Next Season’s Expectations

It always strikes me that you have your expectations fall into four different sections,

1) The Expectation – this is what you expect from your team the line which will be seen as a failure if you fall below.

2) The Hope – basically the best possible scenario and probably most fans first guess before really considering the facts

3) The Probable Finish – where you will finish if you’re being honest.

Most conversations pre-season and during for that matter) tend to go along the lines of

“We’ll stay up but hopefully if we can get rhythm and form going we can push play-offs but we’ll probably finish around 13th-16th” (using the example of this season).

So using this silly/clever/standard (see what I did there) guide for next season…

The Expectation

The minimum is to stay up but given that we so rapidly replaced Harley and the team is seemingly finding good rhythm I think the expectation is a top half finish if not equaling this season’s eighth place however……

The Hope

…….strangely I’m very optimistic about next season and I really think we can continue the year-on-year progression we have seen so far under Tisdale. It has to be accepted that the league will be weaker in general next season while we will probably be stronger. The league has lost Brighton who are rapidly becoming a big player and moving to their new stadium this season will see them attack the Championship with significant momentum; Southampton, who are not only massive but have now an excellent manager a great squad and good resources and Peterborough who have a good side with an unbelievable attack and a rich backer despite being relatively small. These three have been replaced by Sheffield Utd who will struggle to make anything better than play-offs with the awful team they have (as Wednesday and Argyle showed last season the gap is much smaller that it once was) Preston who if they have a very good season might push higher but again I don’t think they will be good enough to better a play-off place. Bournemouth and Rochdale showed that the promoted sides cannot be written off but i think it will only be Chesterfield who will be able to push into the top half and they have lost star striker Davies. This leaves Huddersfield and its about time the big spenders made a real push for automatic promotion as they have been close for a number of seasons now but might struggle from a play-off hang over. Bournemouth on such a limited budget and without Eddie Howe are unlikely to make another challenge for automatic places, Wednesday still have too many problems, MK as much as i might not like them they are a decent size with a solid squad and Karl Robinson has been impressive this season, Leyton Orient very similar to ourselves in ability last year and plagued by the same inconsistencies and form issues and might slip into the play-offs if they can resolve some of that, Carlisle, you can never write the Cumbrians off, Colchester and Rochdale will fall away a bit due to the lowering of budget and loss of Keith Hill and Flicroft respectively while I don’t see Charlton doing any better than play-offs and even then, Brentford and Uwe Rossler will be an unknown quantity. So in short if we make the necessary signings I actually have us down to finish in the top 6, if not the top 2.

The Probable Finish

We have already taken the step to replace Harley we need to resolve the gatekeeping situation too and a couple of other less important things. However, I can’t naturally believe that we would actually make the Championship but I also can’t deny that I feel we are going to get very close this season.  I would say we are in for a play-off push this season and it will depend on how the big clubs deal with the ‘cup final’ effect and financial burdens and also how we perform (especially through winter) as to whether we get there or not. Honestly I think we will finish somewhere between 10th and 4th.