I don’t disagree Pacman that they will improve. We were absolutely terrible against them last season and I can only hope we show a bit more character in the matches against them to get the needed points. With the right recruitment we will improve because in all honesty we (even though we finished 2nd) hardly set the heather alight last season.
Our whole club let us down against them last season from the directors to the playing staff. I believe we surely can improve. Gerrard is a name only as he was a fantastic player, but as a manager who will be under great pressure we can only hope he doesn’t live up to the hype the hun hoards think he will be.
I agree that we will improve on this season. We ended up with 73 pts with one competent central defender, zero competent centre forwards, a goalkeeper who missed two months, zero left backs (competent or otherwise), a right back who only started playing like he can in March and a variety of wide players who were inconsistent at best. What we did have was a know how to beat teams worse than us, so that's most of the teams in the league. If we can maintain this know how (no reason that we can't), properly replace Kenny McLean and upgrade some of our weaknesss then for sure we can be better next season.
I wouldn't worry too much about sevco. Only 1 out of our 73 points (10 of their 70) was gained from them so surely with a stronger team we can take more points from them. They have no real money to spend so whilst their signings can't be any worse than this season they still have the arrogant need to waste the likes of £20K per week on a Pena or £15K a week on a Jack so whilst Gerrard is a big name that may attract higher paid players, I'm far from convinced that they will get the value for money that puts them out of our reach. Expect more loan signings that will be hit or miss and will be a drain on their finances.
Let's just worry about ourselves and making this window more of a success than the last three.
Personally I would quite happily finish 4th next season if we won a cup,finishing 2nd is great because we finished above the Huns yet it’s no where near as good as winning a trophy.
As for Stevie Gerrard he might improve them and end up finishing 2nd but he has no chance of winning the league which will deem whether he is a success or not.
League placing clearly isn’t meaningless. Obviously winning a cup would be fantastic but for a club like AFC it should be the icing on a successful season. Finishing 8th and fluking a cup wouldn’t be quite the same (although I would clearly have taken it in the past when we were sh*te).