When Was The Last Time...

davidwhitehead said:
When was the last time we were in a higher division than Saints? In fact, have we EVER been in a higher league than them ?

Maybe this is an historic opportunity for AFCB ? In the same way that for decades SFC siphoned off support from the Bournemouth/Dorset area, when they were a top tier outfit and we were lower league, maybe now the trend could be reversed ?

Build that new stadium now Mr. Foley !
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A touch early by here's my limited thoughts A stadium will obviously take years and even if they go down they're well served to come back up with parachute payments. Their accounts don't appear to be in bad shape either, they only made a £6 million loss last year for example. They're carrying a £90 million loan which is manageable.

Their match day revenue was £17 million so it's all in place to still be a big hitter (if they go down) although I accept their attendances will drop.

Lets be honest they're a footballing city, syphoning support would be day trippers or the % that want to see PL football, perhaps some nippers / families in the New Forest. Having the capacity for that is potentially years away for us.

I still thinks it's criminal we haven't at least expanded but that's another story.
 
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Never thought of Southampton as a hard-core football city, unlike, say, Pompey.

If they have a couple of poor seasons I can see their gates dropping dramatically.
 
afcdibby said:
West Brom, Watford and Norwich must all be due to come back up.
Clubs without PP can’t compete apparently, yet all the play off places are currently occupied by teams without PP.
Baffling.
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Massive leap to suggest I am saying other clubs cannot compete for promotion in the Championship. That's not what I am saying. I am saying, they have the odds stacked against them.

By all means, quote the current play-off picture, but since COVID 100% of all the sides who have won automatic promotion have been clubs who have been relegated from the Premier League in the two seasons prior.
 
DJ said:
Sheffield United went down on 20 points just two seasons ago and have already won promotion with games to spare.

The gap has widened since covid.

Coventry a shambles of a club off the field, have only just secured a home stadium for the next five seasons (yesterday) could go up via the play-offs.

Southampton are not in any worse shape than either of those two clubs.
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The one I’d compare Southampton to are Watford, who are not even going to make the play offs.

Sheffield United have had quite a consistent core of players for a few years now, they have only needed to supplement what they already had. They didn’t really lose anybody of note after relegation either, because they didn’t have anybody of note to lose.

Looking at Watford this season, they have Pedro and Sarr playing in the championship. They should be walking that league based on the quality in their squad, but they’re not because they haven’t been able to come together as a team. I think it could be similar for Saints, they have a squad heavily bloated with talented but very inexperienced players. They are going to need a complete revamp whereas I think the other two who go down won’t need such an overhaul.

You’re right about the gap being bigger than it ever has been though post Covid, the top two next season will highly likely be made up of two of the teams that have been relegated in the past two seasons. It’s not the championship that we won, a combination of Covid, FFP, parachute payments and the mutation of the PL into some sort of European super league, means that the gap has become almost insurmountable for the rest. Anybody not in the ‘parachute’ category will very likely have to do it via the play offs, as per Brentford or Forest. The insane amount of money at the top level means that even the lower end teams can prise away the best players from teams in the top European leagues, and it’s starting to filter down to the level below unfortunately.
 
afcdibby said:
West Brom, Watford and Norwich must all be due to come back up.
Clubs without PP can’t compete apparently, yet all the play off places are currently occupied by teams without PP.
Baffling.
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You don’t think having 60m, 50m and 20m helps? The two teams promoted were on parachute payments! As they were the year before. Does it guarantee promotion? Of course not you need to make the right managerial appointment and keep a fair amount of decent players but money is always the largest contributing factor to football as we keep pointing out whenever we play the top clubs.
 
DJ said:
Massive leap to suggest I am saying other clubs cannot compete for promotion in the Championship. That's not what I am saying. I am saying, they have the odds stacked against them.

By all means, quote the current play-off picture, but since COVID 100% of all the sides who have won automatic promotion have been clubs who have been relegated from the Premier League in the two seasons prior.
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Think it’s more to do with the spending that goes on in the PL now to be honest, and the calibre of player that the lower sides are able to attract.

Look at the season we won the championship, the teams who came down that year were Cardiff, Norwich and Fulham. They all had strong championship level squads for sure, but you couldn’t really look at any of them and say that they were going to run away with the league. In fact Fulham finished in the bottom half and Cardiff in 11th place, the gap just wasn’t anywhere near as big. Compare these squads to the calibre of player that the relegated sides this year will be going down with. It used to be not so long ago that the lower PL sides were recruiting from the championship to strengthen their squads, now they are virtually all recruiting from the top European leagues.

It’s at the point now that all you have to do as a relegated side is avoid horrific mismanagement and you will at the very least make the play offs. And even if that is the case, it’s still possible to make them! We were managed pretty poorly off of the pitch in 20/21 but still comfortably finished in the play offs because we had a champions league level player carrying us. When we won the league, the recently relegated sides just didn’t have this calibre of player.
 
The key to winning the championship is how battle hardened your squad is to go twice a week at some tricky grounds with more physical play. It’s why Lerma was a great Championship player but Josh King and Stan always looked better a level up. If we went down Pearson would have come back for that role. Solanke was tailor made for it as was Kieffer Moore but I think Outtara might find it hard for a bit….

Southampton will need a squad overhaul. They have spent a long time in the top flight and don’t have a Pearson/Moore equivalent.
 
Neil Dawson said:
You don’t think having 60m, 50m and 20m helps? The two teams promoted were on parachute payments! As they were the year before. Does it guarantee promotion? Of course not you need to make the right managerial appointment and keep a fair amount of decent players but money is always the largest contributing factor to football as we keep pointing out whenever we play the top clubs.
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Don’t know why so many people are trying to kid themselves that those going down don’t have a huge advantage over the rest. The only way a non parachute/not recently relegated side finishes in the top two next season is if virtually all of the parachute teams are mismanaged horrifically. It’s no guarantee of course, if you go bat s*it crazy and appoint four managers in one season like Watford then you will likely fail. But all you really need to do as a recently relegated team now is to not f**k up completely and you have a very good chance. You don’t have to be perfect by any means, the gap and the financial divide is so big now that as long as you are vaguely competent then you will at least finish in the play offs, and have a very good shot at top two.
 
Neil Dawson said:
The key to winning the championship is how battle hardened your squad is to go twice a week at some tricky grounds with more physical play. It’s why Lerma was a great Championship player but Josh King and Stan always looked better a level up. If we went down Pearson would have come back for that role. Solanke was tailor made for it as was Kieffer Moore but I think Outtara might find it hard for a bit….

Southampton will need a squad overhaul. They have spent a long time in the top flight and don’t have a Pearson/Moore equivalent.
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I get where you’re coming from but I actually think that Lerma is a lot better PL level player than he is a championship level one. I think that he looks very comfortable this level for the majority of the time, but he struggled at times at the level bellow. All about opinions though.

Also think that Stan was one of our better players in the first season back in the championship, King was mainly ineffective because he didn’t want to be here.

I think that if a player is talented enough they will succeed in the championship regardless, as long as they have more experienced and championship hardened players around them. Danjuma is an example of this, he is hardly tailor made for the rigours of that level, but he still tore it apart based on pure talent.
 
KingKieffer said:
Given the state of Saints squad and the people they have running the club, it’s far from guaranteed that they will bounce straight back up imo. I’d fancy the other two going down over them, whoever they are.
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its impossible not to go straight back up given the parachute payments
neil dawson taught us that, amongst other things......
 
KingKieffer said:
Don’t know why so many people are trying to kid themselves that those going down don’t have a huge advantage over the rest. The only way a non parachute/not recently relegated side finishes in the top two next season is if virtually all of the parachute teams are mismanaged horrifically. It’s no guarantee of course, if you go bat s*it crazy and appoint four managers in one season like Watford then you will likely fail. But all you really need to do as a recently relegated team now is to not f**k up completely and you have a very good chance. You don’t have to be perfect by any means, the gap and the financial divide is so big now that as long as you are vaguely competent then you will at least finish in the play offs, and have a very good shot at top two.
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Two of the teams that went down last season aren't going to finish in the playoffs. One of them not even in the top half.
 
If it's soton, Everton and forest I can't see any of then fibishibg top 2. They all appear to be in so much chaos.

Leeds and Leicester might do though.
 
Parachute payments will be a drop in the ocean for at least two of the potentially relegated clubs:

o very few of Everton’s squad have relegation clauses (according to this morning’s Telegraph), plus they have some very big earners. For example Pickford on £150k a week. Whilst they might find buyers for him, who is going to want Mina or the permanently injured Calvert-Lewin? Not to mention alll those builders to pay down by the docks;

o Notts Forest have probably spent next year’s money on transfers, signing on and agents’ fees already, on a bloated squad with virtually no resale value.

Both clubs will get about £55 million in parachute payments next year, which will leave them looking down the back of the sofa for a pound to put in the meter after about four months.
 
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