usually do well the next year because they have a solid foundation to build on. That was us last year and we ended up being a shambles. Success is fairly easy to measure. It's promotion or as a minimum challenging for the automatics and giving a platform to build on. A platform starting at midtable is one that can go either way.
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Do you not feel the injuries have played a massive part this season though.


When we first went on the good run under Carrick last season, we seemed to play the same XI week in week out for about 3 months straight. It’s a major factor
 
Nano said:
The teams that are comfortably in the playoffs but fail to go up are the ones that usually do well the next year because they have a solid foundation to build on. That was us last year and we ended up being a shambles. Success is fairly easy to measure. It's promotion or as a minimum challenging for the automatics and giving a platform to build on. A platform starting at midtable is one that can go either way.
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But the platform last year was based on players that weren't ours. It wasn't a proper foundation.

This reason to be cheerful is that we have a core of players who belong to the club. We have a squad capable of finishing in the top half even with the worst injury crisis. Now we can add quality - whether permanently or on loan.

If -and this is a big if - we can do this, I think we'll see the side push on and finish in the top 6 next year. If we don't go up, we'll be that side you describe - capable of top 2 the following year.
 
AytonMews said:
Do you not feel the injuries have played a massive part this season though.


When we first went on the good run under Carrick last season, we seemed to play the same XI week in week out for about 3 months straight. It’s a major factor
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No. We had a fully fit squad at the start of the season and we were awful. Without the injuries we could've scraped into the playoffs but I'm not even convinced that is the case because the difference between our 1st and 2nd string isn't massive. We've lost a few points from injuries but not 20. We would probably be challenging Norwich for 6th at best. Without injuries we'd have seen less of Jones, Coburn, VDB, Rogers, Clarke etc and they have been some of our better performers.

The injuries are a good excuse but they are covering up the fact that the squad isn't good enough. We've scored 20 fewer goals than we scored last season and we've conceded more. We're just not as good and it's a long way to get there.

LaPennaBianca said:
If -and this is a big if - we can do this, I think we'll see the side push on and finish in the top 6 next year. If we don't go up, we'll be that side you describe - capable of top 2 the following year.
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If next season is a big if to finish top 6 then why are we paying top 1 prices? Anything below automatics and we're being ripped off with those prices.
 
We’ll be in a group of about a dozen who expect to get in the playoffs. Those coming down will be vying for automatic along with one or two who miss out this time, one if the team finishing third makes it through the play offs. Norwich, West Brom, Hull and Coventry all look better placed than us at the moment. We seem on a par with someone like Cardiff. Don’t be surprised to see Pompey or Derby make a decent fist of it too!
 
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Nano said:
If next season is a big if to finish top 6 then why are we paying top 1 prices? Anything below automatics and we're being ripped off with those prices.
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That's not debatable - we are being ripped off.

But from a purely footballing perspective, there is a clear logic to the approach and if there was a way to easily become an automatic promotion side I imagine we'd have done it by now.
 
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