Are we over or under achieving this season?

All this "biggest budget" stuff is folly.

"Should be going up with this squad"

Should we?

All I've seen is a criminal waste of money again, signing aging, slow, plodders who will have little or no resale value.

Where was the plan? We needed pace, height and strength and added next to none.

If we don't go up it's because we signed a load of rubbish (again).
 
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TopCat said:
What is the obsession with this "lowest ever finish"? If we finish 2nd and go up, it will be a successful season


I don't think that's correct
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Wycombe have been involved in the least transfer activity, 16 in 17 out - Bradford the most 34 in 36 out. SAFC 25 in 28 out.
 
Going into the new season many would have saw the play offs as a success due to the utter mess we were in. Ross has had to build a new squad with what’s been available to him while being restricted with massive wages already on the books. I think the longer Ross is here the more we’ll see his style of play come through. For me, regardless if we go up or not it’s been a success.
 
Lord Alfred said:
Whole new squad?

We changed the three clowns who masqueraded as keepers for a much better one but we had Matthews, Oviedo, Hume, Cattermole, Honeyman, Gooch, McGeady,Watmore and Maja already at the club That's EIGHT of a starting X1.
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With the exception of the keeper and possibly O'Nien all of our top performers this season were already at the club.
We have signed 5 centre halves who are not good enough. 5 FFS.
The manager had a full pre-season with most of the players, no different to most clubs. He has also had backing from the owners.
Even if we manage to finish second it is the lowest finish in the history of the club.
We have just had 2 home games in a week, both against mid table teams and only managed 1 point from them. We've also conceded 6 goals, 5 in 1 game. Piss poor defending and piss poor midfield performance, by players signed by Ross.
It's shambolic from a club of our stature and backing, both in terms of fan support and financial support from the owners. The minimum requirement this season was promotion.
Yes, in answer to the original question, we are underachieving.
 
Chop Sauce said:
Underachieving. We seem to have a large chunk of our fanbase accepting of failure. We’re in league one. To have Luton + 1 above us is massively sub par. Look at the fan base, stadium, money spent etc. if we don’t go up this has been a disastrous season. Ah but we got to wembley in the tin pot.
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This. We're underachieving. We should have walked this league. No excuses. The fact that we have drawn so many games and struggled to beat teams shows we are now on par with a lot of teams in this league. If we don't go up it will be a disaster.
 
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Born Never Asked said:
Biggest team, budget, squad cost and wage bill in the league by a mile, embarrassing that promotion hasn't already been sealed to be honest. All this talk about the shambles of last season, nothing has changed really it's just the fact that the club Is in a lower division so it looks like this season has been an improvement.
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Agree 100%. Even finishing second will be the lowest finish in our history.
 
Major said:
Going into the new season many would have saw the play offs as a success due to the utter mess we were in. Ross has had to build a new squad with what’s been available to him while being restricted with massive wages already on the books. I think the longer Ross is here the more we’ll see his style of play come through. For me, regardless if we go up or not it’s been a success.
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Unbelievable

Grammar Police said:
All this "biggest budget" stuff is folly.

"Should be going up with this squad"

Should we?

All I've seen is a criminal waste of money again, signing aging, slow, plodders who will have little or no resale value.

Where was the plan? We needed pace, height and strength and added next to none.

If we don't go up it's because we signed a load of rubbish (again).
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So underachieving then.
 
Was actually thinking about this.
Totally appreciate the work needed to turn the sinking ship around.

Almost to a man a very slow start was expected. That didnt happen.

35 points in the first 16 games was a great start. We’d be about home n hosed had we kept that up. The below makes awful reading to be honest. Some absolutely awful results/points dropped all things considered.

Sunderland AFC - Statistics, History and Records - from TheStatCat

Whats staggering there actually is how slim the wins are.

The 2 sets of home tripple headers have absolutely fecked us: DDW and DL?. Now we face 3 handy sides with no breathing space whatsoever.

Massively underacheived imho.
 
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McGregor said:
Our match against Rochdale recently featured 10 players starting who didn't play for us last season, bringing on one sub who also didn't feature for us.

And against Coventry we had 9 starting for us that didn't feature last season.

You go on as if we have the same team as last season and we just don't.
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Were the names I mentioned here or not and are most of them first team regulars or not? Our leading scorers were both here. Our captain was here. Most of the shite we have has been signed by Ross.
 
Lord Alfred said:
Were the names I mentioned here or not and are most of them first team regulars or not? Our leading scorers were both here. Our captain was here. Most of the shite we have has been signed by Ross.
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Yet you continue to ignore the fact that lately we've had comfortably more than half of our first 11 playing in our last team lately. Hume made one appearance last season. Honeyman was still shite last season. Maja made 17 appearances last season and scored one goal, Watmore hasn't had an impact this season due to injuries and Matthews quite clearly isn't fancied at RB.

So really only four of those you mentioned have really played, leaving probably more times than not having at least 7 players who never played for us and are in our team regularly this season.

To say our team hasn't really changed, of course it has a lot more than the teams we are currently fighting for promotion with.
 
I think we’ve consolidated this year and will get promotion next year

Outsiders will think we should of walked this league but there’s so many factors why this is untrue. Ready for the “ oh but you spent 4 mill on one player” which is obviously true but factors such as

New manager who hasn’t managed in England

New set of players

Players having to deal with the pressure of playing for a big club / dealing with the expectation of winning every week

Teams we play happy with solely not losing ( which I don’t blame )

Would I be pissed off if we didn’t go up , no if I’m honest , I’ve enjoyed this season , it’s stopped the rot of getting beat week in week out and dreading going to the matches. Fans seem back in love with the club. The championship may be a season too soon I fear if we go up.
 
SargentQ said:
I think we’ve consolidated this year and will get promotion next year

Outsiders will think we should of walked this league but there’s so many factors why this is untrue. Ready for the “ oh but you spent 4 mill on one player” which is obviously true but factors such as

New manager who hasn’t managed in England

New set of players

Players having to deal with the pressure of playing for a big club / dealing with the expectation of winning every week

Teams we play happy with solely not losing ( which I don’t blame )

Would I be pissed off if we didn’t go up , no if I’m honest , I’ve enjoyed this season , it’s stopped the rot of getting beat week in week out and dreading going to the matches. Fans seem back in love with the club. The championship may be a season too soon I fear if we go up.
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Agree with much of what you say,but the target this season has always been promotion and if we don't go up we will have underachieved.
I've enjoyed this season too....I was so fed up with us parking the bus and getting drubbed every week with players who had no pride and no guts.
Ross deserves a lot of credit for the spirit that's instilled in this squad and I'm looking forward to seeing him progress further having learned from his mistakes this season.....whatever division we're in.
 
sad-eyed prophet said:
Agree with much of what you say,but the target this season has always been promotion and if we don't go up we will have underachieved.
I've enjoyed this season too....I was so fed up with us parking the bus and getting drubbed every week with players who had no pride and no guts.
Ross deserves a lot of credit for the spirit that's instilled in this squad and I'm looking forward to seeing him progress further having learned from his mistakes this season.....whatever division we're in.
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Target was promotion , but I think a lot of that was solely down to our stature and how we fell from the top division

When you take into consideration all the factors I’ve outlined I think that would of been unrealistic with the team we’ve had

We became heavily reliant on Maja, a lad who had a handful of games before this season , compare that to Moore at Barnsley who had 22 games in league one for Rotherham before the season had even kicked off
 
Felt everyone were being utter fannies saying theyd rather exit the flt than go to wembley but to be honest in hindsight it may well cost us top 2! Margins are that tight.
 
If I review our league position (and results, i.e. the no. of draws, particularly against lower-end opponents) against the level of performance we've shown when at our best, then I'd say we've under achieved.

At the start of the season I'd have gladly taken where we are now. But we started brightly the season brightly and I was more than happy until December.

Since then, our form has been incredibly inconsistent and too many performances have been very patchy, even within a 90 minute period.

Whilst other teams have improved over the course of the season, we have levelled off, or arguably even declined. Injuries have been disruptive, of course.

People will talk about budget constraints and where we came from in terms of finances but we paid good money for 2 strikers who haven't lived up to their price-tags, amongst others. It will, of course, all be forgotten about if we find a way out to get promotion but I think we've made very hard work out of a league that we really do have the quality to have comfortably finished top 2 in.
 
McGregor said:
Yet you continue to ignore the fact that lately we've had comfortably more than half of our first 11 playing in our last team lately. Hume made one appearance last season. Honeyman was still shite last season. Maja made 17 appearances last season and scored one goal, Watmore hasn't had an impact this season due to injuries and Matthews quite clearly isn't fancied at RB.

So really only four of those you mentioned have really played, leaving probably more times than not having at least 7 players who never played for us and are in our team regularly this season.

To say our team hasn't really changed, of course it has a lot more than the teams we are currently fighting for promotion with.
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You're talking complete bollocks. Your opening gambit was "whole new squad" and it patently isn't. The players who've underperformed this season were all added by the manager. The teams who finished first and second in this league last season both signed more players than we did at the start of the season and for far less outlay.
There's absolutely no excuses for failure this season. The manager inherited a solid core and has been well backed by the owners.
 
SPUFF said:
Felt everyone were being utter fannies saying theyd rather exit the flt than go to wembley but to be honest in hindsight it may well cost us top 2! Margins are that tight.
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Doesn't seem to be doing Portsmouth any harm lately. They are bang in form and have caught us back up pretty quickly
 

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