Premier League season, 2021 / 2022

I doubt if there is a single person in any way connected with the club who is content about how the season has gone. But there's a huge range of degrees of discontent between the extremes of "Thank God that's over, roll on next season" on the one hand and "Delia Out, Webber Out, Smith Out, Kit Man Out, Tea Lady Out, Everybody Out" on the other. The most critical tend to make the most noise. I think calling this "our worst season for decades" is way off; on the contrary, despite the failures of this season, I'd say the club is in a far better state and has far better prospects than at any other time in recent decades.

 

It's official. According to not606, we're now a lowly championship club.
New thread to follow. Adios Premier League

 

We will return

 

One day, my happy heart will sing...

...and then I'll suddenly realise it's the bleeding PL again!

 

Well, that's a comprehensive analysis (if you put much store in xG ratings).

 

Yeah, apart from the last bit about “recent decades”.

I think we were in pretty good nick 92-93 or so… and if three decades ago isn’t “recent decades” I’m not sure what is…

I think the best position we have been in since 1995 is the end of the first season under Hughton. We were an established Premier League club at the point and it was absolutely criminal that we engineered relegation for ourselves the following season - but in hindsight it does look like there were some internal problems at the club which ended up coming out the woodwork.

I agree that all the doom and gloom is way off right now, as a club we are in great shape despite relegation.

 

I'd say we had a foothold in the PL at that point, but that's well short of being "an established Premier League club" IMO. Our mid-table finish that season, was courtesy of two unexpected wins in the final two games of the season (versus WBA and Man City). Had we only got the expected single point out of those two games, we would have finished 17th, below Sunderland on goal difference!
Furthermore, Hughton had only just got started on improving the football infrastructure of the club. It's really only now that we can truthfully say we have the facilities and off-field support set-up of a top tier club.
Finally, in 2013 we were still persisting with a structure which expected one person, the manager, to handle every aspect of football-related business. McNally"s "Football Committee" was an acknowledgement of the problem, but a failure to properly address it. We may be a Championship club once again, but we are EPL-ready in ways we were not in 2013. Maybe that's why we finally have some apparently serious investment interest.

 

I would agree with this.

 

That’s pathetic quibbling as usual. It was definitely easier to stay in the Premier League eight-ten years ago. We were going into our third straight season, how many seasons does it take to transform from “foothold” to “established”? What does it matter? Who the **** cares? How is that relevant? The point is we shouldn’t have been relegated the following season and the club was starting to improve.

It’s really pointless derailing of a perfectly interesting discussion, playing some silly definitions game rather than engaging in the point.

And it’s also a deliberate misquote, because I go on to say with hindsight there were things going wrong in the background. The point is that was our strongest position in recent years, not that the club was perfect.

**** this. It’s so boring.

 

I didn't derail anything; I simply took issue with your saying we were at that point established in the PL (even making sure I wrote "IMO" in case you accused me of stating something as fact .........), and highlighted two ways in which the club is in a much stronger position now than it was in 2013. A perfectly reasonable further contribution to the discussion.

 

Er, you did, because it was not relevant to the substance of my post, doesn’t really matter, and has ended up being the focal point so has very much derailed the discussion.

The way you do this sort of pedantic thing is really tiresome. As I said, what’s the difference between “established” and “a foothold”? Where’s the line? Who the **** cares other than you in your weird little world of hating anyone having a different opinion? It’s yet another pathetic, snarky comment from you, which completely misses the point.

So no, it wasn’t a reasonable contribution. It was ****ing stupid. The difference between “a foothold” and “established”, I don’t care about. And clearly not something you really want to discuss either as in your opinion, they’re obviously different. That it’s not relevant to my point at all clearly doesn’t matter to you, because you’d rather be a twat. What sort of knobhead of person takes “issue” with the difference between “foothold” and “established”? I mean for ****’s sake they’re part of the same phrase “established a foothold”.

 

What sort of knob head can't see any difference between having a foothold in the Pl and being an established PL club? And what sort of knob head thinks the fact that "established" and "foothold" can be meaningfully combined in the phrase "established a foothold" means there is no difference? Amusingly, I was going to end my previous reply to you by saying "Rob, stop being such a twat". I resisted; more fool me.

 

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Much better than the usual popcorn memes Hairy!

 

I agree with Robbie in terms of the foothold. We had rocketed up into the PL from League 1 and there were many aspects of the club that were way behind where it needed to be, we had finished in a higher position with fewer points that the first season back. The longer you are in the Premiership the easier it becomes to become what Crystal Palace or Southampton or Brighton are.

Though we are relegated our infrastructure is much better and is part of the 'infinite game' that Webber talks about. Ronaldo found that out when he returned to Man Utd and the swimming pool was decaying since he left, they had spent all their money on players/ managers and wages and the rest of the club has fallen behind and then that has translated onto the pitch with their recruitment and their players performances.

 

I know it's mostly newspapers filling up their column inches, but I'm getting a bit concerned about the transfer rumours that are flying around. They all seem to be either wingers or full backs, neither of which we desperately need at this point. Please don't let this be like previous windows, where everyone and his dog knew we needed a DM and we got a lucky bag of other positions instead.

EDIT: Sorry, this was meant to go in the summer recruitment thread, obviously.

 

No, why are you so intentionally thick here? I’m not saying the two words don’t differ in any circumstances, I’m saying the distinction doesn’t matter to the point of my original post, it makes no difference to it, you knobhead. Who cares whether to be “established” on Robbie the Knob’s definition you need to have been in the Premier League an arbitrary [five] seasons rather than a mere [three]? Who cares whether I think a “foothold” should really be the first venture (so your first season after promotion) as that is the more natural definition)? Who cares that they are clearly both within subjective degrees such that there is a phrase “established a foothold”?

It all makes not a toss of difference to the point I was making. It’s just a totally futile debate and worthless because no-one has defined what the difference between “foothold” and “established” is here, other than you have decided in your subjective head one thing and decided to go an next a massive twat about it to derail a thread.

Which funnily enough is what you always do. You say things like someone is “not a Premier League player” without being bright enough to realise that such a phrase is far too ill-defined to make your point anything other than monumentally stupid.

So stop being such an enormous twat (I won’t resist, you are a fool), by focusing on minutiae of detail that is really pointless semantics. I am quite happy for you to think that three seasons in the Premier League is merely “a foothold” and at some arbitrary point after you will decide in your head what “established” means. But I’m not interested in your semantics and fruitless dogmas, so leave me out of it and stop doing your stupid thing on perfectly decent discussions. You knob.

 

So just out of interest what does it take to become an 'established' PL club ?

If it's something we as a club are aiming for how do we know when we've achieve it ?

Is it just a case of being in the PL for a number of years or is it more than that, i.e. to not be in the relegation battle at the end of a season, or more ? Or is it more about finances or is it about the type of player that you can attract to the club ?

 

Personally I don't think it's possible (other than the big six/seven, of course). Even Everton wobbled this season.

I'd say Palace are about as 'established' as it is possible to be. But one bad season and they're gone.