The Queen of the South thread

[QoS99]

10 hours ago, Doonhamer19 said:

I completely disagree with this. Our squad last season was the best we've had for the last 4 years, in terms of quality "all over the park". To me it says a lot that we've signed 10 players from our relegated squad for next season, and there's not one of them that the majority (or even a significant proportion) of people are unhappy about. There are also 2-3 more people who the club would have received no complaints about should they have been re-signed (Rae, Fitzpatrick, maybe Cooper).

Yes, we got relegated so our opponents will be worse. But, as everybody knows, we still need a better quality squad than last season to get promoted this time around. We should no longer be fighting to survive; we need to win matches. It takes a lot to unanimously please a football team's support, and the fact the new contracts of 10 relegated players from the "worst team in the club's professional history" have done just that proves something for me.

We have been saved in recent seasons by strikers that can score goals. In each of the three seasons before our relegation one we had one of the two best stikers in the league. The season before last we had Connor Shields (who was the second best striker behind Liam Boyce) and then signed for Motherwell; we also had Ayo Obileye who was the second top scorer in the league (I'm not suggesting he was a better striker than Shields). The 2 seasons before that we were single handedly saved by the indefatigable Stephen Dobbie (and COVID-19).

The season before last, two of our better players were Rhys McCabe and a certain Daniel Pybus. Yet people were not disappointed to see them released. Last season, we were entirely competent against teams our standard (Dunfermline, Morton, Ayr). We just bottled it against any teams better than us. The lack of experience and belief (and obviously ability) in Allan Johnston's final squad as manager ultimately ended our status as a Championship club. But the ability was not worse than before.

Ultimately we got relegated because our top scorer in the league last season scored a grand total of 7 goals, with second top on 4. If we had a talismanic figure up front like beforehand we would have comfortably stayed in the division. Personally, last season's squad was the first since 17/18 that I've felt any sort of connection with. They didn't do that by being the worst I've ever seen. The amount of games I came out of thinking that we should have got more from that. The squad didn't get worse, the league got better, and we got slightly unlucky.

Edit: Just looked back at the post and it's very long, sorry!

Spot on. The second half of the season’s squad the year Covid hit is the worst I’ve seen in the last few years comfortably. Wouldn’t say our squad is anywhere near as bad as previous years from which I still have nightmares of Ross Stewart and Alan Martin chucking the ball in their own net every game for example 

Edited June 25, 2022 by QoS99

[qos_75]

11 hours ago, Doonhamer19 said:

I completely disagree with this. Our squad last season was the best we've had for the last 4 years, in terms of quality "all over the park". To me it says a lot that we've signed 10 players from our relegated squad for next season, and there's not one of them that the majority (or even a significant proportion) of people are unhappy about. There are also 2-3 more people who the club would have received no complaints about should they have been re-signed (Rae, Fitzpatrick, maybe Cooper).

Yes, we got relegated so our opponents will be worse. But, as everybody knows, we still need a better quality squad than last season to get promoted this time around. We should no longer be fighting to survive; we need to win matches. It takes a lot to unanimously please a football team's support, and the fact the new contracts of 10 relegated players from the "worst team in the club's professional history" have done just that proves something for me.

We have been saved in recent seasons by strikers that can score goals. In each of the three seasons before our relegation one we had one of the two best stikers in the league. The season before last we had Connor Shields (who was the second best striker behind Liam Boyce) and then signed for Motherwell; we also had Ayo Obileye who was the second top scorer in the league (I'm not suggesting he was a better striker than Shields). The 2 seasons before that we were single handedly saved by the indefatigable Stephen Dobbie (and COVID-19).

The season before last, two of our better players were Rhys McCabe and a certain Daniel Pybus. Yet people were not disappointed to see them released. Last season, we were entirely competent against teams our standard (Dunfermline, Morton, Ayr). We just bottled it against any teams better than us. The lack of experience and belief (and obviously ability) in Allan Johnston's final squad as manager ultimately ended our status as a Championship club. But the ability was not worse than before.

Ultimately we got relegated because our top scorer in the league last season scored a grand total of 7 goals, with second top on 4. If we had a talismanic figure up front like beforehand we would have comfortably stayed in the division. Personally, last season's squad was the first since 17/18 that I've felt any sort of connection with. They didn't do that by being the worst I've ever seen. The amount of games I came out of thinking that we should have got more from that. The squad didn't get worse, the league got better, and we got slightly unlucky.

Edit: Just looked back at the post and it's very long, sorry!

You are of course entitled to your opinion, but I am not swayed by your argument. 

The best squad we have had in four seasons?

While that isn’t saying much, we still managed to get ourselves relegated in what was arguably the poorest championship in that period.

Furthermore, it was clear to everyone from long before Christmas that relegation was a distinct possibility. Yet we lumbered on with AJ, while others around us got shot of their non- performing managers’ to give themselves a fighting chance. 

Lets not kid ourselves that the squad of 21/22 were unlucky. They won a grand total of 8 league games all season. Our strikers couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a shovel. We would genuinely have been better off with a strikeforce of me and you. 

However the blame shouldn’t solely be pinned on the strikers, we couldn’t keep teams out either. I think we lost 19 league games. Across a 36 game season this points to collective failings across all areas and  on a regular basis. 

You also mention that we were competitive in our games with Ayr, Morton and Dunfermline but bottled it elsewhere. We remarkably still had survival in our own hands with two games left. Cue a 1-1 draw at home to Ayr, losing the equaliser with 8 minutes to go. We then go and beat Dunfermline when there is nothing at stake for us. 

No disrespect, but the teams around us weren’t exactly brilliant themselves - but they didn’t need to be. They just needed to be slightly better than us, which the final league table tells us they were. 

We have signed a fair few of the players from last season. I genuinely hope that we can get a tune from the players that remain and put in a challenge. However,  It shouldn’t be taken as a given, based on the clear evidence of last season. 

Edited June 25, 2022 by qos_75

[Alex Nesovic's Barmy Army]

Alan Martin...there's a shit blast from the shit past.

Spot on. The second half of the season’s squad the year Covid hit is the worst I’ve seen in the last few years comfortably. Wouldn’t say our squad is anywhere near as bad as previous years from which I still have nightmares of Ross Stewart and Alan Martin chucking the ball in their own net every game for example 

[HoBNob]

1 hour ago, Passionate said:

If Reilly stays fit and scores goals will be massive.  Remember him from his last spell with Del Lyle and they were unplayable at times,  saw Reilly at Morton and I thought his legs were going a little bit...

 

Ruth is raw, but not near as bad as Falkirk make out, defence and midfield   looks excellent for League one..

Reilly is a modern day Pat Clarke. 

Has had a couple of purple patches which ensures teams keep taking him on but he's not a goalscorer. 

[Doonhamer19]

1 hour ago, qos_75 said:

Furthermore, it was clear to everyone from long before Christmas that relegation was a distinct possibility. Yet we lumbered on with AJ, while others got shot of their non- performing manager to give themselves a fighting chance. 

That was a problem with the board and Allan Johnston though? If you, like me and many others, believed a new manager could turn our fortunes around, and that AJ was a major problem, surely you had some sort of belief in the squad at his disposal? I think we did show improvements when Wullie Gibson took over showing the squad weren't completely useless.

1 hour ago, qos_75 said:

Our strikers couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a shovel. We would genuinely have been better off with a strikeforce of me and you.

How many of our strikers have been given contract offers for next season? None out of the 13 total offers. The rest of the squad were Championship quality; as I said before, if we had talismanic strikers like the previous seasons we'd have stayed up comfortably. The strikers take up 1 or 2 positions in our lineup; they shouldn't define the quality of our whole squad.

1 hour ago, qos_75 said:

However the blame shouldn’t solely be pinned on the strikers, we couldn’t keep teams out either. I think we lost 19 league games. Across a 36 game season this points to collective failings across all areas. 

We lost 13 of those 19 games by one goal. I'm not suggesting this team would have been anywhere near challenging for the playoffs even with a striker that can score, but 3 more goals in those games or the nine that we drew could have kept us up.

1 hour ago, qos_75 said:

You also mention that we were competitive in our games with Ayr, Morton and Dunfermline but bottled it elsewhere. We remarkably still had survival in our own hands with two games left. Cue a 1-1 draw at home to Ayr, losing the equaliser with 8 minutes to go. We then go and beat Dunfermline when there is nothing at stake for us. 

We had a record of 6 wins, 3 draws and 3 losses against the rest of the bottom 4. We 'won' that mini league. And I'm not sure saying we only got 7/9 points in our last 3 games is a strong argument for last season being our worst ever team. For me that shows remnants of grit, desire and determination instilled by our new manager Wullie Gibson, and the fact that the squad was capable of performing.

Obviously we all have our opinions, but I don't think the relegation should blind us to the fact that our team wasn't actually any worse than our previous ones. We would have got relegated in the COVID curtailed season, saved by a ridiculous ppg ruling. Stephen Dobbie rescued us in the playoffs before that, and a 2 month purple patch aided us in the shortened 20/21 season.

Edited June 25, 2022 by Doonhamer19

[qos_75]

Fair play to you. You have taken a lot more positives from last season than I have. 

Winning a mini league with Ayr, Morton and Dunfermline meant absolutely nothing in the end. The only league the mattered was the Championship and we finished bottom of that. Only the second time we have done that in our Full Time professional era. 

Don’t get me wrong we had poor sides in the seasons leading up to 21/22. However, they didn’t get relegated. It is a results industry and if our sole aim at the start of each of the those four seasons was to stay up then the class of 21/22 failed, whereas the others achieved their objective. 

Of course, you can point to the Covid hit season where the league was abandoned. We will never know how that would have played out. However, it would also have required Patrick to pick up points and there was no absolute guarantee of that. 

Losing the majority of our games last season by the odd goal is still losing. You don’t get a bonus point for keeping the score line close.  

You also seem to be squarely putting the blame on the strikers and absolving everyone one else for last season. No doubt the strikers were shite, but over 36 games did everyone else regularly do their job to an acceptable level? Once more, I think the final league table suggests that wasn’t the case.  How many times did we string a run of winning league games together over the course of the season? 

I admire your positivity about last season and the quality of the players used. However, you seem to be arguing they were a lot better than results suggest.  

Nothing can take away from the fact that they were the worst team in the league and were relegated. Something no other Queens squad had suffered in over a decade. That is a compelling reason to judge them so harshly, particularly when you consider some of the shite that had gone before them. 

 

[QosLoyal]

The Gus team is the worst team in that last 15 years.

[QosLoyal]

Tom Brighton, Stephen Simmons Mark Campbell, Sam Parkin, just 4 off the top of my head.

[Fae_the_'briggs]

1 hour ago, Doonhamer19 said:

We would have got relegated in the COVID curtailed season, saved by a ridiculous ppg ruling. Stephen Dobbie rescued us in the playoffs before that, and a 2 month purple patch aided us in the shortened 20/21 season.

Is it only me who gets wound up when people say we WOULD have got relegated had the season not been curtailed because of Covid. Agreed that there was a very strong probability that we would have been relegated but it was never a 100% certainty. 

[qos_75]

13 minutes ago, QosLoyal said:

The Gus team is the worst team in that last 15 years.

Oh, I am not sure about that. There are about 7 or 8 players in that side that I would take over last seasons lot.

[Dougie Mills]

4 minutes ago, qos_75 said:

Oh, I am not sure about that. There are about 7 or 8 players in that side that I would take over last seasons lot.

Agreed

[qos_75]

That was the team on the last league game of the 11/12 relegation season v Champions Ross County.

 

Edited June 25, 2022 by qos_75

[19QOS19]

Is it only me who gets wound up when people say we WOULD have got relegated had the season not been curtailed because of Covid. Agreed that there was a very strong probability that we would have been relegated but it was never a 100% certainty. 

It's a pointless argument of course as we'll never know. We were in freefall though and Thistle were getting a bit of traction. We still had to play them on their patch and I saw nothing from our mob to suggest we wouldn't have absolutely shat the bed at Firhill.

[Guest Flash]

1 hour ago, 19QOS19 said:

1 hour ago, Fae_the_ said:

Is it only me who gets wound up when people say we WOULD have got relegated had the season not been curtailed because of Covid. Agreed that there was a very strong probability that we would have been relegated but it was never a 100% certainty. 

It's a pointless argument of course as we'll never know. We were in freefall though and Thistle were getting a bit of traction. We still had to play them on their patch and I saw nothing from our mob to suggest we wouldn't have absolutely shat the bed at Firhill.

After the turn of the year, we took 3 points from 10 games. Thistle took 8 points from their last 10. As you say, we’ll never know but we needed either an upturn in our form or Thistle to become as bad as us in order to maintain the gap. I don’t think the former was likely, so we’d have been relying on Thistle getting worse, which was possible, of course.
The remaining game v Thistle was at Palmerston, though. But I’m not sure if that would have helped us any bearing in mind that our home record from 1.1.20 was P5 L5.

[19QOS19]

After the turn of the year, we took 3 points from 10 games. Thistle took 8 points from their last 10. As you say, we’ll never know but we needed either an upturn in our form or Thistle to become as bad as us in order to maintain the gap. I don’t think the former was likely, so we’d have been relying on Thistle getting worse, which was possible, of course.
The remaining game v Thistle was at Palmerston, though. But I’m not sure if that would have helped us any bearing in mind that our home record from 1.1.20 was P5 L5.

I thought it was at Firhill. Fud.

[Frankie S]

I’m in agreement with qos_75 (who seems to be from my neck of the woods) - last year’s squad was the worst I’ve seen representing Queens in recent seasons, and given some of the motley collections of journeymen, randoms from English non-league football that blew into Palmerston for a pre-season trial and ended up with a contract, callow youths, has-beens and never-will-bes that were haphazardly thrown together at the last minute for some of our recent campaigns, that’s an astonishing achievement. Having said that, the squad from the Covid-curtailed 2019-20 season was almost as bad. The likes of Dobbie, Brownlie, Holt, Bakhtaoui and McCrorie gives 2019-20 the edge in quality over last season’s team for me.

The strikers last term were a particularly dismal collection of imposters, but there were very few goals coming from anywhere in the team, with the midfield seemingly abdicating responsibility for getting on the scoresheet, or indeed for creating anything much at all.

The 2020-21 team had much more collective firepower, as 38 goals from 27 games attested (compared to a pathetic 36 from 36 in 2021-22) and with the pace of Isaiah Jones and Dapo Mebude, allied to the respectable goal tallies of Shields and Obileye, we often looked like we’d score a few (the 4-2 win at Arbroath in March 2021 springs to mind - we could have had half a dozen that day, as well as great 3-2 wins at Dundee and Hearts). Even James Maxwell chipped in with a few from left back that season. 

I’d contend that if Jones hadn’t got injured in that match at Arbroath, we would have been strong candidates for the promotion playoffs.

By contrast, I can barely think of a single exciting attacking performance in 2021-22 - we just didn’t have sufficient pace, skill, guile or goals in the team to threaten to blow anyone away. I streamed more or less every game last season, home and away, but towards the end of the season felt like it was a complete waste of time, as we carried absolutely no threat in attacking areas, and the deficiencies of our hapless strikers (Soares-Junior, Roy and Cameron really were useless, they made me pine for the likes of Derek Holmes) were never going to be compensated for by a shot-shy midfield, (with the notable exception of the excellent Lee Connelly). It’s not often that I can barely be bothered to watch Queens, but last season was a real chore at times, so lacking were we in creativity or cutting edge.

To be fair, the defence wasn’t quite as catastrophically bad as it has been in the past (and FWIW I quite liked the much-maligned Robert Nditi), but given we couldn’t score in the proverbial bordello, any mistakes at the back were likely to prove costlier than in a team with even a semblance of an attacking threat.

There are a few players that we’ve retained that I’m happy about (Connelly, Cochrane, McKay, Todd) but to be honest, I wouldn’t have shed a tear had we jettisoned almost the entire squad at the end of the last campaign. More or less starting again from scratch every season over the last few years has been one of the chief contributing factors to losing our Championship status, but if ever a clear out was deserved, then it was this summer.

I also don’t subscribe to the view that we were a team transformed after Gibson took over - there was a brief glimpse of the almost obligatory ‘new manger bounce’, but we then contrived to lose six in a row in March and early April, including meek surrenders to a poor Hamilton team (who had our number all last season) and the gutless 5-1 capitulation at Arbroath, and of course the failure to see off a poor Ayr United team at Palmerston in the penultimate match of the campaign. 

I genuinely think the first division last season was the poorest standard it’s been in the last decade at least, and Inverness getting blown away by a poor St Johnstone team in the play-offs, and the lofty finishing position of a well-coached but far from stellar Arbroath side, support that, not to mention the utterly shambolic campaigns mounted by Hamilton, Morton, Ayr United and Dunfermline, all of whom finished above us in the table.

Gibson’s approach to the transfer market this summer has been refreshing in the sense that he has made a lot of signings early on, so we won’t have to rely on scrambling around the bargain basement and the loan markets for whatever’s left as we struggle to fill the bench in the Premier Cup campaign, as has generally been the case in recent seasons. However, playing Devil’s advocate for a moment, it’s been a fairly conservative approach in that we have re-signed a lot of last season’s flops, and we’ve recruited a bunch of former players (Reilly, Murray, Wilson), which isn’t always a successful strategy. I’m hopeful that some players who looked a little out of their depth in the Championship (e.g. Paton) might prosper in League One, though that’s hope rather than expectation talking. I’m not sure Reilly has done an awful lot in recent seasons, and his scoring record since he left St Mirren in 2018 has hardly been prolific, wherever he’s been. He’s another one where hope trumps expectancy, but surely he’ll grab a few in League One. Murray I didn’t particularly rate last time round, so neither hope nor expectancy comes into play there, but I hope he’s improved since his last spell at the club. Wilson is a decent signing, and there are one or two others that look promising, albeit a couple seem to be downgrades on their direct equivalents from last season, which is concerning. Delighted that Lee Connelly has re-signed. I expect an outstanding season from him, and I think Harry Cochrane has the quality to stand out next term.

I hope Michael Ruth proves to be a good acquisition, because I still don’t see an awful lot of goals in that team, though presumably we’ll be more prolific than last season, playing at a level lower. I think it’s reasonable to predict that we’ll have enough to be in contention for the play off positions, and it wouldn’t surprise me if we finished third or fourth, but think we’re 2 or 3 key players away from a title challenge as it stands.

Edited June 25, 2022 by Frankie S

[qos1990]

Fair play to you. You have taken a lot more positives from last season than I have. 
Winning a mini league with Ayr, Morton and Dunfermline meant absolutely nothing in the end. The only league the mattered was the Championship and we finished bottom of that. Only the second time we have done that in our Full Time professional era. 
Don’t get me wrong we had poor sides in the seasons leading up to 21/22. However, they didn’t get relegated. It is a results industry and if our sole aim at the start of each of the those four seasons was to stay up then the class of 21/22 failed, whereas the others achieved their objective. 
Of course, you can point to the Covid hit season where the league was abandoned. We will never know how that would have played out. However, it would also have required Patrick to pick up points and there was no absolute guarantee of that. 
Losing the majority of our games last season by the odd goal is still losing. You don’t get a bonus point for keeping the score line close.  
You also seem to be squarely putting the blame on the strikers and absolving everyone one else for last season. No doubt the strikers were shite, but over 36 games did everyone else regularly do their job to an acceptable level? Once more, I think the final league table suggests that wasn’t the case.  How many times did we string a run of winning league games together over the course of the season? 
I admire your positivity about last season and the quality of the players used. However, you seem to be arguing they were a lot better than results suggest.  
Nothing can take away from the fact that they were the worst team in the league and were relegated. Something no other Queens squad had suffered in over a decade. That is a compelling reason to judge them so harshly, particularly when you consider some of the shite that had gone before them. 

 

Saved by other circumstances the two years of covid let’s not kid ourselves on. I don’t think the team was that bad but it’s prob down to a lot of them having a bit of potential If we could keep majority together

[Rjc-1988]

37 minutes ago, Frankie S said:

I’m in agreement with qos_75 (who seems to be from my neck of the woods) - last year’s squad was the worst I’ve seen representing Queens in recent seasons, and given some of the motley collections of journeymen, randoms from English non-league football that blew into Palmerston for a pre-season trial and ended up with a contract, callow youths, has-beens and never-will-bes that were haphazardly thrown together at the last minute for some of our recent campaigns, that’s an astonishing achievement. Having said that, the squad from the Covid-curtailed 2019-20 season was almost as bad. The likes of Dobbie, Brownlie, Holt, Bakhtaoui and McCrorie gives 2019-20 the edge in quality over last season’s team for me.

The strikers last term were a particularly dismal collection of imposters, but there were very few goals coming from anywhere in the team, with the midfield seemingly abdicating responsibility for getting on the scoresheet, or indeed for creating anything much at all.

The 2020-21 team had much more collective firepower, as 38 goals from 27 games attested (compared to a pathetic 36 from 36 in 2021-22) and with the pace of Isaiah Jones and Dapo Mebude, allied to the respectable goal tallies of Shields and Obileye, we often looked like we’d score a few (the 4-2 win at Arbroath in March 2021 springs to mind - we could have had half a dozen that day, as well as great 3-2 wins at Dundee and Hearts). Even James Maxwell chipped in with a few from left back that season. 

I’d contend that if Jones hadn’t got injured in that match at Arbroath, we would have been strong candidates for the promotion playoffs.

By contrast, I can barely think of a single exciting attacking performance in 2021-22 - we just didn’t have sufficient pace, skill, guile or goals in the team to threaten to blow anyone away. I streamed more or less every game last season, home and away, but towards the end of the season felt like it was a complete waste of time, as we carried absolutely no threat in attacking areas, and the deficiencies of our hapless strikers (Soares-Junior, Roy and Cameron really were useless, they made me pine for the likes of Derek Holmes) were never going to be compensated for by a shot-shy midfield, (with the notable exception of the excellent Lee Connelly). It’s not often that I can barely be bothered to watch Queens, but last season was a real chore at times, so lacking were we in creativity or cutting edge.

To be fair, the defence wasn’t quite as catastrophically bad as it has been in the past (and FWIW I quite liked the much-maligned Robert Nditi), but given we couldn’t score in the proverbial bordello, any mistakes at the back were likely to prove costlier than in a team with even a semblance of an attacking threat.

There are a few players that we’ve retained that I’m happy about (Connelly, Cochrane, McKay, Todd) but to be honest, I wouldn’t have shed a tear had we jettisoned almost the entire squad at the end of the last campaign. More or less starting again from scratch every season over the last few years has been one of the chief contributing factors to losing our Championship status, but if ever a clear out was deserved, then it was this summer.

I also don’t subscribe to the view that we were a team transformed after Gibson took over - there was a brief glimpse of the almost obligatory ‘new manger bounce’, but we then contrived to lose six in a row in March and early April, including meek surrenders to a poor Hamilton team (who had our number all last season) and the gutless 5-1 capitulation at Arbroath, and of course the failure to see off a poor Ayr United team at Palmerston in the penultimate match of the campaign. 

I genuinely think the first division last season was the poorest standard it’s been in the last decade at least, and Inverness getting blown away by a poor St Johnstone team in the play-offs, and the lofty finishing position of a well-coached but far from stellar Arbroath side, support that, not to mention the utterly shambolic campaigns mounted by Hamilton, Morton, Ayr United and Dunfermline, all of whom finished above us in the table.

Gibson’s approach to the transfer market this summer has been refreshing in the sense that he has made a lot of signings early on, so we won’t have to rely on scrambling around the bargain basement and the loan markets for whatever’s left as we struggle to fill the bench in the Premier Cup campaign, as has generally been the case in recent seasons. However, playing Devil’s advocate for a moment, it’s been a fairly conservative approach in that we have re-signed a lot of last season’s flops, and we’ve recruited a bunch of former players (Reilly, Murray, Wilson), which isn’t always a successful strategy. I’m hopeful that some players who looked a little out of their depth in the Championship (e.g. Paton) might prosper in League One, though that’s hope rather than expectation talking. I’m not sure Reilly has done an awful lot in recent seasons, and his scoring record since he left St Mirren in 2018 has hardly been prolific, wherever he’s been. He’s another one where hope trumps expectancy, but surely he’ll grab a few in League One. Murray I didn’t particularly rate last time round, so neither hope nor expectancy comes into play there, but I hope he’s improved since his last spell at the club. Wilson is a decent signing, and there are one or two others that look promising, albeit a couple seem to be downgrades on their direct equivalents from last season, which is concerning. Delighted that Lee Connelly has re-signed. I expect an outstanding season from him, and I think Harry Cochrane has the quality to stand out next term.

I hope Michael Ruth proves to be a good acquisition, because I still don’t see an awful lot of goals in that team, though presumably we’ll be more prolific than last season, playing at a level lower. I think it’s reasonable to predict that we’ll have enough to be in contention for the play off positions, and it wouldn’t surprise me if we finished third or fourth, but think we’re 2 or 3 key players away from a title challenge as it stands.

I can’t disagree with anything that you say. I think many of the players that we have retained really flatter to deceive and it is perhaps telling that no Championship clubs have been falling over themselves to sign any of our better players from last season. Only Fitzpatrick seems to have a chance of staying in Championship although he has a lot to prove as well and I don’t think 2/3 decent performances was a good return from a player that was considered good enough to attract a team of Norwich’s stature.

 

I said previously that the nucleus of last seasons squad were highly regarded by the majority of our supporters but they will need to start doing something that they couldn’t do last season and that is …….. battling hard and getting over the line in tight edgy affairs of which there will be many this season.

 

I was also fooled by last seasons squad - after a few games and some respectable league cup performances I thought we could secure mid table safety but as the season wore on it became quickly apparent that we played pretty triangles deep in our own half but offered next to nothing in opponents final third. Brave decision to go with so many who flopped last year but they have another chance to repay the supporters who generally stood by them last season.

[qos_75]

4 minutes ago, qos1990 said:

Saved by other circumstances the two years of covid let’s not kid ourselves on. I don’t think the team was that bad but it’s prob down to a lot of them having a bit of potential If we could keep majority together

Well, there is of course a chance they can turn the negative from last season into a positive this coming season. I would be delighted if they do. 

[Otis Blue]

4 hours ago, QosLoyal said:

Tom Brighton, Stephen Simmons Mark Campbell, Sam Parkin, just 4 off the top of my head.

Steady on, I've no had ma dinner yet ... 🫤