Blessing in Disguise

[tmesis]

I can't really say it's a blessing in any way, unless we can somehow shift our highest wage earners off the payroll as a result.

The fact is that despite this team never looking good enough to have any chance of staying in the premier league if promoted, we'd still have had more chance of kicking off 2015/16 in the premier league if we'd got promoted this season.

Next season will be probably at best a season of rebuilding. At worst, a season with a much weakened squad and a 10 point deduction.

[Libertine]

I don't think this is a "blessing in disguise" on multiple levels.

First off we would have been a longshot to win the play-offs. So our not being promoted was, for me, an expected outcome. Secondly it is going to hurt our ability to find an owner who actually wants to own a professional football club that currently still is in one of the highest levels in the UK. Being promoted would have helped us find an owner who, for example, would have made some modest purchases in the January window when we are decimated with injuries but with a good chance at promotion. I am not angry at the players, or on field management team, I am fuming at our skint owners who did absolutely nothing to improve their team when an opportunity for success was realistic.

What will next year bring? If we have the same ownership group, thus assuming a good many players will be sold off and maybe our manager will walk, mid table will probably be considered a massive success. If we can find an owner who is interested in actually being an owner of a team one step from the Premier League, and who has the ambition to see we make it up to the next level, I might be a bit more optimistic.

Right now I see very little in the way of blessings from this season...

[loyalroyal4life]

Time will prove it is a blessing.....the league table never lies and the fact we finished 7th is testimony to the woeful standard in the Championship. Once the club is sold and the crap on high is sorted out we can in the proverbial words move on and up. We've got a competitive league to look forward to next season and a competition we can compete in unlike the Premiershite which may as we'll be on Mars it's that far away from where we are .

Can't be competitive if all our players get sold off and we don't find adequate replacements for them.


Do agree though finishing 7th in this league, with squad we have is a poor showing in my eyes.

[jellytot]

We obviously have to -

1) find a new owner.
2) allow NA to move on the players he doesn't want
And bring in a few he wants. Plus promote 3 or 4 academy players.
3) ensure we keep cat 1 status and build training ground.
4) we will lose 2 or 3 key players whether we like it or not.
5) run at promotion.

If the ownership issue is not resolved then it will mean most of the first Team sold with the academy filling the holes. For me most important is maintaing cat 1 status. Losing that will be a disaster. That is our club's future. Mid table struggle with no owner or possible relegation fight.

[mambo3]

I don't think this is a "blessing in disguise" on multiple levels.

First off we would have been a longshot to win the play-offs. So our not being promoted was, for me, an expected outcome. Secondly it is going to hurt our ability to find an owner who actually wants to own a professional football club that currently still is in one of the highest levels in the UK. Being promoted would have helped us find an owner who, for example, would have made some modest purchases in the January window when we are decimated with injuries but with a good chance at promotion. I am not angry at the players, or on field management team, I am fuming at our skint owners who did absolutely nothing to improve their team when an opportunity for success was realistic.

What will next year bring? If we have the same ownership group, thus assuming a good many players will be sold off and maybe our manager will walk, mid table will probably be considered a massive success. If we can find an owner who is interested in actually being an owner of a team one step from the Premier League, and who has the ambition to see we make it up to the next level, I might be a bit more optimistic.

Right now I see very little in the way of blessings from this season...

Didn't Leicester find owners when they were in the championship?

That Team was good enough to have been automatically promoted.If we had won the easy games we would I'm sure been
Runner up or 3rd. We lost it in the dressing room and tactically on the pitch.

[AirRaidSiren]

Gutted today, didn't think I would be but I think the last minute winner for Brighton was galling. Less said about the pitch invasion the better.

However I think staying down is the best thing for the club at this moment in time. If we had gone up perhaps Anton would've bought the club if we'd gone up and then we would've been stuck with a fickle owner who owned 100% which would have been a disaster, now we're staying down he can f!ck off.

Get shot of the high earners if possible and bring some of those youngsters through, and welcome some of the injured players back to fitness. I think it's a good opportunity to rebuild the squad.

I think it will be an interesting summer. While he could've done some things differently, I also think that Adkins has been short changed and 7th was probably the best he could've got out of that squad.

Roll on next season.

Good post. I totally agree.

[mambo3]

Not sure it's a 'blessing in disguise', the financial realities will certainly hit this summer as a result, but there are positives to come out of today.

Taylor's cameo should have hopefully shown Adkins that he is better off putting his faith in local youth, rather than the overpaid and underperforming prima donnas we've added to the squad over the past few years. Obviously we need an experienced core in which to supplement with our academy guys, but there are a number of players in that first team squad that I will be DELIGHTED to see leave this summer.

Hopefully we'll get the ownership situation sorted and be able to add some quality this summer, but even if we don't I'm looking forward to seeing a more motivated, energetic team next season.

If we don't make changes, and the line-up for the first game of next season is even remotely similar to what we've seen over the past few weeks, then my enthusiasm for the club will be severely tested.

Who do you think is going to buy them and why should they leave with there fat contracts. More of the same!

[Ian Royal]

Personally I think today proved we had enough to be top 6. The players need to take a long hard look at themselves today. Too many of them went missing for games we should have won.

I agree and that makes it all the more disappointing. We more than matched the second placed team and just showed what might have been.

And no matter how I look at it I can't see a blessing in disguise, I just see a huge opportunity lost

Blessings.
It's not our fault if QPR go up.
We don't have to see us get beat at Wembley again.
We don't have to go through a season of patronising MotD fans.
We hopefully won't have to go through a season of losing most weeks and barely ever winning or genuinely competing.
We hopefully won't have to go through another relegation.
We get to renew acquaintances with Brentford.
We will hopefully get to see more of our excellent youth players come through into the first team, far more satisfactory than spending millions on mercenaries.

[sandman]

Good words from NA over on the OS. Very encouraging.

What, did he quit?

[tmesis]

That Team was good enough to have been automatically promoted.If we had won the easy games we would I'm sure been
Runner up or 3rd. We lost it in the dressing room and tactically on the pitch.

Every team will look back on games where they dropped points where they think they should have won.

The truth is that at no stage this season did we look convincing, which is a big reason why fans spent a whole season grumbling. It didn't feel remotely like a promotion campaign because the performances weren't those of a team who looked like promotion contenders.

[Snowball]

Memory is fickle and I must be older than I think (or the Mad Cow is cutting in)

I actually thought we finished the season really well, my head turned by us beating Boro and Doncaster and then the great 2-2 versus Burnley

We didn't!

Forget the Yeovil, Barnsley, Wednesday and Millwall errors,

Our last six games, "going for it" were W2 D2 L2 (Goals 9-10) and a measly 8 points = 1.33 ppg

We were FOURTEENTH in the form table, just above the abysmal Forest. Had we beaten Burnley we'd've been 8th on form.

Jeez.

Brighton OTOH were second, 4-2-0 and scoring 13-4, so made up 6 points and 10 goals in GD in 6 games

[winchester_royal]

Not sure it's a 'blessing in disguise', the financial realities will certainly hit this summer as a result, but there are positives to come out of today.

Taylor's cameo should have hopefully shown Adkins that he is better off putting his faith in local youth, rather than the overpaid and underperforming prima donnas we've added to the squad over the past few years. Obviously we need an experienced core in which to supplement with our academy guys, but there are a number of players in that first team squad that I will be DELIGHTED to see leave this summer.

Hopefully we'll get the ownership situation sorted and be able to add some quality this summer, but even if we don't I'm looking forward to seeing a more motivated, energetic team next season.

If we don't make changes, and the line-up for the first game of next season is even remotely similar to what we've seen over the past few weeks, then my enthusiasm for the club will be severely tested.

Who do you think is going to buy them and why should they leave with there fat contracts. More of the same!

Fortunately quite a few are out of contract. Of the rest I expect there''ll be foreign interest in Pog who has had a reasonable season, Alf will always attract interest, and McCarthy should be easy to sell for decent money.

If it is more of the same next season then crowds will dip below 15k on a regular basis..

[kwik-silva]

Memory is fickle and I must be older than I think (or the Mad Cow is cutting in)

I actually thought we finished the season really well, my head turned by us beating Boro and Doncaster and then the great 2-2 versus Burnley

We didn't!

Forget the Yeovil, Barnsley, Wednesday and Millwall errors,

Our last six games, "going for it" were W2 D2 L2 (Goals 9-10) and a measly 8 points = 1.33 ppg

We were FOURTEENTH in the form table, just above the abysmal Forest. Had we beaten Burnley we'd've been 8th on form.

Jeez.

Brighton OTOH were second, 4-2-0 and scoring 13-4, so made up 6 points and 10 goals in GD in 6 games

Brighton had a much easier run-in against teams that we'd played and not beaten, such as Yeovil. I don't really understand the point you're trying to make.

[Ian Royal]

I think he's trying to say he'd made an assumption and was wrong. I'm not sure if the implication is we all did the same as him. That would also be wrong.

[Hoop Blah]

Memory is fickle and I must be older than I think (or the Mad Cow is cutting in)

I actually thought we finished the season really well, my head turned by us beating Boro and Doncaster and then the great 2-2 versus Burnley

We didn't!

Really depends what you define as good and what you define as finishing the season.

Our last 5 games was pretty decent. We got a bit of a hiding at Wigan yes, but we did alright against the two best teams in the division and almost won our last 3 games with a bit more luck yesterday.

[pea]

We still have parachute payments so we're at an advantage compared to some others in the division. Drenthe, Bridge, Kelly, Carrico and Roberts are all out of contract and easy savings from the wage bill with minimal impact on the first team. McAnuff and others could all go as well or will have to sign contracts we can afford. The two players that changed the game yesterday were academy graduate substitutes, our player of yhe season has come out of our academy this season, we could arguably have been stronger defensively the last few games with Hector in the team (which would have seen 4 of our back 5 from the academy), Karacan will be back and instantly strengthen the first team.

A lot of positives, I think people are overplaying the issues. Yes we will probably sell some of our bette players to balance the bill but that is only because we didnt last summer. We have strength in depth at most positions and academy players coming through (three this season). We can cope and we'll probably have a more settled side as a result.

[Snowball]

Memory is fickle and I must be older than I think (or the Mad Cow is cutting in)

I actually thought we finished the season really well, my head turned by us beating Boro and Doncaster and then the great 2-2 versus Burnley

We didn't!

Really depends what you define as good and what you define as finishing the season.

Our last 5 games was pretty decent. We got a bit of a hiding at Wigan yes, but we did alright against the two best teams in the division and almost won our last 3 games with a bit more luck yesterday.

We had TWO hidings in the last six games. Wigan and Bournemouth.

We were poor first 2/3 of the game at now-relegated Doncaster, but pulled it out of the fire

Played decently against Leicester, Boro and Burnley

[Ian Royal]

Changing your sample size to suit your argument?

[P!ssed Off]

If it is more of the same next season then crowds will dip below 15k on a regular basis..

The official drop in attendances will be massive.
But in truth home attendances have been fairly artificial high for a number of months now.
It's not the attendance the club are announcing in the 2nd half, it's how many tickets they have sold.

How many of the 14.5K season ticket holders gave up mid season?
There's been so many empty seats week after week, it's a joke when the club announces the typical 18,000 or so 'attendance', when clearly there are not 18,000 people in the stadium.

[West Stand Flash]

If it is more of the same next season then crowds will dip below 15k on a regular basis..

The official drop in attendances will be massive.
But in truth home attendances have been fairly artificial high for a number of months now.
It's not the attendance the club are announcing in the 2nd half, it's how many tickets they have sold.

How many of the 14.5K season ticket holders gave up mid season?
There's been so many empty seats week after week, it's a joke when the club announces the typical 18,000 or so 'attendance', when clearly there are not 18,000 people in the stadium.

How is it a joke? The clubs always going to announce the attendance as amount of tickets sold, every club/concert would. Jesus