Do you think it would be a bigger, better achievement than the last one?
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Do you think it would be a bigger, better achievement than the last one?
Gotta be.Warnock has nothing like the budget Malky had.
My memory of the first Premiership promotion is that the push was remorseless, almost unstoppable.
This time around, despite being in a similar position points-wise, I think promotion will be more of a fight and, if achieved, it will be more satisfying.
Probably. Saying that we were Champions and won it with ease.
Marshall though won us so many points that season.
I would also say there are more genuine top two contenders this time around.
After taking over from Jones, Malky brought in (fees taken from Transfermarkt, most complete list I can find even if some figures look slightly odd) Kenny Miller (£900k), Ben Turner (£675k), Filip Kiss (loan fee: £567k), Joe Mason (£252k), Kadeem Harris (£162k), Craig Conway, Don Cowie, Robert Earnshaw, Aron Gunnarsson, Andrew Taylor, Rudy Gestede (all free). In terms of transfer and loan fees, that's a smidge over £2.5million for 11 players. We definitely made a profit overall on our summer transfer activity in 2011/12.
The following summer we added (fees paid only) Nicky Maynard (£2.84m), Kim Bo-Kyung (£2.70m), Etien Velikonja (£1.80m), Craig Noone (£1.13m), Jordon Mutch (£1.13m), Fraizer Campbell (£698k), Matthew Connolly (£572k), Filip Kiss (£567k), Tommy Smith (£342k), coming in at just short of £12million.
It has to be remembered that, during that summer, Tan and the directors decided to give Malky 1 season to win promotion. A year earlier he was given 3 seasons, but due to success in his first season, the owner and his cronies thought it could be achieved and bankrolled. As it was, Maynard was injured early on and rarely featured. Velikonja was, by all accounts, a Tan signing, as I'm guessing Kim was. Noone, Mutch, Campbell, Connolly and Smith were well worth their fees. Kiss, who was often involved during 2011/12 ended up not being played. We didn't sign many duds under Malky, most of our failures during his Championship time were brought in by others (Earnie, for example, wasn't wanted by Malky).
I'm not sure that lot would cost £30m if they were bought now as they were back then. Maynard would have probably been quite a bit more expensive (the cost of strikers has risen more than the rest arguably).
It is a certainty that we had somewhat of a threadbare squad during 2011/12 due to the number of players we were left with (I recall Jones having a similar scenario to deal with when he took over). Arguably we had more strength in depth than we did back then, so a promotion push, given the right wheeling and dealing, could cost less than it did 5 years ago.
Winning 10 in a row about this time was the main factor, we cruised to it and even finished quite boringly with lots of draws if I remember.
Near enough. 13 wins from 18 was an incredible run, made all the more curious in that 12 of them were by a single goal. We won 3 of our last 13, drawing 6 of the last 8. At the end of that 18 game streak we were top by 7 points. We won 5 points from the next 5 games and were still top by 7 points!
From the beginning of March we won 17 points from 13 games, Hull won 17 points from 12 games and Watford won 15 points from 12 games. Thankfully for us, our main promotion rivals had a remarkable drop in form, too.
That promotion was just weird anyway. Take the last game at Burnley when we were already up we took 1500 fans, terrible. 25 years earlier in the dungeon we got promoted to division 3 and took 3000 despite a very limited team with one or 2 decent players at best.
For me it would be a far bigger achievement yet would mean a lot less.
The desire of seeing us in the top league was an almost unimaginable dream going back a long way.
Once achieved and the underwhelming season there has taken away the excitement that once went hand in hand with the ambition to see us up there with the big guns of the Premiership.
Obviously, I want us to do well but cannot get too excited about the prospect.
I think it would be a bigger achievement given that we haven't been building towards it over a few years. I mean we have in regards to making the club stable again but not in the way of throwing money at it. It would be massive given the parachute payments ending next year. It could be one of the most important promotions in recent times. Bigger than the first with some lessons learned hopefully. If it happens. Good season so far though. Cracking stuff.
Can’t see it happening either to be honest, love to, imagine us going up and the jacks plummeting back to where they belong.......oh the joy