Quote Originally Posted by the other bob wilson View Post
So let's get this right. A team that gained promotion with three games left to play and ended up winning the league by eight points after being undefeated in their last eight matches (they lost just one of their final twelve matches) ended the season out of form? I see.

Also, there was a problem with "a lack of pace and goals". Okay the first of those assertions has some basis of truth to it, but the signing of Fraizer Campbell went some way towards addressing our lack of attacking pace (Bellamy was also still pretty quick then, Noone was quicker than he is now back then, Conway was no slouch, same with Kimbo) and that stat about no one scoring ten goals would not have existed if he had not only been with us for about 40 per cent of the season.

We averaged more than one and a half goals a game and only Watford and Palace scored more than us that year, so a lack of goals was never an issue and, as the season ended, we, obviously, were the best equipped of the promoted teams to succeed in the Premier League - it all started to go wrong when it came to improving a good squad and then it started to collapse in late September when the dispute between manager and owner found it's way into the public domain.

Asserting that the achievement of the 2012/13 side is somehow diminished because of what happened in 2013/14 is ludicrous, as is the claim that we ended our title winning season out of form.
Weird thread this. I'm not sure if you're referring to me or ccfc but I didn't say we were out of form, I just used the phrase to emphasise the point I was trying to make to Baloo, I wasn't referring to us. I said ccfc had exaggerated our loss of form and in the post before I said my view was that we'd lost some momentum by the end of the season, that's closer to a fact than opinion (we'd won 12 of our first 13 home games, 3 of the last 10). We still won the league comfortably, it didn't diminish our achievement in winning the title in any way and, in my opinion, was probably a good thing anyway because it made it easier for Malky to get Tan to release funds for strengthening the squad.

I know you feel this topic has been done to death but I still find it interesting that, even with the benefit of hindsight, it's hard to put your finger on exactly what went wrong for Malky as a manager. It was a spectacular fall from grace. You can blame Tan all you want for what happened at City but that doesn't explain Malky's abject failure at Wigan.

Having gone at Liverpool with Gestede, Miller and Mason at Wembley then looked to expand our style of play later in the year with the signings of Maynard and Noone, he retreated into his shell completely after the 5-4 Charlton game. While that benefited us in the short term, maybe it was the start of his downfall too. He seemed to run out of ideas completely after that and didn't have any kind of a plan B, even with a large amount of money to spend in the summer of 2013. A move back to the Championship with Wigan should've suited him but he failed miserably there. Very odd.