Chances do not come along every season, so when they do we must take them. Those of us who watched the team in the late sixties know that the low points can last a very long time after a spell of success. AP had the vision to employ NP at the start of the season. NP had the vision to accept a job which must have looked decidedly dodgy with all the money constraints. We don't have the financial clout to be a top premiership team, but we have learned lessons from the last time and need to get back there and put those hard lessons to some use. There are plenty of lower premiership clubs that have made a fist of it, Fulham for example. Do not let NP hear you say that promotion might not be for the best - he wants to test himself at the highest level.
Top comment. Let's do it properly this time and make sure we spend the money on a solid infrastructure instead of a lot of overpaid mercenaries. Do it the Blackpool way and that would be great (this is probably all academic anyway as we have a lot of ground to make up to even get in the play-offs).
Owl your statement (above) is what many fans off the club feel. Unfortunately, others, like twf'y would prefer to be in the PL no matter how the team plays, just for the "prestige" of being there. Like you, and Mussie, to name just a couple of posters on here, I would prefer to go back up when we can, at least, compete with the bottom 10 clubs, rather than get lucky against the top 6. On your last point, being a "yo-yo club" is no bad thing, firstly from a financial point, it gives a constant, additional, revenue stream for the club and, secondly, it says, "too good for the Championship, and, (slowly) becoming good enough for the PL (fingers crossed!!)"
As a fan, Id much rather we spent a year in the Championship, winning games and enjoying each weekend and looking forward to the games. Another year would also give us chance to actually put together a decent team, or the basis of one that COULD stay up. As opposed to being humped every weekend, seeing biased refs give "top" clubs the decisions week in week out. Having been to some of the ****tiest away grounds in the country, I just don't buy the "its special playing these top teams and visiting places like Old Traff, Emirates, Stamford Bridge etc" ****e, they're footy grounds where the home teams generally get the decisions. Fab, nice ground, ****e refs, ****e results. Cept of course that one time in North London mehehe! Either way, can anyone honestly say they preferred being in the PL being beaten every week, and knowing we'd be relegated versus being a good competitive side in the Champ? I really do not get that. Yes, lovely to be there, lovely to visit these places, awesome to prove some of them wrong but once we've left as much as we remember, you really think they give a ****e and remember us? No. I've enjoyed this season since NP arrived, it feels nice to win again.
I'd love the joy of promotion followed by the devastation of relegation for the next 6 seasons, especially if we then got promoted and stayed there.
The simple fact is that you cannot choose when to go up. I would prefer another year of consolidation and give the management team a chance to finish the rebuild job and go up next year with a greater chance of making it stick. However, if the chance came along this season it has to be grabbed with both hands as we do not know what twists the next year will bring. One thing that concerns me about going up this year is any potential decision to change management if things are not going our way. They would be judged on what they could cobble together over the summer and live and die by that team, rather than a squad that they had built yo last. The final factor that crosses my mind is parachute payments. I do not know the exact details and am happy to be corrected, but as I understand it if we were promoted this summer then we would not get another parachute payment before next season, and the premier league money does not kick in until the season has begun meaning you have to build for the prem with whatever funds you already have. I wonder what the intentions are for the parachute money if we stay down. Are the Allams going to look to recoup some of their huge investment (and who could blame them)? Or will all the funds go into the team and wages? If so, combined with money saved on wages as more high earners leave we will have quite a useful war chest for summer building ready for the next championship season.
Should we get promoted survival obviously would depend on recruiting the right players and developing the right mentality. Brown initially did this, he brought in several players with something to prove and set his team out in a "nothing to lose" menatilty, as Blackpool have this year, then when we hit 30 pts he realised that we could say up, and went defensive. On top of that we had injury problems and player disbutes. The question is how would Pearson fair in player recruitment? Well so far I think he has shown he has a good eye. All his players are keen, hungry for sucsess, and all play for each other. Are our players good enough? I think so, if we made a loan signings permanent we could have: Manonne/New keeper Dawson/New LB Gerrard/Hobbs Chester/Ayala? Rosenior/New RB Belaid/Stewart (after recovering) Evans/Harper Cairney/New CM (think we will still get rid of Bullard even if promoted) Koren/Devitt/Amoo Fryatt/McClean Simpson/New Striker Plus Barmby, Cullen, Devitt, Cooper as back up (see Fagan, Garcia ect been released) On papper not too bad, needs some more strength and experience, but the likes of say Greening could bring that. With the Allams and AP i think promotion would be great for us and could really drive the club and city forward
there is nothing negative abt promotion.. nothing, this is the aim of the game surely.. guitartrax has said it well and sik above.. you take it when it comes.. if possible.. in any case the great bunch of young players we have now could only benefit from the PL.. add to that their values would rise if they played well.. there's a long way to go yet...
With the management structure in place it'd be a definite positive, as we surely wouldn't fritter away as much money as we did previously and if we did get relegated then i'm sure we'd be in a stronger position then we are now. There is a little part of me though that almost hopes we don't go up, after the last yr and a half of watching us get spanked royally in the premiership it's been great to watch us hod our own as one of the stronger clubs in the division these past months, and I could see us challenging to go up as champions next year which would be ****ing mint
^^^^^^^^^^^^ This is the correct answer and guitartrax has saved me a lot of typing. However, the real question is whether ALL of our fans could buy into the concept and not use a perceived lack of on-field success as a reason to hound managers and board-members out of the club.
Personally I would prefer to watch Hull City fighting for the 3pts every week and playing attractive football in the Championship than being the top half of the EPL's "easy win" games. Winning the play-offs and the first few weeks of Premiership football were an all time high for the club but what followed was a year and a half of melancholy and inevitable away defeats. The moral of the club is higher in this division and I can say I would rather watch a victory at Glanford park than a humiliation at hands of a team like Wigan. Think back to last season when we had relegation confirmed, there was a few days of depression but then most of us realised what we had been missing from Championship football.
I'd like to see us go up as Champions next year, I think promotion next year would be the best bet of all time. We could still sneak the play-offs this year but I'd like to see us start next season with a settled line-up completely committed to the club, giving us a great base for the future.
it's alright saying "we'll go up as champions" but we'll have the likes of Wolves, Wigan, Blackpool, Birmingham or West Brom coming down.. The Cockney Porn Mafia will escape as usual.. Then add to that, 4 of the current top 8 will still remain meaning plenty of good teams. That said financially we are on sounder footing than many, plus a great management team and coaches.. If we're top 10 this season, surely top 6 is the aim next..
I'm enjoying life in the championship atm. Would be brilliant to reach the playoffs, although if we make them and lose it could be a knock to the system and set us back at the beginning of our campaign? I think we'll just miss out anyway. Another season in the champ and perhaps we'll be after that number one spot. And somebody mentioned the teams coming back down, but west brom would have to sell their quality players like odemwingie, brunt etc, and the same would happen with whoever else went down probably, not to mention with our squad and our form at the moment i'm more than confident we could beat those teams at the foot of the prem. As Owl has been saying, i'd much rather be enjoying my football, looking forward to the games, winning games and having a good time at this moment in time.
definately a positive.. club would be run properly..even if we did get relegated..we would come down richer, and able to build further..
We would need to reduce the wage bill, our quality would be raided by surviving teams and those newly promoted and we would need to rebuild yet again.
Why couldn't we do what WBA did when they were relegated in 2006? They lost virtually nobody, and had they had a decent manager would have been promoted again at the first time of asking.
I think this is definitely a "cross that bridge when we come to it" situation. Every team should be aiming to go up, and as others have said on this thread I feel we have learned from our last tenure in the Prem and may not make the same mistakes. But the revenue we will receive is a great bonus and the reputation will make us more attractive to better players should we wish to pursue them.
