Arteta was our only viable play maker,hence a lack of goalscoring opportunities.
LOL. Obviously I was talking about the Prem. If you truly believe that Forest winning the league 35 years ago has any bearing on teams abilities to break the billion pound monopoly of today's clubs then we should agree to disagree and go our separate ways. There is no bridging that gap.
Are we hoping to just fluke a one-off good finish like we did in our CL season or are we talking about some degree of actual sustainable success? If we define success as a one-off fluke I'd be more likely to agree it's possible -- although I would say a Cup or fourth place is far more likely than a league title (obviously).
I hope so although I don't feel as if City's run has been particularly well managed and they still won. They wasted a lot of money on head-case players who either left permanently or temporarily (or stayed to cause trouble). Plus Chelsea's "slip" this year could yet have no negative ramifications -- in fact it could go down as one of their best ever seasons with a domestic cup, the CL title (finally) and continued qualification to the CL via the RS rule. They lost a few million in league money I suppose but I think they'll survive. Newcastle ultimately just got an extra 1m and Europe league out of Chelsea's slip which (while more than we got) doesn't feel as if it's likely to cause a revolution.
I hadn't thought about this before with your Valencia example but Spain get four CL slots but there are only two mega rich teams likely to be there every year. Assuming you make the group stages there is no different revenue value in the CL between 1st and 4th (you could argue 1-3 has more value than 4th; however assuming you make it through qualification you are all on equal money). So essentially you are fighting whomever is likely to be battling for fourth -- in Spain the difference between Valenica with the other teams contending for fourth is nowhere near as dramatic as the difference between us and the RS, Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs. So surely the easier access to CL money is going to make building a contender far easier. I'd be far more confident of our chances if we had to fight the likes of Malaga, Atletico Madrid, Levante or Osasuna for the final CL spot because we're much closer to them in resources than we are to the likes of Chelsea.
Well to a certain extent -- I still think if there were managers out there who *could* do better than Moyes with the same resources there would be managers out there who *have* done better than Moyes with the same resources. All the mid and bottom of the spending league table teams have fired 2-3 managers in the time Moyes has been around and they weren't fired because they finished 5th-7th too often.
I would love a Cup. Don't get me wrong. However a Cup isn't going to turn our fortunes around (Portsmouth, Birmingham, Middlesbrough). There is quite a bit of luck in a Cup. It would be fantastic and I'm not diminishing how much we all would enjoy it but Cups aren't changing our fortunes -- they would however change our moods and probably make GoT a more pleasant place to be so I'm all for it.
I'd also quibble with "often" as there are two winning FA Cup teams in the last twenty years whom I would categorize as not rich (and we're one of them): Why can't the person who came damn close do it again? Obviously this isn't easy -- Newcastle just failed (as did everyone else every other year). I know you put stock into other leagues but for the Prem we are the only example to follow. The Prem is also unique (in France you have a couple of money teams -- and those teams aren't *that* rich, if you take away their CL revenue they make the same amount we do; in Spain you have two massive teams ... we have three absurdly rich teams and three slightly less absurd but till pretty absurdly rich compared with the rest of us teams). I'd be more confident of our chances if we only had two teams to contend with.
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