"What's wrong with Derby?"

[LeedsRam1999]

What we really need is to keep the core of this team together with the likes of Hughes, Martin, Carson, Thorne, Keogh and then add genuine quality. Offload players who don't add anything different to what we have. 

We also need to rehearse 4-2-3-1 as well as 4-3-3 and use on occasions to suit. That's why I am fairly pleased recently despite results as we are at least trying someththing different.

So if we can practice 2 systems, let Mac get who he wants and clear out other managers drivell. We should be fine and in safe hands. 

A full pre season and transfer window would do this squad some good. As well as continuity of manager as that's the only way we can see improvement.

[duncanjwitham]

5 minutes ago, LeedsRam1999 said:

We also need to rehearse 4-2-3-1 as well as 4-3-3 and use on occasions to suit. That's why I am fairly pleased recently despite results as we are at least trying someththing different.

Just changing from 433 to 4231 isn't going to make that much of a difference, we need a style/philosophy shift as well.  We tend to struggle when teams press us high and stop us getting the ball into the forwards feet, and changing the midfield balance won't sort that.  The difference in the last 2 games is that we've got the ball forward a lot quicker - mostly by lumping it over the top and hoping that it sticks with the forwards often enough to outweigh the fact we're giving the ball away a lot more.  It's sort of worked, but it doesn't really suit the squad we have at the moment (not that anything really does, given how much of a mess it is).

If we're genuinely going to use this as a plan B, we need to get at least one strong forward that can hold the ball up when it's played direct to them (and this isn't something that Martin's great at either).  It can either be a big physical winger to play on the left that we can play diagonals to, or it can be a striker that we can use instead of/as well as Martin when needed.

[Ninos]

4 minutes ago, duncanjwitham said:

Just changing from 433 to 4231 isn't going to make that much of a difference, we need a style/philosophy shift as well.  We tend to struggle when teams press us high and stop us getting the ball into the forwards feet, and changing the midfield balance won't sort that.  The difference in the last 2 games is that we've got the ball forward a lot quicker - mostly by lumping it over the top and hoping that it sticks with the forwards often enough to outweigh the fact we're giving the ball away a lot more.  It's sort of worked, but it doesn't really suit the squad we have at the moment (not that anything really does, given how much of a mess it is).

If we're genuinely going to use this as a plan B, we need to get at least one strong forward that can hold the ball up when it's played direct to them (and this isn't something that Martin's great at either).  It can either be a big physical winger to play on the left that we can play diagonals to, or it can be a striker that we can use instead of/as well as Martin when needed.

I'd agree that we no longer have any idea what our footballing vision/identity is and without any vision we won't go anywhere. Director of Football needed imo. And no it's not this guy.

[LeedsRam1999]

3 minutes ago, duncanjwitham said:

Just changing from 433 to 4231 isn't going to make that much of a difference, we need a style/philosophy shift as well.  We tend to struggle when teams press us high and stop us getting the ball into the forwards feet, and changing the midfield balance won't sort that.  The difference in the last 2 games is that we've got the ball forward a lot quicker - mostly by lumping it over the top and hoping that it sticks with the forwards often enough to outweigh the fact we're giving the ball away a lot more.  It's sort of worked, but it doesn't really suit the squad we have at the moment (not that anything really does, given how much of a mess it is).

If we're genuinely going to use this as a plan B, we need to get at least one strong forward that can hold the ball up when it's played direct to them (and this isn't something that Martin's great at either).  It can either be a big physical winger to play on the left that we can play diagonals to, or it can be a striker that we can use instead of/as well as Martin when needed.

Totally agree, one of the reasons I suggested 4-2-3-1 would be a good alternative is because if teams are pressing high, the 4-2-3-1 does allow a more direct approach. If you had a strong forward up front (Martin or other) and a quicker player buzzing around them (Vydra or other), this would allow a more direct approach to said big fella who gives us an outlet. Then the quicker player could be stretching the centre halves whilst the big man competes for the longer ball. This in turn would give us the right to play because if we show variety and show we can beat the press, teams may think twice. 

As you said, linking the tactics to how we set up is important and this would allow us to play a bit more by passing if we can beat the press often enough. 

[Leicester Ram]

I understand people think we're an average championship team (right now, we most certainly are) but we're a championship team made up of different parts of a good championship team.

Ince, Bryson, Keogh, Thorne, Hughes and Martin are the core of a quality 4-3-3 McClaren type team.

Shackell, Johnson, Bent, Pearce, Anya and Vydra are the core of a tough Sean Dyche type team or a counter-attacking Nigel Pearson team.

Players like Russell, Butterfield, Christie, Olsson, Nugent, Forsyth, Blackman and Baird are the sort of top half championship players that aren't the core of the team, but are part of a decent championship squad. 

There's a clear difference between the sort of players we've signed post 14/15 as opposed to before, we need to get to picking one identity. Because we have a core of players that could bury themselves in a championship top 6 if you gave them the right supporting staff.

 

[SKRam]

2 hours ago, eddie said:

Rabbit, meet headlights.

By the sounds of it the rabbit would prefer to meet headlights than a Huddersfield Town player 

[Alph]

I don't understand how a club can have a mental problem 2014 - 2017 when in that time it's had different owners, managers, players.

People talk about rebuild. You won't get more "rebuild" than that!!

[Dethorn]

I cannot remember all the facts - some of you guys really impress me with your recall.

Bu tI cannot believe noone has mentioned the Cup thing.

I seem to remember about three or four times now going out of a cup/playing a weakened team/both when we are on a good run has kind of upset the rythmn/confidence/morale

I think one of my examples was reading ??

Not saying this is everything but I wonder if it contributes.

[TroyDyer]

5 hours ago, Squid said:

It would be nice to have a fully fit squad all season for change without someone's knee exploding! 

But that could be said of every other team in the league. We aren't the only team that gets injuries. 

[LesterRam]

Too much green space and not enough soulless bland concrete buildings, life's rough 

[WhiteHorseRam]

7 hours ago, RadioactiveWaste said:

Please no more "we need a tough guy" stuff.....Pearson, Barton, Warnock, Pulis....na, not for me.

We need a solid plan, some stable building and to pull together as a club.

This seasons promise was dead by September. The winning run corrected itself and we are where we are.

 

You are quite right about having a solid plan. But I think we need to look at some kind of shake up. If I was Mel i would get Eddie Jones (England RFU) to come and spend a week just watching and listening. He obviously knows zip about Football ( so I understand) but he clearly knows about putting together winning teams and drawing leadership from within every player.

[TroyDyer]

4 hours ago, King Kevin said:

Maybe it's just me but I always think we are linked with the right expensive player and then go and buy a cheaper make weight .Mind you I blame Newcastle and Aston Villa for some of it.

I always feel like we are dabbling at signing top players. In the race, but never really threatening to win it. When we are linked with someone, I never get excited, because the club never delivers. 

[BobbyD]

2 hours ago, ramit said:

The recipe for a good team is basically a few leaders forming a spine to build around and good coaching, resulting in a well organized unit with clear game plans where each player knows his role under various circumstances

We have good coaching, need more leaders

Plus we need more 'winners' - players with a burning will to win. You wonder if its as much about character as technical ability when you get to that level.

Anyone who has played sport knows that its the mentally tough players with reasonable technical ability who will succeed against their purely technically superior opponents. They won't allow themselves to lose and they rise to the occasion in the big points or the crucial phases of a match. They keep going the whole time. They might not be perfect but they infect their whole team with that drive and desire. They aren't cheats but they don't take any prisoners in getting to their goal of winning.

Currently, we don't seem to have too many of these. Maybe Keogh and Johnson (when he's on song, as currently). Cant think of too many others, however much I respect their technical ability. Not many who seem to be prepared to pretty well die for the cause.

If you look at the Rams teams over the years, the successful promotion ones had plenty of these kinds of players. Stimac/Van der Laan/Carsley/Sturridge/D Powell/Rowett , Hindmarsh/Williams/Gregory/Davison/Ross McLaren , Macfarland/Mackay/O'hare/Durban/McGovern

It makes you wonder, as part of our recruitment process, how much effort is put in to assessing the character of new players as well as their footballing ability ? 

[BramcoteRam84]

I would question Prutton when he says Shackell and Johnson are good characters. 

Johnson when he plays like he did in the past 2 games is fine, but for that performance there's others like Cardiff when he was hauled off, he often goes missing when going gets tough, he is very much a confidence player.

As for Shackell his performance against Leeds was disgraceful for a senior pro. The number of times he passed the buck and put Hanson under pressure, a young lad playing out of position at left back instead of taking responsibility himself, doesn't seem like a good character to me.

 

[Alph]

Apart from the fact every position at the club has changed over the last few years, how many of our team have been successful. 

We've got ex internationals, current internationals, players with promotions, players that have played in the top flight.

Every season 21 teams aren't promoted from this division. 

This season we didn't start for the first month. 

We didn't bottle anything at Wembley. We lost a game. 

2015 had a whole list of obvious excuses. Poor management and injuries being up there. I'm sure Mac would agree?

2016 we were so dumb in the 1st leg. Battered them in the 2nd. 

 

[RamNut]

8 hours ago, TroyDyer said:

A psychological disease from the top to the bottom. 

That's why I think the club needs a HUGE character. A Barton. A Warnock. A Pulis. whatever you may think of certain people within football, some seem to have the balls to go into a club and flip it on it's head. I hoped Pearson might be that man, but it seems his GI Joe routine is old hat. Players have far too much power and they are happy to wield it. 

I don't think SM is a strong enough man to command ultimate respect. Neither is Keogh. 

Phew Troy, you had he worried.

for a second there i thought you weren't going to blame keogh 

 

[wixman1884]

6 hours ago, Leicester Ram said:

Think it's largely ******** and hysteria from the fans, if I'm being honest.

Let's examine our "bottling" and failures, shall we?

13/14: play off final v QPR

Closest we've come to bottling it. An almost perfect, well balanced, confident team couldn't find a goal against a very resolute QPR team who fluked a goal on the break when there were plenty of opportunities to stop them. If we played that fixture in the same conditions ten times over, we'd have won the other nine.

Verdict: Gutting, but it was more horrific luck than anything, 99 time out of 100 that cross and clearance doesn't land perfectly for Zamora. 

14/15: missing out on the play-off's

A series of injuries to the spine of the team starting with all our CDM's, Thorne, Eustace and Mascarell, and our ST's Martin and Bent, meant the whole system the team was built around fell apart. It was extremely unlucky and the team falling apart probably had more to do with us struggling to find a new system that worked. One fixture that stands out is Norwich (A) when we had Johnny Russell playing as a lone target man and Jamie Hanson at DM for his debut. Another under appreciated factor was Buxton's injury, which took the consistency out of a previously solid back four. The fact that McClaren wouldn't rule out the Newcastle job also played a part, but I suspect it was more a factor for the fans than the players.

Verdict: This would look like bottling to the uninitiated, but not many teams would survive so many injuries to their most important positions. If you lose your wingers, there's people who can do a job there, but when it's roles as mature/vital as CDM and ST in our classic 4-3-3, it's a kiss of death.

15/16: play-off failure with Wassall

A bit of a car crash in slow motion of a season, we finally got George Thorne back fit and playing, only to lose Bryson and Hughes on the first day. Johnson and Butterfield were brought in and we plodded along fairly well until our playing style got worse and worse, and more negative, with players performances falling off a cliff. It seemed like a lot of our players had got worse under Clement and most likely due to other factors off the field, he was sacked. This left us with Academy director Darren Wassall for the rest of the season. What people often forget is that Wassall did get us playing again, we had some decent results. But after losing Thorne in the final game of the season, Wassall naively put Will Hughes in the holding role and Bradley Johnson more advanced for the play-off home leg against Hull. We got torn apart 3-0 and a spirited away performance wasn't enough for us to get back in it.

Verdict: more poor luck, injuries at the worst times, managerial failings and ***** signings contributed to us messing up the play-off's. If Thorne had been fit for the play-off's, it could have been a different story. Although a good manager, Clement wasn't the right fit for Derby and Wassall did a fairly good job but was exposed by Steve Bruce in that play-off home leg.

16/17: being ****** from the off 

Pearson sat on his squad all summer, even though it clearly didn't suit the sort of system he wanted to play, then only decided to make moves in the transfer market late after an appalling start and no league goals. He shipped out the previously vital Chris Martin and cashed in on Hendrick, bringing in the very different Matej Vydra. After an awful 9 games and a shambolic performance against Blackburn, something seemed to happen off the field and he was out. McClaren came in, tinkered with the team and got us back into play-off contention with a run of clean sheets and wins. Unfortunately, to realistically make the play-off's, Derby would have had to keep up automatic promotion form for the rest of the season to make the play-off's and in a year where none of the top 6/7 teams seem to be slipping up, it's proved too much of an ask.

Verdict: a team that's now a mish-mash of 3/4 managers different ideas was maximised by McClaren enough to get back into play-off contention fell off. Was this team really meant to be good enough to make the play-offs? Mac's played a 4-3-3/4-2-3-1 because it suits the majority of the players, but really there is no cohesive system they're all meant to fit into. Until there's some continuity at Derby, it's extremely difficult to say we are 'bottling' it because what is there to bottle? There's about 6/7 other teams in the league which are clearly better than us and that's for off the field reasons as well as on the field.

Conclusion

It depends on what your definition of bottling is, but I don't think we've bottled it really. It comes from this idea that getting out of the championship is a piece of piss and we're a big club so should be doing better than the likes of Bournemouth, Burnley and Huddersfield. It's a lot of arrogance, people forget that there's 23 other teams in the league trying to achieve something too.

How many of the years we've been in contention and missed out have we been deserving of promotion? One I'd say, we were possibly better than Burnley in 13/14 and definitely better than QPR. The other times, there's been other teams!

14/15: Bournemouth were fantastic and Watford became a real force, Boro and Norwich were both comfortably better than what the depleted Derby team were at the end of the season. So were Brentford.

15/16: Burnley were absolutely clinical, Boro and Brighton were both clearly teams that would have finished 1st and 2nd in other years. Wednesday were on a level with us and probably had more momentum. Hull (and the rest of the league) had a proper manager instead of an academy director.

16/17: Newcastle and Brighton are about as good as it gets at this level. Huddersfield and Reading aren't as fashionable as other big teams in the league are, but they're easily play-off contenders and better than us. Wednesday, Leeds, Norwich and Fulham have consistency as well as a raft of talent. How is it an outrage/colossal failure that we aren't above these teams?

Under the circumstances, we're pretty much where we should be and people need to get used to that. Next season will finally give a manager a chance to build on what he was working with the season before and I'm feeling very positive about that.

So stop the hyperbole, entitlement and hysteria, get behind the team and take a minute before you buy into the bottlers image.

This is probably the best thing I've read on here in a while actually. Sums up my feelings over the last few years entirely down to the letter. 

[ramit]

Bucko was a fan favorite for a reason, he made up for his deficiencies with a warrior mentality.  Scored a few from corners too, something rarely seen anymore from our central defenders

[King Kevin]

6 hours ago, Leicester Ram said:

Think it's largely ******** and hysteria from the fans, if I'm being honest.

Let's examine our "bottling" and failures, shall we?

13/14: play off final v QPR

Closest we've come to bottling it. An almost perfect, well balanced, confident team couldn't find a goal against a very resolute QPR team who fluked a goal on the break when there were plenty of opportunities to stop them. If we played that fixture in the same conditions ten times over, we'd have won the other nine.

Verdict: Gutting, but it was more horrific luck than anything, 99 time out of 100 that cross and clearance doesn't land perfectly for Zamora. 

14/15: missing out on the play-off's

A series of injuries to the spine of the team starting with all our CDM's, Thorne, Eustace and Mascarell, and our ST's Martin and Bent, meant the whole system the team was built around fell apart. It was extremely unlucky and the team falling apart probably had more to do with us struggling to find a new system that worked. One fixture that stands out is Norwich (A) when we had Johnny Russell playing as a lone target man and Jamie Hanson at DM for his debut. Another under appreciated factor was Buxton's injury, which took the consistency out of a previously solid back four. The fact that McClaren wouldn't rule out the Newcastle job also played a part, but I suspect it was more a factor for the fans than the players.

Verdict: This would look like bottling to the uninitiated, but not many teams would survive so many injuries to their most important positions. If you lose your wingers, there's people who can do a job there, but when it's roles as mature/vital as CDM and ST in our classic 4-3-3, it's a kiss of death.

15/16: play-off failure with Wassall

A bit of a car crash in slow motion of a season, we finally got George Thorne back fit and playing, only to lose Bryson and Hughes on the first day. Johnson and Butterfield were brought in and we plodded along fairly well until our playing style got worse and worse, and more negative, with players performances falling off a cliff. It seemed like a lot of our players had got worse under Clement and most likely due to other factors off the field, he was sacked. This left us with Academy director Darren Wassall for the rest of the season. What people often forget is that Wassall did get us playing again, we had some decent results. But after losing Thorne in the final game of the season, Wassall naively put Will Hughes in the holding role and Bradley Johnson more advanced for the play-off home leg against Hull. We got torn apart 3-0 and a spirited away performance wasn't enough for us to get back in it.

Verdict: more poor luck, injuries at the worst times, managerial failings and ***** signings contributed to us messing up the play-off's. If Thorne had been fit for the play-off's, it could have been a different story. Although a good manager, Clement wasn't the right fit for Derby and Wassall did a fairly good job but was exposed by Steve Bruce in that play-off home leg.

16/17: being ****** from the off 

Pearson sat on his squad all summer, even though it clearly didn't suit the sort of system he wanted to play, then only decided to make moves in the transfer market late after an appalling start and no league goals. He shipped out the previously vital Chris Martin and cashed in on Hendrick, bringing in the very different Matej Vydra. After an awful 9 games and a shambolic performance against Blackburn, something seemed to happen off the field and he was out. McClaren came in, tinkered with the team and got us back into play-off contention with a run of clean sheets and wins. Unfortunately, to realistically make the play-off's, Derby would have had to keep up automatic promotion form for the rest of the season to make the play-off's and in a year where none of the top 6/7 teams seem to be slipping up, it's proved too much of an ask.

Verdict: a team that's now a mish-mash of 3/4 managers different ideas was maximised by McClaren enough to get back into play-off contention fell off. Was this team really meant to be good enough to make the play-offs? Mac's played a 4-3-3/4-2-3-1 because it suits the majority of the players, but really there is no cohesive system they're all meant to fit into. Until there's some continuity at Derby, it's extremely difficult to say we are 'bottling' it because what is there to bottle? There's about 6/7 other teams in the league which are clearly better than us and that's for off the field reasons as well as on the field.

Conclusion

It depends on what your definition of bottling is, but I don't think we've bottled it really. It comes from this idea that getting out of the championship is a piece of piss and we're a big club so should be doing better than the likes of Bournemouth, Burnley and Huddersfield. It's a lot of arrogance, people forget that there's 23 other teams in the league trying to achieve something too.

How many of the years we've been in contention and missed out have we been deserving of promotion? One I'd say, we were possibly better than Burnley in 13/14 and definitely better than QPR. The other times, there's been other teams!

14/15: Bournemouth were fantastic and Watford became a real force, Boro and Norwich were both comfortably better than what the depleted Derby team were at the end of the season. So were Brentford.

15/16: Burnley were absolutely clinical, Boro and Brighton were both clearly teams that would have finished 1st and 2nd in other years. Wednesday were on a level with us and probably had more momentum. Hull (and the rest of the league) had a proper manager instead of an academy director.

16/17: Newcastle and Brighton are about as good as it gets at this level. Huddersfield and Reading aren't as fashionable as other big teams in the league are, but they're easily play-off contenders and better than us. Wednesday, Leeds, Norwich and Fulham have consistency as well as a raft of talent. How is it an outrage/colossal failure that we aren't above these teams?

Under the circumstances, we're pretty much where we should be and people need to get used to that. Next season will finally give a manager a chance to build on what he was working with the season before and I'm feeling very positive about that.

So stop the hyperbole, entitlement and hysteria, get behind the team and take a minute before you buy into the bottlers image.

Good post and I can see where you are coming from , I work in a very competitive environment and if that was someones C.V. I would say they are a loser and they are the excuse's  which is pretty much where we are as a club.

[Sparkle]

6 hours ago, Leicester Ram said:

Think it's largely ******** and hysteria from the fans, if I'm being honest.

Let's examine our "bottling" and failures, shall we?

13/14: play off final v QPR

Closest we've come to bottling it. An almost perfect, well balanced, confident team couldn't find a goal against a very resolute QPR team who fluked a goal on the break when there were plenty of opportunities to stop them. If we played that fixture in the same conditions ten times over, we'd have won the other nine.

Verdict: Gutting, but it was more horrific luck than anything, 99 time out of 100 that cross and clearance doesn't land perfectly for Zamora. 

14/15: missing out on the play-off's

A series of injuries to the spine of the team starting with all our CDM's, Thorne, Eustace and Mascarell, and our ST's Martin and Bent, meant the whole system the team was built around fell apart. It was extremely unlucky and the team falling apart probably had more to do with us struggling to find a new system that worked. One fixture that stands out is Norwich (A) when we had Johnny Russell playing as a lone target man and Jamie Hanson at DM for his debut. Another under appreciated factor was Buxton's injury, which took the consistency out of a previously solid back four. The fact that McClaren wouldn't rule out the Newcastle job also played a part, but I suspect it was more a factor for the fans than the players.

Verdict: This would look like bottling to the uninitiated, but not many teams would survive so many injuries to their most important positions. If you lose your wingers, there's people who can do a job there, but when it's roles as mature/vital as CDM and ST in our classic 4-3-3, it's a kiss of death.

15/16: play-off failure with Wassall

A bit of a car crash in slow motion of a season, we finally got George Thorne back fit and playing, only to lose Bryson and Hughes on the first day. Johnson and Butterfield were brought in and we plodded along fairly well until our playing style got worse and worse, and more negative, with players performances falling off a cliff. It seemed like a lot of our players had got worse under Clement and most likely due to other factors off the field, he was sacked. This left us with Academy director Darren Wassall for the rest of the season. What people often forget is that Wassall did get us playing again, we had some decent results. But after losing Thorne in the final game of the season, Wassall naively put Will Hughes in the holding role and Bradley Johnson more advanced for the play-off home leg against Hull. We got torn apart 3-0 and a spirited away performance wasn't enough for us to get back in it.

Verdict: more poor luck, injuries at the worst times, managerial failings and ***** signings contributed to us messing up the play-off's. If Thorne had been fit for the play-off's, it could have been a different story. Although a good manager, Clement wasn't the right fit for Derby and Wassall did a fairly good job but was exposed by Steve Bruce in that play-off home leg.

16/17: being ****** from the off 

Pearson sat on his squad all summer, even though it clearly didn't suit the sort of system he wanted to play, then only decided to make moves in the transfer market late after an appalling start and no league goals. He shipped out the previously vital Chris Martin and cashed in on Hendrick, bringing in the very different Matej Vydra. After an awful 9 games and a shambolic performance against Blackburn, something seemed to happen off the field and he was out. McClaren came in, tinkered with the team and got us back into play-off contention with a run of clean sheets and wins. Unfortunately, to realistically make the play-off's, Derby would have had to keep up automatic promotion form for the rest of the season to make the play-off's and in a year where none of the top 6/7 teams seem to be slipping up, it's proved too much of an ask.

Verdict: a team that's now a mish-mash of 3/4 managers different ideas was maximised by McClaren enough to get back into play-off contention fell off. Was this team really meant to be good enough to make the play-offs? Mac's played a 4-3-3/4-2-3-1 because it suits the majority of the players, but really there is no cohesive system they're all meant to fit into. Until there's some continuity at Derby, it's extremely difficult to say we are 'bottling' it because what is there to bottle? There's about 6/7 other teams in the league which are clearly better than us and that's for off the field reasons as well as on the field.

Conclusion

It depends on what your definition of bottling is, but I don't think we've bottled it really. It comes from this idea that getting out of the championship is a piece of piss and we're a big club so should be doing better than the likes of Bournemouth, Burnley and Huddersfield. It's a lot of arrogance, people forget that there's 23 other teams in the league trying to achieve something too.

How many of the years we've been in contention and missed out have we been deserving of promotion? One I'd say, we were possibly better than Burnley in 13/14 and definitely better than QPR. The other times, there's been other teams!

14/15: Bournemouth were fantastic and Watford became a real force, Boro and Norwich were both comfortably better than what the depleted Derby team were at the end of the season. So were Brentford.

15/16: Burnley were absolutely clinical, Boro and Brighton were both clearly teams that would have finished 1st and 2nd in other years. Wednesday were on a level with us and probably had more momentum. Hull (and the rest of the league) had a proper manager instead of an academy director.

16/17: Newcastle and Brighton are about as good as it gets at this level. Huddersfield and Reading aren't as fashionable as other big teams in the league are, but they're easily play-off contenders and better than us. Wednesday, Leeds, Norwich and Fulham have consistency as well as a raft of talent. How is it an outrage/colossal failure that we aren't above these teams?

Under the circumstances, we're pretty much where we should be and people need to get used to that. Next season will finally give a manager a chance to build on what he was working with the season before and I'm feeling very positive about that.

So stop the hyperbole, entitlement and hysteria, get behind the team and take a minute before you buy into the bottlers image.

Spot on in my opinion and just what I have watched happening, but you can understand other clubs supporters not understanding