I have to say that I actually feel much better about this season than I did last. Not because I expect more good results than last time, or because I think we’ve got a much better squad (I don’t think we’ve replaced the likes of Nelson, Whyte or Browne with players as good as they were, but I also don’t think we had a striker as good as Taylor or a centre midfielder as good as Brannagan has seemingly become in the last few months either, so it’s swings and roundabouts).
It’s because there are now no excuses. Our owners and our manager have been here for 18 months, had more than 60 league games at the helm and three full transfer windows to sort the squad out. The club has also had half a dozen winding up petitions to learn from and finally got the training ground to a point where it isn’t a building site, which should have given us a much more peaceful pre-season with far better preparation environments. On the face of it, this season is geared up to be better than last in an awful lot of ways. We’ve had nothing thrown at us apart from reassuring statements and strong messaging affirming how everything is amazing and rosy, both from the club and their cheerleaders, and as such expectations are high. Why not? Let’s have a damn good go, I say. Even if we don’t finish top six, we should be in the top half of the table for virtually the entire season, you’d expect. There’s certainly no way a repeat of last season’s horrific start could be justified, nor another season where most of it is spent in and around the drop zone. The board have also given the manager a new three year contract, so seemingly we now know exactly where we are. Whatever anyone thinks of this, that or the other on any of the matters mentioned above, the club seems to be saying that it knows exactly what it wants, where it thinks it’s going and how it believes it’s going to get there. And the people involved have had enough time to not only be able, but probably to be expected, to know those things and start getting them right.
So I say to those concerned: crack on. Get on with it and show everybody how good you are, and how knowledgable you are. Prove that you know better than anybody else. Because if you do, it’s happy days for anybody who spends time, money and huge chunks of their own sanity following this football club. It’ll mean we’ve had some form of success, which is what we all hope for and spend our time and money hoping to see firsthand. But if you DON’T succeed, and we don’t move forward at all... well, the proof will be in the pudding, won’t it? And if that happens there’s nothing anyone in the stands can do about that, and therefore none of us should be that worried, because it’s completely on the people at the top. They’ve embarked on quite the campaign of PR leading up to this season, and they’ve set expectations high with their statements about a lot of the players they ended up bringing in, so it’s on them to deliver something that is a marked step forward on last time. There’s absolutely no justification for not at least improving on last term, when we finished 12th. That’s the minimum we can reasonably expect, because otherwise it’s a failure. Better facilities, more stability, another year of learning and experience, a load of players we were assured are so good we just had to keep waiting for them as we would never have got them otherwise... there’s no way we can finish lower than 12th, is there?
We’re in a position where it seems there’s at least a fairly decent squad on paper, there’s at least a fairly decent infrastructure and environment for the playing staff to exist within, and there’s been at least a fairly decent amount of money spent on sorting all of that out. So if it goes wrong? Well, it should be pretty fixable, shouldn’t it? There’s nothing wrong with the setup anymore if people are being honest and straight up - we can’t have any excuses about this or that being wrong behind the scenes, being too thin on the ground here, needing somebody in over there etc. If it doesn’t work it’s because the people charged with making it work haven’t done their job. If that happens then certain people will have to make changes, and if they make changes and everything is as solid as we’ve been assured off the pitch, and the team is as good as we’ve been told it is on paper, then it won’t be an issue finding somebody semi-competent to at least do a half-decent job of it.
Basically, if everything is exactly as we’ve been told, it’s only the manager failing to perform who can make this season a shocker. And if that happens it’s really easy to sort out, because there’s absolutely no doubt that will be the main source of underperformance if it goes wrong. And if he’s as good as a lot of people say he is, it won’t be a problem anyway. Either we’re in for a decent season, or we’re in a position to know exactly how to fix it if it all goes tits up. We’ve got what we’ve been told is a solid plan, and as a result everybody can see where the escape pods are in case it goes wrong.
So what’s to worry about?
