2021/22 expectations

[hippo]

9 hours ago, Lord Willard said:

How far are we away from top 4/5/6

Ollie - nearly made the England squad 2/3rd best English Striker. 

Jack - world class. Top 5 best players in the league, should be hitting 10/10 (goals and assists) 

Buendia - same situation as Ollie just missed out of Argentina squad. I'm hoping for 10/10 again. 

Traore - improving and has potential. Lacks abit of muscle for me to be a top top player.  Expecting 8/6 hopefully more. 

McGinn - Scotlands best player - carried them to the Euros. Can be unplayable but makes mistakes. Needs to find that form for the whole season. 

Dougie - Brazilian international - has so much potential and flair. No one knows if he is a 6 or 8. 

Sanson - a French McGinn. 

Back 5. Brilliant don't think I need to say anything else on them. 

What's the difference between this and a team that finishes 4/5/6?

 

 

We need to avoid those long runs of poor form - even if Jack gets injured.

[Tommo_b]

4 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

Those of you who say top 6 who of these teams are we legit finishing above? 

Man City

Liverpool 

Chelsea 

Man Utd

Leicester 

Spurs 

Arsenal 

West Ham

Leeds 

Everton 

Leeds, Everton, West Ham, Arsenal, Spurs and Leicester, oh and I have a sneaky suspicion Man United will implode this next season, Ole has winged it there for too long. 
 

So by that theory… too 4?

[Phil Silvers]

21 minutes ago, Tommo_b said:

Leeds, Everton, West Ham, Arsenal, Spurs and Leicester, oh and I have a sneaky suspicion Man United will implode this next season, Ole has winged it there for too long. 
 

So by that theory… too 4?

I think the top 4 will remain the same for some time unless the game is levelled up.

That said, Ole is a factor and they may well do an Arsenal, so top 3 probably nailed on as city Chelsea Liverpool. 

The rest is up for grabs but I could see Leeds Everton and spam as comfortably mid table.

If our new signings click, I can see us and Leics as the ones to push for top 6 ahead of the London scum.

 

Edit.. I would love it if Brentford were the highest placed London team behind Chelsea. 

Edited June 11, 2021 by Phil Silvers

[Mic09]

1 minute ago, Phil Silvers said:

I think the top 4 will remain the same for some time unless the game is levelled up.

I thought that for a long time, but then I look at us, Leeds, Everton, West Ham, Leicester.

We were bottom of that pile, and we were literally 3 wins and 2 draws away. Everton and Leeds even closer.

I think that 'the gap' in quality is not that big anymore. We beat Brighton and Burnley, don't concede 2 JWP freekicks, have a goal allowed vs West ham and we are up there. 

It's really conceivable that the above mentioned teams could repeat and marginally improve on last season and end up in Europe. 

I think that the margins are so close we can't really talk about a big gap in quality anymore. 

[Phil Silvers]

1 minute ago, Mic09 said:

I thought that for a long time, but then I look at us, Leeds, Everton, West Ham, Leicester.

We were bottom of that pile, and we were literally 3 wins and 2 draws away. Everton and Leeds even closer.

I think that 'the gap' in quality is not that big anymore. We beat Brighton and Burnley, don't concede 2 JWP freekicks, have a goal allowed vs West ham and we are up there. 

It's really conceivable that the above mentioned teams could repeat and marginally improve on last season and end up in Europe. 

I think that the margins are so close we can't really talk about a big gap in quality anymore. 

Fair. The fine lines of what could have been, we really don't need to do a lot different to improve on last year, factor in Buendia + others and we have to be optimistic. 

I hope your are correct about the gap narrowing as the game is crying out for it and will implode without it.

[Mic09]

1 minute ago, Phil Silvers said:

Fair. The fine lines of what could have been, we really don't need to do a lot different to improve on last year, factor in Buendia + others and we have to be optimistic. 

I hope your are correct about the gap narrowing as the game is crying out for it and will implode without it.

Don't get me wrong; I think Man City will be the English Bayern Munich, but the rest is really up for grabs. 

[Phil Silvers]

5 minutes ago, Mic09 said:

Don't get me wrong; I think Man City will be the English Bayern Munich, but the rest is really up for grabs. 

Leicester and us are in the best position, although most of the league do not know what we are about just yet. 

Chelsea will be the ones to keep Citeh on their toes, Liverpool could regress a bit post klopp VVD Salah Mane. ManU unknown but will never get back to Fergie levels. Arsenal same, they need another Wenger and they do not grow on trees. Spurs need a miracle. 

The rest will flirt between 7-11th but I'd expect West ham to cash in and hamper themselves. 

 

[CVByrne]

I really think we'll be up there in next two years like Leicester competing for the top 4 into the final 4 or 5 games of the season. We need to keep signing these players we know will improve the first team and thus the squad.

[Tommo_b]

Actually in hindsight finishing where we did may have been good for us moving into next season. 
 

A lot of teams and fans will be massively underestimating this team.

[Phil Silvers]

3 minutes ago, Tommo_b said:

Actually in hindsight finishing where we did may have been good for us moving into next season. 
 

A lot of teams and fans will be massively underestimating this team.

100% 

[CVByrne]

We're 7/1 for the top 6 next season which prices us at a 12.5% chance. That's a great bet, I'd say we should be more like 3/1 or 7/2

[rubberman]

2 hours ago, villalad21 said:

Those of you who say top 6 who of these teams are we legit finishing above? 

Man City

Liverpool 

Chelsea 

Man Utd

Leicester 

Spurs 

Arsenal 

West Ham

Leeds 

Everton 

Spurs, Arsenal, West Ham, Leeds and Everton all absolutely possible. 

Arsenal finished strong, but still aren't that convincing.

Spurs will be in transition.

West Ham overachieved and will be lucky to have another season as good.

Everton and Leeds were only marginally ahead of us.

And I can see Man Utd having a trickier season, but they still have enough individual quality in depth so I'd have them 5th behind City > Chelsea/Liverpool > Leicester. We could be anywhere in the next few places IMO.

[Dave-R]

My expectations are simple really, anything better than the 11th we put in season gone.

Though I will say this, sometimes when you have a cracking season because of how we did because of so many different reasons that were out of our power, I kind of feel we may of done better than what we should of. I feel as though if we have a worse season by any chance, then all is not lost and it certainly won't be back tracking or taking steps back.

I think many will judge seasons gone 11th place and not see it for what it were, a successful, very successful season built on a crazy season with Crazy world events where inconsistency was a huge problem for most. The season happened the way it did because a world wide event decided to screw around with everything and I feel if we did worse next season then it would be wrong of us to compare it to season gone.

I think as fans come back now and the chants, the boos get to players, it will set apart the real talent and teams that would usually thrive from fans that were unable to due to covid. We will start to see consistent runs of wins that change l the season back to what they were like before Corona hit the world.

I do have a theory though that the so called big six teams a couple of them like Arsenal, Spurs and possibly Chelsea, may struggle more against teams like ours, Leeds, Leicester, West ham, Everton n so on. We and many teams are closing them down in many ways including signings, coaching, financial ability and of course playing on the field.

[Sulberto21]

If we had taken our 'easy' (relatively speaking) chances we would have finished very close to the top 4. 

This for me is a massive positive because it shows we're not far off just need that extra bit of killer instinct. Say last season if we had Buendia and Jack I think we'd be easily making reservations for Madrid Barcelona et al. 

I think we're going to have a good un. The addition of Buendia from a purely defensive POV makes me very confident that we'll cause a lot of damage again this season. 

Edit : I'd love us to sacrifice someone to wipe out the sabre toothed knobend when we play the scummy barstools of Stretford.

Edited June 11, 2021 by Sulberto21

[VillaJ100]

Yeah we did have some crazy results. Like when do Burnley ever score 3? and we conceded two direct free kicks which happens roughly every 4000 games or every 5 and a bit years.

[Keyblade]

17 hours ago, Kiwivillan said:

 Ref decisions

If that ain't the truth...

[nepal_villan]

10 hours ago, Mic09 said:

I think that 'the gap' in quality is not that big anymore. We beat Brighton and Burnley, don't concede 2 JWP freekicks, have a goal allowed vs West ham and we are up there. 
 

This goes both ways, no? We were fortunate to get wins versus Wolves and Southampton and the draw against WBA.

[Mic09]

1 hour ago, nepal_villan said:

This goes both ways, no? We were fortunate to get wins versus Wolves and Southampton and the draw against WBA.

Nope, it only works to prove my narrative.

[sidcow]

Back to Man U, take away their usual 6 points from us and they would only have finished 2 points ahead of Leicester. 

I agree, they may have finished an unlikely second but I can see them being vulnerable still. 

[MotoMkali]

18 hours ago, villalad21 said:

Those of you who say top 6 who of these teams are we legit finishing above? 

Man City

Liverpool 

Chelsea 

Man Utd

Leicester 

Spurs 

Arsenal 

West Ham

Leeds 

Everton 

The bottom 5. I expect Leeds to have second season syndrome. But if not with a fit jack we should be ahead.

Everton had the worst goal difference in the top 11 which is more indicative of future performance and they just lost Ancelloti and are probably replacing him with Nuno. 

Arsenal are a fading club they needed a 30 year old striker to turn the corner on his form over the last 2 seasons to finish 8th. Leno has looked shaky, their defence is somewhat suspect. They have 2 central midfielders and are instead looking to invest 50 million in white, they have 500k a week spent on willian and auba etc. 

Spurs are an aging squad, and with a decent chance of Kane moving on I don't see how they get top 6 next year. 

West Ham will probably struggle next season, I think they overperformed especially with that Lingard purple patch. He got zero goals and 1 assist in his last 6 games but scored 9 goals and got 3 assists in his 10 games prior. I don't think it is realistic to count on that production from him again. Especially as he seems to be a spree scorer. He has scored like 35 goals in 50 games over 4 separate patches of his career. And has scored like 10 others in the 200 other games he has played. 

Plus aside from that had Jack been fully fit we were on track for 6th place finish this season and I expect we will invest heavily and we won't be playing the corpse of Elmo as a backup to cash next season which cost us 3 goals in 3 games or something like that.