I can say it very easily, Toff.
By common consent we had "underachieved" with those two 11th place finishes......so making the leap to seventh was not like we bridged some Grand Canyoneasque chasm....welcome as it was.
But no great excuse for hanging out the bunting.
And whilst it is great we are in Europe......Lyon here I come.....the simple fact is that but for in unjustly disallowed goal for Saints in the EFL cup final that simple pleasure might have been denied us.
We are only in Europe because two of the qualifying spots went to teams which went into Europe by another route.
And whilst there is no denying that City are a very good side, they only had ten men for most the game and they gave us the runaround.
And Burnley beat Chelsea where we just went there to keep the score down. Go figure
But ultimately Toff, I judge things by what I see with my own eyes.
And this turgid stuff we have seen over six and a half competitive games, the first half versus Split being the exception, was evident for much of last season as well.....particularly away from home.
At the lower level clubs as well as them as finished above us.
I am not looking forward to Saturday's game with any great optimism I have to say, Toff.
And it was an awful lot further into Bobby's reign when such ominous feelings coloured my judgement![]()
But we did improve though? We made the leap from 11th to 7th which I think we can call agree is where we should be - as in the bare minimum.
But we still achieved it. We still got back to where we should be so we did improve.
Now it's about building again. The end of the window wasn't kind to us and as a club we only have ourselves to blame for not getting those one or two more additions in.
On your second point, Burnley beat a Chelsea side who were down to 10 men for 80 minutes Khal, and were a bit of a shambles. We faced a Chelsea side who came off a great win vs Spurs and were back at their usual standard. It happens, even though our tactics were poor.
So we'll see. Goals win games and keeping clean sheets does as well.
We have to find a balance and there's a lot of integration to come.
.....the simple fact is that but for in unjustly disallowed goal for Saints in the EFL cup final that simple pleasure might have been denied us.








