I see posts like this and genuinely wonder if you have conveniently forgotten the history of the club, the revenues, our stature as a club in the game, the standards that SAF helped set.
You are absolutely right, we have failed to reach the CL 6 out of the last 11 years. Does that mean that we meekly accept that and slink away while a cheating club like City, and clubs without our history like Spurs, Villa and Newcastle are better than us?
Yes, by the standards of most of our supporters, a year without CL football is a lost season. It also means 75m in lost revenue and makes recruitment more difficult.
I consider it “lost”. Real Madrid and Barca and Juventus, Bayern and PSG would consider it lost as well. Do you want to swim in those waters or are you happy with domestic cups?
This is the sort of deluded nonsense we spent years mocking Liverpool fans for. It doesn't matter what we were doing 10+ years ago. We let things slip too far, and we can no longer hold ourselves to the standards of Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, etc. A lot of work needs to be done before we can start thinking in that way, and if we keep trying to hold ourselves to the standards of a team that dominates the league, then we're obviously just setting ourselves up for disappointment, as well as giving any manager we have an impossible task.
I'm not saying we need some grand 5+ year plan, but this season (and probably next) is likely to be a bit rocky. It's been an encouraging summer, but it's also been one largely spent removing deadwood and adding potential to the squad, rather than any immediate strengthening. It took Arsenal about three or four seasons under Arteta, and Liverpool two or three under Klopp. If we consider this summer just gone, with it being the first under INEOS, the starting point, I think it's more than feasible we could be a solid 2nd/3rd at a minimum, from 2026/27. For what it's worth, I think it's highly likely we'll have a new manager leading us into next season, if not the new year.
City, Arsenal and Liverpool have better squads than us (the asterisk on Liverpool being whether Slot can keep Klopp's work ticking over). Villa, Spurs, Chelsea and Newcastle are all vying for Champions League qualification too. The fact is, we could even end up with 75 points (something we've only done twice since Fergie retired) and still miss out on the Champions League places (it happened to Arsenal in 16/17).
Setting the stall out at "anything but top four and 75 points is complete failure" given our actual position, and not where we were 10+ years ago is just setting yourself up for massive disappointment, because it's simply unrealistic.
I get what you're saying mate but the club could could find one tomorrow. Hiring a coach that will play a similar style to which the club wants is easy there are a lot out there.
Would they be top coaches? Probably not. Do they need to be to bridge the gap until a better candidate is found? Again probably not.
I think this is where the shift in attitude will be from INEOS, should results not pick up (dramatically) in the next month or two.
It seems we had two sets of managers in the summer - those we would have hired but couldn't agree terms with, and those we could have agreed terms with but weren't interested in hiring at the time.
Assuming we can't tempt any from the former category, we'll look at some from the latter and reevaluate our stance on them. I just hope Southgate isn't among that list.
