you see 5th as the minumum?
How? Why? We finished 16 points behind 5th this season and those above us have had poor-ish ends to the campaign.
Ok - my fault. Next time I'll put the special irony exclamation marks at the start and finish. I'd just read that Man City could have a seasons ban from CL and was being ironic as 5th would get you in.
My actual minimum expectations is that we have a season where we do not have a repeat of December, January and February 2018-2019, ditto 2017-2018, September to December 2016-2017, March - May 2015-2016 or December - March 2014-2015.
If we can have a season where we don't have a 3 month period where we are completely and utterly dour and useless it would mean that we we would be much closer to the top 6.
If you go back to my original post I said:-
"Alternatively no mid season run of terrible performances which should mean that we may not crack top 6 but we’ll be close. Ready to launch following season.
Of course just before start of the season i’ll be far less measured and put a cheeky bet on us."
I think that's quite measured. In any event there isn't a huge difference between 5th and 6th. 66 and 70 points. (we need 12 or 16 points)
In fact during our annual 3 monthly slump this year we drew with Newcastle and Watford and lost to Brighton, Southampton, Wolves, Leicester and Watford. We dropped 19 points in those games.
We also lost 3 times against Man City (2) and Tottenham (1)
In the 13 games we played over 3 months (7 at home) we only managed 11 points out of 39 points. We only beat Burnley, Bournemouth and Huddersfield.
If we were able to retain all the players that we presently have and made no additions I would hope that there would not be a repeat of that slump, and in fact I don't think that it would be setting too high a standard to expect at least 8-10 (Brighton win, Southampton win, Watford home win and one other draw) additional points from those games which would take us within spitting distance of 5th and 6th.