Just to be clear, the message people are trying to give you is you need to invest and recruit well to stay up as you'll likely be relegated if you don't. Not 'you will definitely be relegated regardless' as obviously nobody knows who you will sign and you could pull it out the bag and have an amazing window, which is possible.
You have a lot of confidence in your current team and manager and I'd expect that given you've just walked the league and are on a high. Some will step up, some won't. I think it's very optimistic and a bit naive to think as many will step up as you think. Maybe they will, who knows, but history suggests not. Leicester and Ipswich were promoted with 97 and 96 points, spent £100m+ and went straight down and Leicester had a lot of players with Prem experience. Burnley were promoted the year before with 101 points playing attacking football under Kompany, went straight back down, came up again with 100 points playing defensive football and came down again. It's a big step up and 'we'll score loads of goals because Lampard has coached them to shoot more, we score loads of GOTS contenders' sounds ominous.
I've defended Lampard a lot over the past couple of years, I think the criticism he's received is really harsh. I think he did an OK job at Derby and Everton without either improving or making them worse. He genuinely did well in his first season at Chelsea considering the transfer ban and sale of Hazard. His downfall at Chelsea was failing to integrate the new signings in his second season, or rather, they had two years worth of money to spend, signed a boatload of players and he quite publicly fucked off the ones he didn't like and couldn't manage a dressing room consisting of lots of egos and some unhappy players who he'd hung out to dry. Lesson to learn for him there considering you'll surely be quite active this summer. He was on a hiding to nothing in his second spell given the players had mentally checked out. He's clearly improved you though, it's obviously the most impressive work of his managerial career. If he goes into next season playing the same way without tightening up the defence I think you'll be crucified and I'd be very wary of 'Lampard says who he wants, the chairman negotiatiates'. I'm sure he is well connected but the Prem is several levels above that and Premier League clubs have much more sophisticated networks - we appointed Roma's Sporting Director for example who led our recruitment and we still have a long way to go. Recruitment is a specialism, the days of the manager leading and sending scouts across the country on a retainer are long gone.
It's all a wait and see anyway. Who knows what will happen over the summer and next season. It's probably inevitable we'll play you at the CBS early on and lose but nevermind. It just comes across a bit naive when you come on here about 25 years away from the top flight reeling off a list of players who'll step up and you'll score all these goals because of a manager who is viewed as a failure in all three of his Premier League jobs will use his contacts to sign players and has coached you to attack.
