It's just being realistic. We can ignore City and Liverpool, It's hardly 'pathetic' to finish behind Chelsea who strengthened massively in the summer. That leaves us in 4th competing with Spurs who also had a decent Summer after an injury hit season. And now they've had an excellent start.
Every manager can't 'over achieve'. As for our wage bill we pay £100k+ a week to the likes of Jones and Rojo to contribute absolutely nothing it's no wonder it doesn't correlate to our results on the pitch.
Last season we spent north of £125mil whilst Chelsea were under a transfer ban [though Pulisic was basically a £50mil signing for them]; at no point on this forum did I see people adding an asterisk to their achievements last season as they were ‘handicapped’ & we finished a substandard amount of points ahead of them considering they also sold Hazard. That’s realism.
No ones talking about City & Liverpool; we finished 3rd yet because we didn’t spend as much as Chelsea [who again didn’t spend last summer] it’s ok to surrender 3rd place & hope for 4th, yea ok.
You’re right not every manager overachieves but when you finish 3rd last season I’d consider the same or 4th par for the course. Any regression in finishing position should be seen as such not reasoned away because ‘Chelsea spent more than us’ or because Harry Kane’s fit.
This squad is capable of Top 4, we may or may not get it but saying we shouldn’t aspire for it 8 games in is a shambles.
The league truly isn’t that spectacular this season; we’ve been crap & could be 4 points off top after our game in hand. We’ve as much a right to look at Top 4 as being achievable as most of the other teams. To clarify, achievable isn’t expected before we head back down that road.
All that to say we spent money this summer.
Agreed, but you need to remember that many fans have lowered their expectation to such a level that even 5th place would have them smiling.
Only 2.5 years ago, many fans were unhappy that we finished 2nd and now finishing 4th or 5th is a good achievement shows the falling standards.
It could be that fans are allowing Ole to get away with the low standards because he is an ex-player, but I don't give any manager a free ride. Last year Ole scored the lowest points total of any manager post SAF. That was a poor season.
We can also see that Ole's plan is Bruno and the counter attack. That's it. If Bruno plays well, we can win. If he plays bad or doesn't play, we can't win. If teams allow us to have the ball, we struggle.
Should Bruno get injured for a few months, I do believe Ole will be fired as we'll probably go several games without a win.
Pretty much agree with this all.
I won’t get into why OgS seems to be given blind faith based on his achievements as a player rather than a manager but we’re getting what we deserve for the most part.