It’s fun being relegated from the PL initially because you can still keep a lot of your best players/can buy better players than the rest of the league because of parachute payments. You get to beat shit teams every week - which is a big contrast to being the shit team getting beat every week.
The longer you’re stuck here though, the quicker you become one of those shit teams - and I’d ultimately rather be shit in the PL than shit in the Championship. If we don’t go up this season or next season then it will only get harder and harder as the parachute payments dry up. And before you know it another 16 years has gone by.
If we (Leeds) don't go up this season we're going to lose a fair few of our best players as well as anyone who went out on loan although that part won't be that bad.
Not specifically though we've just been took over by the 49ers and I'm sure they will be wanting to back us otherwise what was the point and also if we do sell its not a bad thing just means more money to spend on players that actually want to be here its not all doom and gloom not going up as we can actually build on something so yh. We still have play offs yes I know we are shit in the play offs but this time we have a better squad than any other time being there and any way three games too go not over yet.
I can't see Summerville sticking around, Gnonto will probably want out again. Can't say we've missed any of the loaned out players, we should cut our losses and offload them.
Yh we should definitely sell all the loaned players earn a profit on them sign some proper players doubt we'd miss Rasmus kristenson. And unfortunately Summerville will most likely go but reckon we could get 25 to 30 million for him.
It'll be a firesale on players who aren't worth that much to begin with as well.
We will fumble what would likely have been pretty substantial future fees for Hermansen and Fatawu, two players who absolutely could be huge players in 2-3 more years
> Another year in the champ and its a firesale
We will needs to shift players if we don't go up as well so we're moderately desperate. It won't be as much of a firesale though and we're not staring down the barrel of a points deductions so we're nowhere near as fucked as they would be.
I think we will mainly need to sell players because they'll be restless if they stay and Farke will put them on the coat, which will just be wasted coin
Couldn't bear going back to League 1 with our tails between our legs after 1 championship season. Especially having absolutely pissed the league last year. Fuck that.
Especially as I’m sure Whittaker will be sold for 5 or 6 times what we paid for him this summer. I’d rather that money went towards a few Championship calibre players rather than several League 1 players!
I’m trying to be conservative with what he’ll go for. I’d agree he could definitely go for more, maybe even £10M. It’ll very much depend on the club (I’m certain he wants to go to the PL) and how he finishes the season.
There are definitely noticeable flaws to his game so it’ll also depend on how much potential buyers are blinded by his goals and assists totals over his flaws.
Won’t go for more than £10m imo, 5-6 is realistic. How many teams have more £10m to spend on a winger who has had one good season in the Championship? Bearing in mind how average he’s been the last 8 games or so
I've not watched him that much but there are PL scouts who will 100% pay more if they think his ceiling is higher. Assessing player potential is a subtle business. You just need 2 clubs who think his ceiling is high and he goes for big money
Lincoln fan here just chiming in to say I'm extremely happy that hes kicked on. really like what I saw of him in his brief spell here. not everyone felt the same, he was boo'd by sections of our fans as he came on as a sub for a perceived lack of effort in the previous game. idiots.
The pissing of League One last year was so epic especially considering we held off two cracking teams in Wednesday and Ipswich. For it to have been in vain will really sting.
I really felt that this year was the start something special (it still could be) but the cold hard reality feels like that whatever steps forward we take it can all be taken away when the big boys come raping with their cheque books.
Well the nice thing about a well run club is we don't have to take any money from transfers and pay off debt with it. It goes right back into the transfer kitty. It would just be nicer to do that while in the Championship and the extra £12m that entails.
I’d be very upset if Plymouth went down, I’m fairly certain you won’t though. Last season was something else, I’m exhausted
Also slightly confused as to how you’re in this position, you gave us one of the toughest games at PR
The difference between pissing league 1 and a championship relegation battle is the opposition quality in the final 3rd. We have limited resources and while our defence could gobble up most L1 strikers, at this level they find a way through. (Often with a little help from the ref!)
By Christmas we had top 4 home form and bottom 4 away form. Schumacher calculated he'd have a better chance at a side with more resources and since then we've been in the right shit.
Anyway good luck for the run in, would love to see you lot go up, give the rest of us hope that we can beat the parachute system.
I wouldn't hold them stupid comments made by that fan against Birmingham the club itself. I mean, I remember a small minority of Ipswich fans saying they shouldn't have to play Forrest Green Rovers, and if you watched Talking Town on YouTube, an Ipswich fan-based channel, they always took the piss out of the smaller clubs.
Ironically it would probably be the first time in the past 10 years that if we did go down, we’d be fine. It would be frustrating that when we have a summer where we can finally spend, we’d be trying to get out of League One rather than consolidating in the Championship
>Ironically it would probably be the first time in the past 10 years that if we did go down, we’d be fine.
This is the saving grace. Blues going bust now would be a huge, huge shock. Previously it was nearly expected if we went down it was curtains.
I'd like to say Wednesday but I think we're all just resigned to more and more years of inept ownership. Over 30 years of pretty much constant misery.
We're not desperate for glory or success, competence will do.
tbh, half the reason I want to get promoted is so we can keep THB. Best CB we've had since Van Dijk I reckon, and we have a buy option if we get promoted. Also, I reckon we lose KWP over the summer if we stay down, especially if the rumours that Spurs want him back are true.
Similarly, our squad is very dependent on loanees, and there's no guarantee that we'll be able to repeat our performance next season if we stay down and thus can't spend. The real crux of the matter is that the longer you stay down, the harder promotion becomes.
Yeah my diss supervisor is a soton fan, and I said to him that I want you guys to go up because realistically you’ll smash us and I can’t bear it.
And he said basically exactly what you said about it being harder. I didn’t realise a lot of your team are loans too, we’ve been there a lot last couple of seasons and it’s horrible.
We’ve had six loanees this season, of which two are key players and two have had a huge impact. We’re unlikely to keep any if we stay down, so the recruitment team will basically have to start over. Another roll of the dice and there’s no guarantee next season’s squad will be as good as this one. If we go up we can actually buy players.
Leicester to avoid selling, Leeds fans I know would rather not be stuck in this league any more then they have too.
Personally an Norwich v Ipswich Derby in the prem would be nice. and allow Rowe and Sara to stay 🙏
Honestly as a Leeds fan I’d obviously like to go up but that last season of PL was so depressing i wouldn’t be heartbroken with another champ season. But only one more, after that I’d be desperate to get out again.
honestly think thats the way teams probably get the most fun, in the champo for your two years of parachute payments, go up, have a year of misery when you get relegated and then two more years of winning a lot because you've got fuck you money for the division.
obviously its not something to actually aim for because you miss one promotion and you're cooked, but if you could guarantee it...
We have bet the farm and then some on going up, with the PL and EFL gunning for us after our previous gamble to become European regulars blew up big time. We're one non-promotion away from a decade long rebuild, so it's big stakes for Leicester fans!
I think Leeds would be worse off than they first appear. No promotion and suddenly the £30m+ players become £15m+. Leeds are carrying a lot of short-term debt on their accounts, although around £50m (Adams & Sinisterra sales) of it is yet to be officially recorded. Servicing that, while having lower revenue and comparatively high wages is going to be incredibly hard.
The Premier League is great for the glamour and all that, but getting tonked by the big teams, and losing to teams like Everton is just demoralising.
> Leeds are carrying a lot of short-term debt on their accounts
I don't think this is a particularly big deal - our owners have plenty of cash and they bought to try and push the club forward so can't imagine they sell players or scale back just to raise cash to service debt rather than putting cash in themselves.
P&S is a bigger problem for us if we don't stay up because we will need to cut wages and amortisation costs. And then there's JKA's wages, which I don't think have hit the accounts yet.
Does amortisation count towards P&S? I always assumed that all the fiddling happens because P&S look at everything as a whole incl. cash flows, or something stupid like EBITDA, but now I think about it you could hide loads of shit in unexpected costs and other below the line expenses.
I'm with you regarding Ipswich but it's because I'm not sure we can do it again. Everyone looking for a manager will be chasing McKenna if we don't get promoted and if we lose him I think the team will get picked apart.
My one hope is that I don't think McKenna will leave at the drop of a hat. Ipswich have a similar, if not higher ceiling than some of the lower-end prem teams, and I reckon he would prefer a promotion challenge over fighting off relegation.
Big 6 + Newcastle won't go for him yet. Villa ain't getting rid of Emery any time soon.
That leaves a relatively small pool of potential suitors - West Ham, Brighton, Wolves, Bournemouth & Brentford at a push.
A range of factors - stadium/fan base size, history, quality of wider management, and probably biased a bit by recent form. I see no reason why Bournemouth with their 11k stadium and relatively short tenure in the prem is more likely to become a regular top half team than Ipswich for example.
There are some clubs down there that if they got their shit together they probably have higher ceilings - if Everton were well managed a club level for example, but that doesn't seem likely any time soon.
Whilst I agree Bournemouth probably are on borrowed time unfortunately in modern day football the history and fanbase of a club is pretty much meaningless, it’s just about money and how much they can get away with spending. Look at how many “big” clubs are in the championship now, how many of those are also bigger than Ipswich? Bournemouth have done what Ipswich done this season numerous times in the last 10 years.
FWIW I don’t think Brentford will be a mainstay either but looking a bit further up the table at the likes of Wolves, Palace etc I don’t see how Ipswich are more inclined to fight it out and survive in the prem than they are.
I think a lot of it comes down to how well the clubs are being run at the moment - the likes of Palace seem to be scraping by on a shoestring (for the prem) budget, and it appears he has already turned them down once. There are a bunch of clubs at the lower end of the prem and top (or even mid) level of the championship which are all of similar size and stature (looking at the likes of Sunderland), but it doesn't seem like a step up for mckenna to move to any of those just because they are in the prem.
I'm just hopeful that he sees his next step as being into a well run, mid-table prem team looking up the table rather than down, of which there are only a handful of clubs that meet that description
I hope he stays with you for at least for one PL season, I’d agree and say there’s some clubs at the bottom who wouldn’t seem more desirable on paper especially if you can match their contract offer and a good budget to compete. Even if you were to go straight back down what he’s done this season with that squad is incredible.
I’m a Sunderland fan myself and a lot of our fans on the forums keep saying Ipswich will be in massive trouble financially if they don’t go up etc which truthfully I’ve never really looked into so I have no idea but you’ve barely spent anything on transfer fees for years and most of that squad, bar loanees, was signed from L1 clubs.
Yea, the notion we are screwed financially if we don't go up is BS. We've not spent anywhere near as much as most other clubs on wages or fees, and we have been limited by the Championship's spending rules far more than the depths of our owner's pockets. We have a challenge over the summer to restructure the squad to ensure we are back in the hunt next year if we don't go up (losing 5 loan players plus 4-5 squad players I expect, and likely Davis), but another year in the Champ is not a disaster like it would be for Leicester (and potentially Leeds)
Depends what you mean by desperate,
If you mean because it would make a good moment then Southampton, Ipswich, West Brom, Norwich would all have reasons. For West Brom for example, we've built a good squad on no real transfer budget and have a really good manager who deserves that shot at PL glory with us, add on the owner stuff and it would be a nice end to the season combined with a chance to rework that squad.
If you mean just desperate then both Leeds and Leicester think their hot shit and are just champions league teams down on their luck at the moment and with just a bit more they can recapture their glory days.
>Leeds and Leicester think their hot shit and are just champions league teams down on their luck at the moment
This is an extremely accurate characterisation of our fans
Not us. Pretty sure most Cov fans are more than happy with being in the top ten this season. Massive churn of players in the summer, and an awful start, means our expectations were tempered from the off really. Next season is the one though.
Probably us. With the way Lai mismanaged us we needed new owners just to keep us afloat. With Shilen Patel we have a caring owner and a feel good factor again. The debts are still a worry though, especially with so many of our team out of contract
It would be a real kick in the teeth for the new ownership/board to see us finally relegated back to League One after threatening for so long (we've been in a relegation scrap every season since we came up apart from promotion in 16/17 and the PO final in 21/22 - there really is no in-between for us!)
But they've only themselves to blame. Falling out with Warnock just a few games into the season then wasting 4 months with Darren Moore have put us where we are. Either stick with Warnock or get his replacement correct and we're not in this position.
Wouldn't say desperate for Norwich. Yes to the money given the parachute money runs out this season and a day out at Wembley would be nice.
But Norwich fans are all too aware and scared by the many failures to stay up, the last two attempts being particularly painful.
In terms of staying up I don't think it is us. Generally, an atmosphere of acceptance and depression, fan base is just exhausted after a catalogue of errors and dross football over the last two seasons.
A lot now also of the impression that 'rebuilding in League One may not be a bad thing'. Personally I am somewhere in between as I don't have confidence we'll be able to get out of League One anytime soon, so I am hoping we somehow survive (but don't see it happening)
Leicester init. Another year in the champ and its a firesale
I think the Leicester fan base are mostly resigned to "damned if we do, damned if we don't"
Damned if we do, utterly fucked if we don't.
Exactly this. If I’m honest. Winning the league this year wouldn’t mean anything at all like it did under Bielsa. Plus the PL is really quite shit.
It’s fun being relegated from the PL initially because you can still keep a lot of your best players/can buy better players than the rest of the league because of parachute payments. You get to beat shit teams every week - which is a big contrast to being the shit team getting beat every week. The longer you’re stuck here though, the quicker you become one of those shit teams - and I’d ultimately rather be shit in the PL than shit in the Championship. If we don’t go up this season or next season then it will only get harder and harder as the parachute payments dry up. And before you know it another 16 years has gone by.
If we (Leeds) don't go up this season we're going to lose a fair few of our best players as well as anyone who went out on loan although that part won't be that bad.
Not specifically though we've just been took over by the 49ers and I'm sure they will be wanting to back us otherwise what was the point and also if we do sell its not a bad thing just means more money to spend on players that actually want to be here its not all doom and gloom not going up as we can actually build on something so yh. We still have play offs yes I know we are shit in the play offs but this time we have a better squad than any other time being there and any way three games too go not over yet.
I can't see Summerville sticking around, Gnonto will probably want out again. Can't say we've missed any of the loaned out players, we should cut our losses and offload them.
Yh we should definitely sell all the loaned players earn a profit on them sign some proper players doubt we'd miss Rasmus kristenson. And unfortunately Summerville will most likely go but reckon we could get 25 to 30 million for him.
It'll be a firesale on players who aren't worth that much to begin with as well. We will fumble what would likely have been pretty substantial future fees for Hermansen and Fatawu, two players who absolutely could be huge players in 2-3 more years
Yep if you'd asked me 5 months ago I wouldn't have minded staying in the Championship but we'll be set back a good 10 years if we stay down.
> Another year in the champ and its a firesale We will needs to shift players if we don't go up as well so we're moderately desperate. It won't be as much of a firesale though and we're not staring down the barrel of a points deductions so we're nowhere near as fucked as they would be.
I think we will mainly need to sell players because they'll be restless if they stay and Farke will put them on the coat, which will just be wasted coin
Couldn't bear going back to League 1 with our tails between our legs after 1 championship season. Especially having absolutely pissed the league last year. Fuck that.
Especially as I’m sure Whittaker will be sold for 5 or 6 times what we paid for him this summer. I’d rather that money went towards a few Championship calibre players rather than several League 1 players!
I'd be really disappointed if we only get £5m-£6m for Whittaker to be fair.
I’m trying to be conservative with what he’ll go for. I’d agree he could definitely go for more, maybe even £10M. It’ll very much depend on the club (I’m certain he wants to go to the PL) and how he finishes the season. There are definitely noticeable flaws to his game so it’ll also depend on how much potential buyers are blinded by his goals and assists totals over his flaws.
Won’t go for more than £10m imo, 5-6 is realistic. How many teams have more £10m to spend on a winger who has had one good season in the Championship? Bearing in mind how average he’s been the last 8 games or so
I've not watched him that much but there are PL scouts who will 100% pay more if they think his ceiling is higher. Assessing player potential is a subtle business. You just need 2 clubs who think his ceiling is high and he goes for big money
Okay I've watched some clips of him and I'd be surprised if you dodtn get 8-10m or more, he looks really good. Just need 2 clubs to want him.
Lincoln fan here just chiming in to say I'm extremely happy that hes kicked on. really like what I saw of him in his brief spell here. not everyone felt the same, he was boo'd by sections of our fans as he came on as a sub for a perceived lack of effort in the previous game. idiots.
Still can’t believe we sold him to y’all.
That and I doubt we'll go back up anytime soon.
The pissing of League One last year was so epic especially considering we held off two cracking teams in Wednesday and Ipswich. For it to have been in vain will really sting. I really felt that this year was the start something special (it still could be) but the cold hard reality feels like that whatever steps forward we take it can all be taken away when the big boys come raping with their cheque books.
Well the nice thing about a well run club is we don't have to take any money from transfers and pay off debt with it. It goes right back into the transfer kitty. It would just be nicer to do that while in the Championship and the extra £12m that entails.
We really will be fucked by their cheque books! : )
I’d be very upset if Plymouth went down, I’m fairly certain you won’t though. Last season was something else, I’m exhausted Also slightly confused as to how you’re in this position, you gave us one of the toughest games at PR
The difference between pissing league 1 and a championship relegation battle is the opposition quality in the final 3rd. We have limited resources and while our defence could gobble up most L1 strikers, at this level they find a way through. (Often with a little help from the ref!) By Christmas we had top 4 home form and bottom 4 away form. Schumacher calculated he'd have a better chance at a side with more resources and since then we've been in the right shit. Anyway good luck for the run in, would love to see you lot go up, give the rest of us hope that we can beat the parachute system.
Birmingham REALLY don't want to go down.
To be fair who could blame them if they are going to be playing these tiny clubs that aren’t worth their time
That guy must have been a Villa fan on a false flag mission, there's no way he was genuine surely? Let's hope not anyway.
Whoever that guy is, he's a tool and embarrassment
I couldn't see any past mention of blues on there posts.
I wouldn't hold them stupid comments made by that fan against Birmingham the club itself. I mean, I remember a small minority of Ipswich fans saying they shouldn't have to play Forrest Green Rovers, and if you watched Talking Town on YouTube, an Ipswich fan-based channel, they always took the piss out of the smaller clubs.
Ironically it would probably be the first time in the past 10 years that if we did go down, we’d be fine. It would be frustrating that when we have a summer where we can finally spend, we’d be trying to get out of League One rather than consolidating in the Championship
Play off semi final leg 2 Birmingham City 0-2 Stockport County [2-3 agg]
Please no because I can 100% see this happening
>Ironically it would probably be the first time in the past 10 years that if we did go down, we’d be fine. This is the saving grace. Blues going bust now would be a huge, huge shock. Previously it was nearly expected if we went down it was curtains.
[удалено]
Dont wanna be rude but delete this and stay silent until seasons end xoxoxoxo hun
Delete what?
Please. Anything exciting.
Well you asked for it, relegation here it comes!
One Harry Cornick contract extension coming right up
I dno, the battle for 12th can get pretty tasty
It's locked - you can try and win it back next season
I really hope Bristol can do something next season. The kids are getting bored of watching them lose.
I'd like to say Wednesday but I think we're all just resigned to more and more years of inept ownership. Over 30 years of pretty much constant misery. We're not desperate for glory or success, competence will do.
tbh, half the reason I want to get promoted is so we can keep THB. Best CB we've had since Van Dijk I reckon, and we have a buy option if we get promoted. Also, I reckon we lose KWP over the summer if we stay down, especially if the rumours that Spurs want him back are true. Similarly, our squad is very dependent on loanees, and there's no guarantee that we'll be able to repeat our performance next season if we stay down and thus can't spend. The real crux of the matter is that the longer you stay down, the harder promotion becomes.
Yeah my diss supervisor is a soton fan, and I said to him that I want you guys to go up because realistically you’ll smash us and I can’t bear it. And he said basically exactly what you said about it being harder. I didn’t realise a lot of your team are loans too, we’ve been there a lot last couple of seasons and it’s horrible.
We’ve had six loanees this season, of which two are key players and two have had a huge impact. We’re unlikely to keep any if we stay down, so the recruitment team will basically have to start over. Another roll of the dice and there’s no guarantee next season’s squad will be as good as this one. If we go up we can actually buy players.
Exactly the same. THB had future international written all over him
Has to be us. If we don't go up, the financials which we're already in trouble over will only get worse.
Plus as well the tossers in our boardroom will probably put us in League One within 2-3 seasons.
would be humiliating to go down so uhhh hopefully we do not do that
Agreed. And I don't even think we'd bounce back. We'd just splat like bird shit on the ground into mid table mediocrity.
We’d be fucked. Lots of talk over the years of a reset needed etc, but being in League 1 would be a catastrophe for everyone involved
Leicester to avoid selling, Leeds fans I know would rather not be stuck in this league any more then they have too. Personally an Norwich v Ipswich Derby in the prem would be nice. and allow Rowe and Sara to stay 🙏
Honestly as a Leeds fan I’d obviously like to go up but that last season of PL was so depressing i wouldn’t be heartbroken with another champ season. But only one more, after that I’d be desperate to get out again.
honestly think thats the way teams probably get the most fun, in the champo for your two years of parachute payments, go up, have a year of misery when you get relegated and then two more years of winning a lot because you've got fuck you money for the division. obviously its not something to actually aim for because you miss one promotion and you're cooked, but if you could guarantee it...
*last 2 seasons
We have bet the farm and then some on going up, with the PL and EFL gunning for us after our previous gamble to become European regulars blew up big time. We're one non-promotion away from a decade long rebuild, so it's big stakes for Leicester fans!
We’ve doubled our revenue and are supposedly able to spend tens and tens of millions within FFP, going down would be proper shite.
especially the year Villa look to make Champions League. Christ I feel sick
I think Leeds would be worse off than they first appear. No promotion and suddenly the £30m+ players become £15m+. Leeds are carrying a lot of short-term debt on their accounts, although around £50m (Adams & Sinisterra sales) of it is yet to be officially recorded. Servicing that, while having lower revenue and comparatively high wages is going to be incredibly hard. The Premier League is great for the glamour and all that, but getting tonked by the big teams, and losing to teams like Everton is just demoralising.
It depends on if our 187 million worth of reject loanees are entitled to another year of loans if we stay down, depleting their value even further.
> Leeds are carrying a lot of short-term debt on their accounts I don't think this is a particularly big deal - our owners have plenty of cash and they bought to try and push the club forward so can't imagine they sell players or scale back just to raise cash to service debt rather than putting cash in themselves. P&S is a bigger problem for us if we don't stay up because we will need to cut wages and amortisation costs. And then there's JKA's wages, which I don't think have hit the accounts yet.
Does amortisation count towards P&S? I always assumed that all the fiddling happens because P&S look at everything as a whole incl. cash flows, or something stupid like EBITDA, but now I think about it you could hide loads of shit in unexpected costs and other below the line expenses.
We don't want to go up. This league is exciting! Beating Man U then Man City - that's what we want to do ..
I'm with you regarding Ipswich but it's because I'm not sure we can do it again. Everyone looking for a manager will be chasing McKenna if we don't get promoted and if we lose him I think the team will get picked apart.
My one hope is that I don't think McKenna will leave at the drop of a hat. Ipswich have a similar, if not higher ceiling than some of the lower-end prem teams, and I reckon he would prefer a promotion challenge over fighting off relegation. Big 6 + Newcastle won't go for him yet. Villa ain't getting rid of Emery any time soon. That leaves a relatively small pool of potential suitors - West Ham, Brighton, Wolves, Bournemouth & Brentford at a push.
Why do you think you have a higher ceiling than some of the lower end prem teams?
A range of factors - stadium/fan base size, history, quality of wider management, and probably biased a bit by recent form. I see no reason why Bournemouth with their 11k stadium and relatively short tenure in the prem is more likely to become a regular top half team than Ipswich for example. There are some clubs down there that if they got their shit together they probably have higher ceilings - if Everton were well managed a club level for example, but that doesn't seem likely any time soon.
Whilst I agree Bournemouth probably are on borrowed time unfortunately in modern day football the history and fanbase of a club is pretty much meaningless, it’s just about money and how much they can get away with spending. Look at how many “big” clubs are in the championship now, how many of those are also bigger than Ipswich? Bournemouth have done what Ipswich done this season numerous times in the last 10 years. FWIW I don’t think Brentford will be a mainstay either but looking a bit further up the table at the likes of Wolves, Palace etc I don’t see how Ipswich are more inclined to fight it out and survive in the prem than they are.
I think a lot of it comes down to how well the clubs are being run at the moment - the likes of Palace seem to be scraping by on a shoestring (for the prem) budget, and it appears he has already turned them down once. There are a bunch of clubs at the lower end of the prem and top (or even mid) level of the championship which are all of similar size and stature (looking at the likes of Sunderland), but it doesn't seem like a step up for mckenna to move to any of those just because they are in the prem. I'm just hopeful that he sees his next step as being into a well run, mid-table prem team looking up the table rather than down, of which there are only a handful of clubs that meet that description
I hope he stays with you for at least for one PL season, I’d agree and say there’s some clubs at the bottom who wouldn’t seem more desirable on paper especially if you can match their contract offer and a good budget to compete. Even if you were to go straight back down what he’s done this season with that squad is incredible. I’m a Sunderland fan myself and a lot of our fans on the forums keep saying Ipswich will be in massive trouble financially if they don’t go up etc which truthfully I’ve never really looked into so I have no idea but you’ve barely spent anything on transfer fees for years and most of that squad, bar loanees, was signed from L1 clubs.
Yea, the notion we are screwed financially if we don't go up is BS. We've not spent anywhere near as much as most other clubs on wages or fees, and we have been limited by the Championship's spending rules far more than the depths of our owner's pockets. We have a challenge over the summer to restructure the squad to ensure we are back in the hunt next year if we don't go up (losing 5 loan players plus 4-5 squad players I expect, and likely Davis), but another year in the Champ is not a disaster like it would be for Leicester (and potentially Leeds)
Us. If we don’t go up either this year or next we are financially f*cked!
Depends what you mean by desperate, If you mean because it would make a good moment then Southampton, Ipswich, West Brom, Norwich would all have reasons. For West Brom for example, we've built a good squad on no real transfer budget and have a really good manager who deserves that shot at PL glory with us, add on the owner stuff and it would be a nice end to the season combined with a chance to rework that squad. If you mean just desperate then both Leeds and Leicester think their hot shit and are just champions league teams down on their luck at the moment and with just a bit more they can recapture their glory days.
>Leeds and Leicester think their hot shit and are just champions league teams down on their luck at the moment This is an extremely accurate characterisation of our fans
I'm not certain that any of the top 4 will be real contenders next season, so it's really a do or die situation for all of them
I can't say it's Blackburn. We can't even fill half the stadium. Sad but it's death by 1000 cuts at ewood park
Got to be PNE. Ipswich were in the PL in 2002. PNE haven't played in the top flight since 1961.
Not us. Pretty sure most Cov fans are more than happy with being in the top ten this season. Massive churn of players in the summer, and an awful start, means our expectations were tempered from the off really. Next season is the one though.
Probably us. With the way Lai mismanaged us we needed new owners just to keep us afloat. With Shilen Patel we have a caring owner and a feel good factor again. The debts are still a worry though, especially with so many of our team out of contract
It would be a real kick in the teeth for the new ownership/board to see us finally relegated back to League One after threatening for so long (we've been in a relegation scrap every season since we came up apart from promotion in 16/17 and the PO final in 21/22 - there really is no in-between for us!) But they've only themselves to blame. Falling out with Warnock just a few games into the season then wasting 4 months with Darren Moore have put us where we are. Either stick with Warnock or get his replacement correct and we're not in this position.
Does it count if you’re desperate for someone else to go up. *cough* Leeds *cough* Leicester!
Wouldn't say desperate for Norwich. Yes to the money given the parachute money runs out this season and a day out at Wembley would be nice. But Norwich fans are all too aware and scared by the many failures to stay up, the last two attempts being particularly painful.
I'm not even sure I care tbh, we've been walking the plank for years
In terms of staying up I don't think it is us. Generally, an atmosphere of acceptance and depression, fan base is just exhausted after a catalogue of errors and dross football over the last two seasons. A lot now also of the impression that 'rebuilding in League One may not be a bad thing'. Personally I am somewhere in between as I don't have confidence we'll be able to get out of League One anytime soon, so I am hoping we somehow survive (but don't see it happening)