[Football] Anyone else really looking forward to next season?

[Napper]

Does our 10 point buffer plus the 26 superior goal difference not give you any cause for optimism in our fight to the death with West Brom?

was more a response to the comments only talking about Fulham. Fulham are gone IMO

West Brom could rally , not concerned , yes optimistic. If they lose thrsday then would prob say they are gone too

 

[Questions]

I'm not sure. Talk of selling players for that magic £50 million mark disappoints. We should be keeping them and adding a striker. That said, interesting fact last night that Maupay has scored more than any Chelsea player. Just need the others to score as well.

I really rate Lallana but his finishing has been poor.

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Oh you can’t wait to have a good moan

How many games will it last until you start politely enquiring about the merits of Potters CV? [emoji38]

Read my post #46 again that you quoted. It was my love letter to the beautiful game you weird obsessive tvvat. Well, pre-season anyways Oh you can't wait to have a good Cult Of Potter stalk

 

[Comrade Sam]

What's not to be excited about? We're awesome and I wish we could play on through the summer. We've all waited a life time for a team that could play like this in the Premier. Poyet gave us a glimpse, but even then we could go for turgid months devoid of a shot at goal. Potter has made a thing of beauty with little more than bits of old string and washing up liquid bottles. I want more and have that excited anticipation before each game that I had when I used to queue up for the North Stand back in the eighties!

 

[Pavilionaire]

Is it wrong of me to be hugely disappointed with Maupay? I'd have expected at least 12-15 goals by now and 18 for the season.

1. What do you expect for the £16m - £20m we paid? As it is, he is level with Mane and Gabriel Jesus.

2. Even at the lower end of your scale 12 goals would make him the 10th highest scorer in the Prem. All of the Top 10 scorers play for teams in the top half of the table.

 

[Weststander]

This. There's always huge amounts of apologists on here saying why it's impossible that we could ever do what, say, West Ham or Leeds somehow manage to do with a a seeming minimum of effort in a single season. Or do something as simple as signing the next Ollie Watkins for the going rate who will only cost 50% more the following season. These are simple, relatively straightforward issues to address. Instead we're asked to believe in a long term goal of Top Ten. That's a bit of a pitiful incremental wishlist 'if I'm being honest'. Far more likely to fall by the wayside due to lack of investment in critical areas.

Oh well. Don't really care on a personal level at which level we play 'going forward'. Sort of care about Tony Bloom blowing his massive investment through lack of investment in credible strikers tho. And no it's not my money. Not my investment at stake either

And... RELAX

Cost of squads:
West Ham £355m - until this season, their fans have been relentless moaners, dominating phone ins.
Villa £365m
Leeds spent £100m last summer, despite no stadium income, they were already badly run financially making a £62m loss last season.

Albion £205m
TB has loaned/gifted the club £395m. For the first time in his reign, the club had to take out a sizeable bank facility to see us through lockdowns.

Your view that TB should pump in vast addition sums, to satisfy your impatient lust for West Ham style success, is unrealistic and unfair on TB.

 

[blue-shifted]

was more a response to the comments only talking about Fulham. Fulham are gone IMO

West Brom could rally , not concerned , yes optimistic. If they lose thrsday then would prob say they are gone too

Even if we lose all our games, which of course we won't, WBA will still not find 11 points from their 7 remaining games. They're gone already

 

[blue-shifted]

Win against Sheffield and the relegation battle is over.

Indeed looking forward to next season. I imagine it might start a bit rough as the team needs to adapt to playing without Bissouma, but by the end of the season I think Brighton will be in the top 12 with 50 points or so., though that could be adjusted downwards or upwards depending on what happens in the summer (transfers in and out, Lamptey situation).




Yes, expecting someone to be a top 3 goal scorer in the PL is a bit "wrong". Generally speaking people really dont have realistic expectations on the number of goals from strikers.

This is a hangover from our days (making up the great majority of our history) down the leagues.

It's common to talk about 20 goal a season strikers when you play 46 games, plus some noddy cups. 20 goals then is a good, but unexceptional return.

The parlance hasn't been updated to be appropriate to a perpetually struggling lower PL side

 

[London Irish]

Cost of squads:
West Ham £355m - until this season, their fans have been relentless moaners, dominating phone ins.
Villa £365m
Leeds spent £100m last summer, despite no stadium income, they were already badly run financially making a £62m loss last season.

Albion £205m
TB has loaned/gifted the club £395m. For the first time in his reign, the club had to take out a sizeable bank facility to see us through lockdowns.

Your view that TB should pump in vast addition sums, to satisfy your impatient lust for West Ham style success, is unrealistic and unfair on TB.

But isn't this an argument for just saying we can't compete with midtable teams? How does fatalism like that create a massive buzz and excitement about the next season?

 

[London Irish]

Yep we might, let's see. Obviously 13th would be some measure of progress but I'd compare us to Southampton right now, who have mostly kept out of trouble better than us this season but their fans are not getting carried away with what they've done, it's a bit more of a grounded sense of where they are than some of the stuff I read about us on here I think

Also one of the other interesting questions is how you interpret an end-of-season dead rubber surge. Boosters will say it gives strong indications of how a team will start the next season, yay excitement. Others will say that the near-beach football games don't replicate the cut-throat intensity you see when the competition starts again proper in the new season. It's difficult to unpick which is true here

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Cost of squads:
West Ham £355m - until this season, their fans have been relentless moaners, dominating phone ins.
Villa £365m
Leeds spent £100m last summer, despite no stadium income, they were already badly run financially making a £62m loss last season.

Albion £205m
TB has loaned/gifted the club £395m. For the first time in his reign, the club had to take out a sizeable bank facility to see us through lockdowns.

Your view that TB should pump in vast addition sums, to satisfy your impatient lust for West Ham style success, is unrealistic and unfair on TB.

Impatient lust? Oh, PLEASE!

Much as I always respect your wise posts, think you're calling this one wrong mate. The whole of football has identified the Albion's primary weakness: Lack Of Goals. Might well have the lushest training ground in the land but that don't count for jackshit in the short or even medium term. Empires crumble, and some last longer than others. Maybe best TB keep his eye on the immediate ball tho eh?

 

[Machiavelli]

Agree that there's a lack of progress in terms of the table, but I'd argue there's been massive improvements in terms of the potential to make progress. At the end of the Hughton era I'd argue we were playing as a relegation fodder team. No confidence, no sign of any genuine attacking intent to go and win games. As we finish this season, it's a completely different feel to me - we look up for it every game. We've pushed top 6 sides to the limit. The reason we are where we are currently is because of how many points we've thrown away from winning positions - that's a big change, and while we're still dropping points we're not dropping them (note: I've not actually checked the stats...) at the same rate in the Sanchez half of the season as we were in the Ryan half of the season.

All of this. I think Sanchez is now up to 9 clean sheets (no bedwetting for him ) out of 21 games, but it might be 10 out of 22.

 

[Machiavelli]

The important thing is to keep expectations realistic and not get carried away...

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There I was thinking it only contained Spain, Italy and the UK. Silly me.

 

[Weststander]

But isn't this an argument for just saying we can't compete with midtable teams? How does fatalism like that create a massive buzz and excitement about the next season?

I'd hate for us to always in relegation battles, who would? Midtable Championship would be more enjoyable.

Steadily and surely, I think we're heading in the right direction on every level.

Winstanley and Bloom came to the EPL 4 years ago inexperienced in elite level player recruiting. Expensive gaffs were made in Jahanbakhsh and Locadia, in terms of fees and wages. I get the impression recruiting is now far more measured, I hope that'll benefit us this summer.

 

[Weststander]

Impatient lust? Oh, PLEASE!

Much as I always respect your wise posts, think you're calling this one wrong mate. The whole of football has identified the Albion's primary weakness: Lack Of Goals. Might well have the lushest training ground in the land but that don't count for jackshit in the short or even medium term. Empires crumble, and some last longer than others. Maybe best TB keep his eye on the immediate ball tho eh?

You're a socialist, but not when spending TB's money for him.

 

[Badger Boy]

The creativity is already there l think, we are making a lot of chances . . . sadly though only taking a very few of them.

I think we don't take many because we don't create many genuinely good chances. Lallana's last night was pretty much the only chance you'd expect us to take. The Welbeck shot off the post was magnificent but I wouldn't really call that a chance created. I think we end up with a lot of players in a small space and we need to get better at moving the ball quickly.

All the time the door is firmly closed at the back we have the margin for error and it's the one area of the game every team is looking to improve on. We're very, very close to being a top 10 side. We're there up until the final third in my opinion.

 

[Terry Butcher Tribute Act]

Why should what West Ham have done this year be so beyond our ambitions? But ok if it is, what about what Leeds have done in 10th? Or are Leeds now so huge a club beyond our reach? OK scratch that, can we match Palace in 13th? A finish near there might represent some measure of progress. Why do fans think a constant bottom 5 is us doing great? Any intelligent responses please rather than the usual superfan droning about just loving relegation struggles

Agreed. So many people have a 'little Brighton' mindset. We've been poor this season but in recent weeks have looked so much more solid at the back that there's encouragement that we might actually fulfil our promise next season and do what we should have done this year. There's no way we should have been knocking about just above the relegation zone imho

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

 

[Pavilionaire]

It's annoying that the bulk of those teams in the second quartile of the Prem have improved: Leicester, West Ham, Everton, Aston Villa. To break into the Top 10 we'll have to do better than at least one of them or The Super Six.

On the plus side Wolves, Southampton, Palace, Newcastle, Burnley seem to be regressing so - as things stand - there is a good opportunity to be vying with Leeds for 11th / 12th spot.

 

[Surf's Up]

Me. Have you not noticed, that despite our football being more pleasing to the eye, we are still currently a lowly16th in the table and in a relegation scrap?

We are evolving as a side and are a work in progress - our defence and midfield are both good and getting better every game but as we all know we don't score enough goals meaning we draw too many games and we lose too many points when we take the lead in games. Fix this, and it won't be cheap, and who knows

 

[blue-shifted]

It's annoying that the bulk of those teams in the second quartile of the Prem have improved: Leicester, West Ham, Everton, Aston Villa. To break into the Top 10 we'll have to do better than at least one of them or The Super Six.

On the plus side Wolves, Southampton, Palace, Newcastle, Burnley seem to be regressing so - as things stand - there is a good opportunity to be vying with Leeds for 11th / 12th spot.

If we finish below any of Burnley, Newcastle or Palace next season we'll have underperformed.

You'd hope above all 3 promoted clubs as well.

Wolves, Southampton and Leeds might be tougher nuts to crack and I reckon those are our three benchmark clubs. We want to be up and around them

Villa are one ACL away from being a relegation threatened side again, so maybe include them

I'm not ruling out one of Everton, Spurs or West Ham finishing in the lower half

Arsenal with their young team and decent manager should improve year on year