If you are serious you have a three year progression plan and look to get better every season.
Ok so what’s at the end of the three year cycle? We are half way through that now. Is it just Europe, or is it Champions league? For example, we have finished 4 points off Europe this season. Last season we finished 17 points off. This seems like improvement until you see that this season was particularly generous with the placings due to results in Europe.
If next season resumes at around 60 plus points for Europe, then we are still be going to be significantly off given that this season we’ve only made one point progress. Sunderland who last year had only just been promoted via the playoffs have finished 5 points clear of us with no pre existing PL squad and after only 12 months.
That aside, up until six games ago, we were in situ for a European place despite of our seasons performances so this should have become the expectation. You can’t rigidly stick to the plan when you are seemingly achieving more than the plan.
Finally, given the number of clubs that come up or go down, and given this new stadium which many people will believe to be a game changer for us to finance a better team, three years would seem a long time just to achieve the modest target of some form of European football.
