I light of the continuing negativity and assumption that we have over achieved this season, if we didn't make any changes to the side next season, do you think we would do better or worse?

We have a relatively small squad and injuries could have had a worse impact, but on the plus side many of our younger players should continue to improve. I obviously expect us to strengthen, but firmly believe we continue to underrate the current side. We can see the weaknesses and faults, but the reality is that other sides (apart from the three title contenders) possess at least as many if not more weaknesses. If all sides remained similarly unchanged next season, I would still expect a top 5 finish.

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2002

Answers

Appropriate Position

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2002

With the current squad, top 6. With additions and removals in a few positions top 3. We have had our fair share of luck matched with a new found grit and determination and belief that's taken us through tough games. European games will be a real test of character. More of the same for next season.

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2002

Ya agree Bobby. Im really positive for the future.

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2002

We need a new face up front, young wild and free and preferably with English as his native language. A "tuff" no nonsense Jock and a referee intimidator with shaven head and veins bulging in his neck.......... or something like that ......... why in hell's name are we still talking "top 5" etc. The number one spot is all that counts...................

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2002

Bobby, Sudden,

agree. YBR has bought young talented players, and built a team with a bright future. Bloody excellent that.

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2002

My personal view is that at the end of the season the position in the PL is a good indication of the merits of each team. You can over- achieve, or indeed under-achieve over a period of a few games, but over the season class tells. As someone has already said, we quite naturally tend to be very analytical and critical of our own team, and largely overook the fact that all teams have weaknesses.

My only caveat in this view is that we have had more luck with injuries this season than previously, that has allowed us field a relatively settled team.

Looking to further improvement, we are still not good enough defensively, and I'm looking for strengthening there, particualrly at LB. We lack a strong ball-winner in m/f - a la Viera & Keane, and this may mean replacing Gary Speed if we could find the right replacement.

We have some wonderful attacking flair, but imo are still too reliant on Shearer doing the business up front. This imo is the biggest threat to our continuing upward progress - he is nearing the end of his fantastic career, and a "no compromise" replacement will be extremely difficult to find.

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2002

It wasn't the intention of the thread to discuss where we need to strengthen, but to put this season's performance in perspective. So far everyone has effectively agreed we have achieved our current position through merit. So come on all you doom-mongers. Where do you think we would finish based on the assumptions in the first thread? ;-)

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2002

OK Pete, not good enough, we threw away stupid points at home against bottom end clubs, it should always be "Fortress St James'" with those extra points we would ahve not only been home and dry in the CL but still in contention with the top three. Season End Report : Could do better !

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2002

Potential for natural progression is high as the side is generally pretty youthful. Lua2 for example seems to have progressed enormously, and Bernard is going the same way. Not players you see as first choice but our problem has been lack of depth when members of the first XI are out.

Would be nice to see Gary Caldwell do a Bernard next season.

A couple of key signings and we'll be flying.

Downside could be on-going loss of Solano to Peru.

Fairly comfortable that this season is repeatable as long as we don't get too distracted by a long CL run :0)

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2002

Why bother asking when you know what i'm going to say?

We need to improve to retain this place next season....need to be better defensively, in midfield and need better cover up front for Al&Bellers who my first choice strikers....

Need to tie Bernard and Distin down to new deals and only let go of the average players.....

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2002

I'm afraid I'm not quite so confident and if we kept the same line up we'd be looking at maybe 6th next season. It's the same story, our defence is really too ready to hit the panic button and lets in sloppy goals. We had a fair bit of luck in certain away games and with injuries. Leeds won't have the troubles they had this year, and I can see Man City finishing in the top 10. Also Ipswich show that you can over-achieve over a whole season, though we're a much better team than they are.

...just that back and it sounds really pessimistic which I don't feel. We've done very well and we deserve to be in the Champs League, all I'm saying is we can't stand still.

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2002

Agree with Martin and Gav. We've definitely had luck this year, but we've also improved the squad and have promising younger players. But I can easily see us doing a Leeds or Chelsea next season if we get too many injuries. We have got to improve defensively before I could feel comfortable saying we are real title contenders. Doesn't mean I don't think we could push for it again. More good luck on our part, with some implosions by teams playing in red would help. It could happen, but I'm won't believe it until I see it. ;-)

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2002

We can't afford to be complacent; just look at the Mackems and Ipswich to see where resting on your laurels gets you. We need a 24 year old Tony Adams or Alan Hansen at the centre of our defence and a 23 year old Roy Keane or Edgar Davids in our midfield. A 22 year old Luis Figo would also be nice...speaking of which, I'd love to know why the hell YBR didn't outbid Peytar for Jason McAteer when he became available.

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2002

I have it on some authority that McAteer was desperate to come to Newcastle. Unfortunately for him he got the wrong Metro line from Central Station...

I'm not convinced McAteer would have made any difference to our midfield. Given a choice between Jenas and McAteer, who would you pick?

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2002

Of course it's worth it Gav, although it would be interesting to know roughly how much worse you think we would do if we stayed unchanged and others similarly. Ciara and Martin agree with you, but seem to think we have 'over-achieved', but just by two places, which helps me put into perspective the relative pessimism - ie we're a UEFA team candidate rather than Champions League (still IMO a very solid building block). Hence the 'pessimism' is more ambition driven rather than a sense of hopelessness.

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2002

Wasn't there talk of a £35 mil war-chest for Bobby should we get through to the Champs league. Just to keep this on topic - I agree with all that has been said here and would add that if we had held on against Fulham and Villa and the Ipswich game had gone our way - we would still be discussing title chances. 4th slot is fully deserved.

Solid injury cover is crucial - with that alone I would expect a similar or better placing next season.

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2002

And don't forget Nobby not finishing the mackems off earlier in the season....we could've finished higher but as has been said, we have been VERY lucky this year in that most of our major performers have remained healthy for the majority of the season...

My opinion is that if we don't improve the squad then we could very well be just a top 8 team next year....given the improvements I mentioned and also retaining our luck with injuries I see no reason why we can't aim for top 4 again....

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2002

DSS - totally agree that we should be complacent. I'm not advocating no change, just trying to gauge reaction to this season's performance.

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2002

Oops - that should be not complacent :-)

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2002

I wouldn't call myself pessimistic on this issue, just realistic. But yeah, it is more ambition driven, as has been my real pessimism about us in the past.

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2002

Bobby, I wasn't being serious. There isn't one mackem who'd get into our first XI. Philips on the bench maybe and Arca in our youth team.

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2002

it seems like everyone here has to be so positive, well I think if we qualify for top six next season we'll have stepped up a notch in my opinion. Everyone has mentioned luck here and if we don't get it next season it could be 8th or 9th. It's a massively competitive league and outside the current top three it's anyones game. A return to Champs league the following season would be a much bigger achievement. Anyway, we are not there yet.....;->

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2002

The key to this season was confidence - we suddenly felt that we could win every game, even when we fell behind, the players didn't give in

However that is also the problem, we have come from behind and won far too many times this season - we need to control games from kick-off, not from when we are 1 or 2 goals behind.

We are 4th, we have had some luck this season as has every other team, but we are 4th on merit. However if we wish to finish in the top 6 next season then we do need to sort our defence out.

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2002

I totally agree that 6th place next season would be a good achievement. As Clarky said, we have been relatively lucky with injuries - next season, should we qualify for the champions league group games, we will have to play a minimum of 48 games - that's if we lose our first Worthington and FA cup games - we could quite easily be looking at over 50 games. We do not have the squad to cope with that many games - imagine we lose Given, O'Brien, Dyer, Solano, Bellamy for three weeks, imagine that Distin and Robert are suspended at that time - it's quite a frightening prospect but a real possibility.

If we did have an injury crisis as bad as that then we would do well to finish in the top half, never mind in Europe. As I said in my previous post, we have played with confidence this season, just how much confidence will we have if we do get beaten heavily in a European game?

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2002

I think unfortunately for us our injuries came at precisely the wrong time. If Dyer and Bellamy had been playing against Arsenal and Liverpool in March we may have won those games and we would now be strongly challenging for the title along with the other 3. I think our position is a fair reflection of our abilities this year.

-- Anonymous, April 23, 2002

In that case you could say Arsenal have been very lucky.

For virtually the whole season they have had Pires, Henry and Vieira fit. Liverpool have rarely had to change their back line, and Man U have had Keane fit all season.

We've had Dyer, Bellamya and Speed all out for certain lengths of time.

We have had some luck, but the bad luck is also being forgotten here.

-- Anonymous, April 23, 2002

As I said we have been relatively lucky with injuries - yes we lost Bellamy at a key point in time and Dyer has only played half the season, but that's about it - in previous seasons we've had no centre forward or no centre half or no midfield. This season has been comparatively good - Arsenal on the other hand have used at least 10 different defenders, possibly more, 3 goalkeepers and had Ljungberg, Van Bronkhurst and Pires out for at least 3 months - you could hardly call them lucky with injuries could you?

Obviously every team has injuries but the point I was trying to make is that if we have some kind of mini (or major) injury crisis next season we will struggle to achieve 6 th place in the league never mind higher.

-- Anonymous, April 24, 2002

But next season we'll have a stronger squad as well, a couple of great players who settle into their game quickly could make a huge difference.

-- Anonymous, April 24, 2002

I reckon we need 4 or 5 decent players coming in - players who BR must have confidence to frequently play and use to rest the really key players.

This season we've had too many squad players who are simply not good enough to come in and do an effective job eg. Quinn, Griffin, Bassedas, Gavilan, Steve Caldwell, Marcelino - and also to a degree players like McClen, Bernard and Lx3 who only recently have made any impact.

If we go into a CL campaign with the current squad + say only 2 new players we could find ourselves in difficulty.

-- Anonymous, April 24, 2002

Agree entirely Clarky, we need probably two really big signings, another two shrewd buys - £6m for Bellamy is looking like one of those, and perhaps some cheaper players from abroad who can do the job if needed.

-- Anonymous, April 24, 2002