Sorry FL but this has all the hallmarks of comfort blanket thinking to me. Yes, if we'd been off the pace all season and then produced a late run that got us to third....we'd all be chuffed...but that's not how the season played out. Without ever being at our thunderous best, and disrgarding the various mitigations of poor refs and injuries, we had put ourselves within touching distance of 2 top prizes....but it was the nature of the collapse(s) that shocked us. There's no shame in losing, even to Palace, Everton and Atalanta, IF, and it's a big IF...we'd put up a fight; but when the pressure was on, we buckled without a fight and that for me was the failure...not the losses, but the feeble application of the players in those key, potentially career defining fixtures. We shouldn't have lost those games, but we deserved to lose them.
It doesn't feel to me that we have overachieved...as you say you end up where you belong...3rd, measurable progress...but its fractions in truth.
It was our lack of quality that was our downfall, in particular in those games mentioned, we just didn’t have the players that fought hard enough for me, we rolled over especially in the Atalanta game, the score reflects that, against N-Everton they simply wanted it more than our players did, despite still having a chance to be champions at that point, we again rolled over, as for Palace heads were shot, we knew then it was all over, and Palace historically always give us a hard time so no real surprises they fu**ed us over,
We have good players in midfield, but where is the steel, we have flair players and that’s fine if everything is going your way but we need steel too when things get a bit tougher, and we lost that when Hendo went sand dancing, and Jimmy flew with the seagulls, we’ve replaced neither, and nor have we replaced Gini, another who had a bit about him, we need to sign players with a bit of muscle if we want to go that step further next season, I hope Arne recognises this too and acts accordingly!!
YNWA
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