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More journalists writing us off


What fixtures do the African lads miss?

It's 21st Dec to 18th Jan...so depends when their countries expect them to join up with the squad. Also if they pick up any injuries etc. Tournament football in the middle of a season can be quite intense.
 
I’m probably in the minority where I quite like the ‘zany banter’.

In terms of knowledge, Brassell is good (leaving like), so is Vish. The others are a mix of average to dreadful.

OTC is class. A very knowledgeable group.

It's a good podcast and certainly isn't just zany banter which has been mentioned. Brassell was very complimentary about our business so far, where is he off to?
 
It's 21st Dec to 18th Jan...so depends when their countries expect them to join up with the squad. Also if they pick up any injuries etc. Tournament football in the middle of a season can be quite intense.
Also depends how well their countries do in the tournament.

Can’t see Mozambique doing great for example, so Reinaldo won’t be away too long.
Warnock write us off on TalkSport this morning, in the nicest possible way mind, he a good egg him.
I remember when he was a pundit for one of our games v Leeds. Basically said he hadn’t a clue who our head coach was.

This was in February.
 
They're Premier League focused because they also have a podcast for European football and the Second Tier is also part of their group.
well they're premier league focussed because it gets more listens. But it ultimately makes their opinions/ knowledge on anything outside of the league a bit superficial I think. Even before the Second Tier they very rarely talk about lower divisions.
 
A team promoted through the play off predicted to struggle in the top flight. Which bit are we supposed to be outraged at?
Not outraged and it’s not the point about struggling I think most accept we will be down there it’s the “not sure where they get a point from” level of expert punditness 😂 I take umbrage with. There’s a fair few of these journalists that have clearly never been to a football game outside of the top six and engerrrrrland. Their knowledge is lacking these days on anything not covered by the latter. It’s shines a light on the current level of journalism. We’ve all known that though you get better expert opinions from a fair few YouTube level fan pages types than those working for the so called big brands red tops etc.
 
Even with the signings we have made / targets we are looking at, I feel like it will be a tough season.

Think people are looking at the quality and how much better they are and getting a bit carried away with thoughts of breaking into the top 10 etc.

It's so difficult to bridge the gap, especially depth wise. I keep looking at Spurs and Man Utd's squads and where they finished last season. It's hardly surprising that people have us nailed on for relegation still.
 
Firstly just because you own a webcam have a You Tube channel or even possess an NUJ card it doesn't make you a journalist or your views on football worthy of note.

Second - the great majority of people involved in football punditry follow an accepted line on everything in football like sheep. It's the most obvious and safest path because if they are wrong about something everyone else was "wrong" about it too. Why is SAFC "certain to be relegated " - because that's what has happened to the three promoted teams for the past two seasons.

Thirdly only a very small minority of them do any real research on any of the Clubs outside the top six of the Premier League other than looking at the form guide . Even when we won the play off final it was ridiculous how many of them were still harping about how we had lost our last five league games a the end of the season when it was perfectly clear that we had written them off in order to prepare for the play offs. Le Bris even confirmed that was the case when he was interviewed at the end of the final.

I watched our game against Sporting last night and all I know for sure is that the team that plays West Ham on 16th August will not be the one that finished the play off final in May and that it will be radically different. You can bet that all of that is lost on the pundits they will simply look at last nights score line and say "As I expected - Sunderland lost." therefore confirming the view that Sunderland will stand no chance.
 
Even with the signings we have made / targets we are looking at, I feel like it will be a tough season.

Think people are looking at the quality and how much better they are and getting a bit carried away with thoughts of breaking into the top 10 etc.

It's so difficult to bridge the gap, especially depth wise. I keep looking at Spurs and Man Utd's squads and where they finished last season. It's hardly surprising that people have us nailed on for relegation still.
To put it into perspective - even with the signings we have made - I think we need 5 more to be competitive with just the bottom 6.
 
well they're premier league focussed because it gets more listens. But it ultimately makes their opinions/ knowledge on anything outside of the league a bit superficial I think. Even before the Second Tier they very rarely talk about lower divisions.

Do they need to discuss every league?
 
It's a good podcast and certainly isn't just zany banter which has been mentioned. Brassell was very complimentary about our business so far, where is he off to?

Will be focusing on other Stak projects apparently.

He had to ditch something by the sounds of it. Million miles an hour that bloke
 
Not outraged and it’s not the point about struggling I think most accept we will be down there it’s the “not sure where they get a point from” level of expert punditness 😂 I take umbrage with. There’s a fair few of these journalists that have clearly never been to a football game outside of the top six and engerrrrrland. Their knowledge is lacking these days on anything not covered by the latter. It’s shines a light on the current level of journalism. We’ve all known that though you get better expert opinions from a fair few YouTube level fan pages types than those working for the so called big brands red tops etc.
I mean they don't literally think we won't get a point but as it stands I'm not seeing any obvious wins, even though we will win at least the odd game.
 
I think we’ll be way better than the journos and bookies are saying. Decent recruitment so far, add a couple of quality CB’s, a keeper and a 15+ goals striker and we’ll definitely be competitive against teams like Wolves, Brentford, West Ham, Everton and the other 2 promoted teams.

It's the 15+ goals bit that will be really difficult. Fantastic if Mayenda or Wilson do it. But there's nobody in our price range who anyone would expect 15 goals from. Last season 9 players got 15 or more. Down the bottom of that list were complete cheap garbage players like Cole Palmer and Ollie Watkins who got 15 and 16 respectively.
 
We're still favourites to go down. It's not surprising. It is a risk signing these youngsters with no premier league experience.

It might turn out really well, but equally, it might not. I'm more than happy to see us use this approach rather than signing the likes of Longstaff.
That's the thing, we got promoted and can now have a go at it. It may be painful and we get whupped but I think even if we did, we'd have another go at the Championship next season.

We'll be a lot stronger with better players than we had last season and can possibly add to it again to make another push for promotion again. It could be like 1995 onwards when it took us more than 1 attempt to get in the PL, or 2004 onwards.

Personally I don't think it will be as bad as some expect and we'll give it a good go and may well surprise a few people.
 
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It's the 15+ goals bit that will be really difficult. Fantastic if Mayenda or Wilson do it. But there's nobody in our price range who anyone would expect 15 goals from. Last season 9 players got 15 or more. Down the bottom of that list were complete cheap garbage players like Cole Palmer and Ollie Watkins who got 15 and 16 respectively.
Hopefully one or both of our two will be a surprise package
 
Hopefully one or both of our two will be a surprise package

I'll put my neck on the line and say that neither of them is scoring 15 goals in the PL. They will struggle to score 15 between them.

Goalscoring opportunities are few and far between when you are a bottom half PL team. Both of them missed quite a lot of chances last season.
 
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