Viva

Oh come on, 2015/16 was a once in a lifetime event that no other club might experience. Last seasons Premier League and Championship tables were very closely aligned with squad values. What happens with your last sentence is we get through about three different managers this season when we are not in the top half. Expectations within the club and fans need to be realistic. I'm sure Cooper hasn't said to the players, I only want you to come 17th because that's the level you are, but the reality is that 17th would be a good season for us.

A bit of a simplistic way of looking at it. Ipswich lost to Liverpool and Man City, but I'd also expect them to lose both matches against Spurs and Villa who would be classed as easier. Ipswich, Southampton, us and Everton will probably be fighting it out for the 17th spot. That is the reality of newly promoted teams.

I was responding to a post saying that we should be aiming for mid table. The squad is currently not the quality of a mid table team. That is just a fact. That doesn't mean we can't finish mid table and far stranger things have happened in football. However, a 17th place finish would be a very good season for us and would enable us to strengthen further next summer, with three more newly promoted teams in a tougher position than us. We are predicted to finish between 30-31.5 points by the spread betting companies. Expectations for this season need to be realistic from fans. We have pretty much had a par start to the season.

We are a good £100m+ spend away from being a mid table squad on paper. It’s debatable whereabouts in the bottom four our squad is on paper. Thats not to say we can’t finish higher, but that’s where we are.

Surprised they all piled round his house to celebrate promotion. Bit surprising if he wasn’t liked by the majority.

A mid table finish? We really haven't got the 10th best squad in the league.

Most new managers come into a struggling club. It was harder for Cooper, as he came into a dressing room that loved the manager and had a very distinct style of play which was drilled into them day after day. His methods will be very different to Enzo's and there are bound to be players that don't like the change. It might take time for the players to be fully up to speed with the new style after being coached by Enzo. If you feel the body language of the players is bad, then that's on them as well as the manager. All this doom and gloom though and we are not in the relegation zone, which will be a huge success if we stay outside this at the end of the season.

Good post. Fans were starting to create this atmosphere of negativity when we were top of the table under Enzo too. That was madness, and going all in to get Cooper out when we aren't in the relegation zone having had a tough set of opening matches is not right either. Let's see how the Bournemouth, Southampton and Ipswich matches go, before pulling the trigger far too early.

Lots of what you have said are natural in a team that's not winning matches. It's not going to be as happy a camp as it was when we won virtually every game in the first half of last season. - I can't remember Mavididi ever playing with a smile on his face. - Justin did a similar interview towards the end of last season ender Enzo. - It's natural Vestergaard isn't happy not being in the team. - I would hope some of the leaders in the team like Coady and Winks are having a go at players not doing their job correctly - Faes needs to accept where the manager wants to play him and crack on!

You aren’t always going to get a manager that plays 100% to your strengths like Enzo did for Winks. Maybe showing some of his limitations then if he’s not as willing to adapt to a new managers ideas.

Fulham offered BDR a new contract, so wanted to keep him. I imagine Ayew would have also got quite a few minutes with Palace this season if we hadn’t come in with a decent offer. They were decent signings for us in our situation on a budget. I’m willing to give Edouard more than a few minutes before judging him too. We are a club aiming for 17th this season. People need to remember that rather than going on about the good times from a few years ago.

He's not going to get many minutes in the first team, unless we have an injury crisis. A loan would be his best option, but if a Championship club doesn't come in for him that is likely to offer him a lot of playing time, then it would be better to drop down a division to League One.

Maybe he's just not quite as good as people are hoping for, if he's not attracting much Championship interest? If he has to drop down to League One for a loan in January, then I think that would be the best move for him. Needs to be able see what he can do on a regular basis.

We deserved to beat Leeds and I thought it was comfortably our best performance of the season. We were superb for 80 odd minutes. xG doesn’t tell you the whole story. You get a feel for matches and whether we did enough to win them. I don’t think we did enough to win the Boro, Bristol City, QPR, Millwall or Plymouth matches. Yes on another day we could have won them, but we wasn’t unlucky to lose them. We didn’t do enough and teams were playing better against our system than earlier in the season.

You’ve got a short memory! We deserved not to win plenty of those matches. We stole the win against WBA too. Mavididi had a poor second half to the season too, so can understand why he’s not a certain starter for us.

That shape also got found out in the second half of the season. Teams worked out how to play against us.

I think it’s been a good window. Happy with the mix of experience and youth. If it gets us to 17th or above then it will have been a success.

You’re deluded if you think we can compete in the top 6 year after year. No club our size can in this modern era. We tried and did it for a few years. It only takes two bad transfer windows for it to change. We then can’t buy more players to turn it back around like clubs like Chelsea can.

You haven’t answered my question? If we hadn’t got promoted last season, things would have got a lot worse for us. However, we did and are in a far better position than we was 12 months ago. So things aren’t as bad now as you are making out. Would have to get a lot worse again before I’m calling out the DOF. I’ve been happy with this transfer window too. If we stay up, I think we’ll be in a much better position to add more quality next summer.

As Babylon mentioned below, you keep ignoring the fact that we are back in the Premier League. A lot of good decisions last year helped. I’d be interested to know what it would take for you to stop talking about the one year we got things wrong? How successful do we need to become?

Giving credit to a bloke that contributed to us signing the players that helped us win the league, FA Cup and challenge for the Champions League really isn’t indefensible. Neither is giving him credit for signing the players and manager that won us the Championship. The manager also made us good profit to help with PSR. We could go onto consolidating ourselves as a top half Premier League team again and people like you will still go on about the fact we once got relegated because we were trying to achieve more than really a club like ours should be capable of.

Ah yes, the ok Jon reply. Not had that one before.

Did a great job of helping to win the league, FA Cup and having multiple seasons in Europe too. Let’s forget about that though hey.

Then made some great signings in the Championship and hired Enzo, who won us the league and made us £10m profit to help with PSR.

Mavididi was poor for the second half of last season. I don't think he should be a guaranteed starter.