Promotion and The Prem

Nano said:
Luton only managed 26 points. They did better than the other two but they were still really poor. They seemed like they were in touch but that's because the other teams like Everton and Forest had points deductions. Forest finished 10 points and 15GD better than them once you exclude their 4 point deduction. With the points deduction then 32 points broke the record for lowest points total to survive relegation in the PL and they were still 6 points from danger. All 3 promoted teams were miles away from safety last season.

It's a completely different league to the one we got promoted to in 98. We could compete financially with PL teams when we came up from the championship. It's not possible now. You get about £100m when you get promoted but the average value of a PL player is £20m so it takes about £200m to buy a first XI good enough to compete. It's hard to do and easy to get wrong.
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Fair point about the points deductions, but I don't think you're disputing that PL experience is valuable?
 
Frozen Horse said:
Fair point about the points deductions, but I don't think you're disputing that PL experience is valuable?
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No, not at all. It's a lot more expensive to buy proven premier league players now though. Players like you mentioned "Coops, Pally, Townsend, Gordon and Deane" with a decade of PL experience will be wanting £50k per week as a minimum. Southampton signed Lallana in the summer for example and that's what he is on, similar for Townsend at Luton last year. That's also essentially what we did last time we got promoted though with Negredo and Valdes. The % of players in the PL with that experience are much more likely to be foreign and so don't have the desire to stay in England and drop down to a relegation battle for a big paycut when they could go to another team in Europe for similar money and play European football or to Saudi for a mega contract.

Long term you are probably better trying to build a killer championship squad so you can get relegated and promoted again and using the stronger foundation to then add quality. The experienced players on big wages all leave if/when you get relegated and even the big purchases often do which makes them just expensive loans and then the players that you were promoted with don't stick around to play back-up so you end up with a weaker squad after relegation than you did when you got promoted and nothing to show for your increased outlay.
 
You need to invest in quality.
Quality that gives you a chance of staying up and retaining the quality.
Quality that you can recover book value/make a profit if you have to sell.
Quality that if you go down you can keep it and it will get you back up straight away.
Buy young quality from Championship, big club fringes and abroad if you have the network.
Ipswich have done this.

You may need to spend on experience too if you can’t afford to invest to buy it.
Frees and loans of experienced Prem players who make no sense to buy, but makes sense to pay high wage to on in the short term.

We spent pitifully low in 2016-17 and did not recruit near enough quality to add to a promoted squad that lacked Prem quality.
Brighton did the exact opposite, investing heavily.
Ipswich are trying that route now.

If you don’t step change your squad through investment of young talent and clever spending on experience, you don’t survive. You don’t come back up again either any time soon.
 
Problem is players may sign for you on big wages but do they put a shift in?

I thought Southampton were weak when they got relegated & not really impressed in the championship though passed it about well.

Leicester were terrible in relegation season & good enough to get promoted but lack cutting edge other than Vardy.

Ipswich, are trying to do what we did back in the day: two consecutive promotions in to the top league, if they cut out over playing & errors at the back, they may be able to stay up.

Maybe Wolves or Everton will save one of them.

I trust us to make a decent effort of staying up - if we can get there - without breaking the club..
 
You go up and should expect to come straight back down. Anything else is a bonus. The money is also a bonus.

What happens though is the fans get giddy and start expecting things that are unrealistic. Like the Chairman splurging £140m to try and stay up, or calling for the manager to be sacked when you are above the bottom three then spending the next however many years back in the Championship with managers like Monk & Pullis.
 
It’s 18 months since all three of them stayed up and one of them finished in the top half (and six since they all stayed up for a second time). I think “the promoted sides always get relegated these days” is displaying a recency bias thats extreme even by the already extreme standards of football supporters.
 
Should we manage to get promoted maybe we should try and sign the 2 very best centre backs in the championship and then then 2 of the very best midfielders in the championship ? 🤔😉

That should plenty of cash for a proven striker and probably goal keeper .
 
Blowing the budget on attack and hoping you can stay up is suicide. You used to be able to park the bus and pick up enough points to scrape through but that’s not good enough now either. You need good players in every position and a few standout creative players to open teams up.

I think we’re in as good a position as anyone though. We have a young squad with plenty who should be able to make the step up alongside a few big money signings.
 
For comparison with the 1998 mentioned.

We went up with Charlton and Nottingham Forest.

Both of them immediately went down and it wasn't even close for Forest, they were 11 points adrift.
 
indeedido said:
You need to invest in quality.
Quality that gives you a chance of staying up and retaining the quality.
Quality that you can recover book value/make a profit if you have to sell.
Quality that if you go down you can keep it and it will get you back up straight away.
Buy young quality from Championship, big club fringes and abroad if you have the network.
Ipswich have done this.

You may need to spend on experience too if you can’t afford to invest to buy it.
Frees and loans of experienced Prem players who make no sense to buy, but makes sense to pay high wage to on in the short term.

We spent pitifully low in 2016-17 and did not recruit near enough quality to add to a promoted squad that lacked Prem quality.
Brighton did the exact opposite, investing heavily.
Ipswich are trying that route now.

If you don’t step change your squad through investment of young talent and clever spending on experience, you don’t survive. You don’t come back up again either any time soon.
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I agree with some of your sentiment, but your point on Brighton isn’t right, they didn’t spend big, and not that you said this but they didn’t buy prem experience.

I really like the business Ipswich did and I hope they stay up. Feels much better than when Forest just flung as much money as they could with the hope something stuck.

Personally I still believe you can stay up without spending Forest style money - but you have to make those quality purchases and have a clear plan. The championship is ripe with talent most years.

Interesting how many people think a good chunk of our starting 11 is PL destined (VDB, Hackney, Morris, ELL, McGree, Doak…), and we also already have a number of players who have either already proven at PL level or have played well in one off games against Prem opposition (Fry, Clark, Jones, Forss, Ayling…)
 
If any of our current squad were of Premier League quality they would be playing there. Those mentioned already in the thread have potential. We would be doing really well to keep the relegation battle going until the end of the season, something Karanka tried to explain to our fans in January 2017. I think we could survive with good signings and trust the current recruitment model more than Victor Orta’s one, but the first season up won’t be fun.
 
TeaCider said:
For comparison with the 1998 mentioned.

We went up with Charlton and Nottingham Forest.

Both of them immediately went down and it wasn't even close for Forest, they were 11 points adrift.
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And this despite us finishing second to Forest the promotion season too.

Another fact for those who think Luton made a "decent fist" of it in the Prem last year due to finishing above the other two hopefuls? Remember when we stunk the Prem out last time out, especially from Christmas onwards and with Agnew running the show for umpteen games at the end? That side of ours (who in the words of Bob Mortimer "turned up, farted and left" I believe) with those results would have survived last year, 2 points and +7 GD better off than Luton....
 
I always felt the last time we got promoted we never went heavy on set pieces .. the gap is a lot closer between teams when it comes to set pieces. Get a free-kick specialist in to whack in a few from around the box .. a great corner taker .. and an 8 foot tall central defender to get his bonce onto the crosses .. 10 or 15 goals a season from set-pieces could make all the difference between bottom 3 and staying up
 
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Otto42 said:
If any of our current squad were of Premier League quality they would be playing there.
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Not sure that's quite right, but get what you're saying.

They might be premier league quality already, I think it's very possible you could put them in a prem side and they'd look very capable. But until it's tested, you just don't know.

Tav and Rogers, to name two, were premier league quality while playing in the championship.

If we hadn't drawn Villa in the cup, it's very possible Rogers would still be here in fact.
 
It’s very possible we already have 2 midfielders and 2 centre backs ready to go . It’s not Conway and latte may well be equipped to do a job as well . Think that’s what we’re doing isn’t it ? Trying to build a sustainable squad so every summer we have a good asset to sell or we don’t need to spend £20m on a speculative punt on someone that may do a job in the prem like most promoted sides tend to do
 
Air Resistance said:
I agree with some of your sentiment, but your point on Brighton isn’t right, they didn’t spend big, and not that you said this but they didn’t buy prem experience.
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Don't be daft.
Brighton spent a net 70m in 2017-18 i.e. on promotion.
Then net 77m the next season 2018-19.
Then net 53m the next season 2019-20
Then net 30m the next season 2020-21 despite Covid.

They spent on wages to get promotion, but on signings when they got promoted.
 
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