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When Ardley took over we weren't treading water in calm seas as you suggest, we were flapping our arms around , gulping in water and mildly panicking near the relegation zone.
All Ardley did was not improve things at all, he carried on Nolan's and Kewell's poor work. He continued to struggle and slowly drowned.
The fans expected promotion last season? Say whatttt? That completely goes against what everybody predicted at the start of last season. Where did you get that from LL?
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From being the bookies favourites for champions of L2 and then of the National League. What else could the fans be expected to think? "Everybody" didn't predict anything else.Originally Posted by laddo
Where did I say "...in calm seas..."?? Don't pretend you didn't add that for dramatic effect. I've done with this thread.
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Treading water gives me an image of a lake, calm sea or a swimming pool, that's why it was added.
So treading water in really choppy seas then? Always happy to amend as we were struggling from Day one that season as you well know.
You can't just rewrite history LL. The bookies had us favourites or second favourites both seasons that's a fact.
"The fans" (all of them or just the majority?) expected promotion? That's just made up. Where do you get this from? Please don't say NCM cos that's simply not true.
You tried to sneak it in there with the bookmakers , naughty Laxton but that was easily spotted.
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If we're talkng about last season, expectations for promotion grew during the first three months as it became clear that we were no longer being hobbled by the events of the summer.
Pre-season, we still didn't know if we were going to start with a points deduction in administration, so nobody expected it then.
By October 12th, we were 5th (and 5 points behind leaders Halifax who we had beaten) signing decent players. I wouldn't have thought many would have expected us to finish lower than the play offs by that stage and you'd naturally assume Notts were strong enough to be considered favorites to win the play offs if they couldn't snatch 1st.
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Oh yeah if you are fast forwarding 3 months into the season and ran a poll after a comfortable win at home that closed that gap to the current leaders then yes. At that point many would have predicted the play offs for Notts no doubt about it. Get there and you've got a great chance to win it.
However fast forward less than 2 months later in early December and the predictions were all about missing out on the playoffs. Talk of a mid table finish.
Alternatively rewind a couple of months to the Barnet home defeat on TV and again the seasons predictions and our chances of promotion were very different as the prediction thread at the start of the season clearly showed.
It's a rollercoaster on here.
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It's usually a rollercoaster from match to match on here
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The thing about expectations is that they do change during a season depending upon what happens at the club (you lose a key player to injury for the season; your manager walks out on you; a loanee is unexpectedly recalled by his parent club; you sign the new Messi, etc,) - nothing is ever set in stone.
Most fans' expectations at the start of last season were probably survival given the nightmarish pre-season and lack of players. But once the new owners allowed Ardley to assemble a very strong squad (and keep adding to it throughout the season) - and once we had seen the standard of the league - most fans saw a top three finish as the bare minimum. This was achieved, and we'll always be left speculating about where we would have ended up if the season had been allowed to run its full course.
The fact fans were predicting that we would finish outside the playoffs after the two lousy runs in the winter months is not an indictment of those fans - it's an indictment of an underperforming team that was unable to beat the likes of Sutton, Boreham Wood, Dover, Aldershot and Maidenhead, and a manager who was being out-thought by the likes of Dagenham & Redbridge and Hartlepool. And I'm guessing their "expectation" that we should be finishing in the top three hadn't changed.
Given our resources and the now settled squad, the fans' expectation this season (and the aim of the club, as stated by Neal Ardley and the players) is automatic promotion. As we keep saying, let's see where we are after 10 games. Looking at how Stockport and Hartlepool have started (Torquay too, though I think they started strongly last season too before fading), anything less than 20 points after 10 games isn't automatic promotion form (you could argue that anything less than 22-24 points isn't actually promotion form given our relatively easy start).
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Of course that's the case, likelihood, odds and expectations change. I'm certain that the bookmakers quickly changed who the favourites were for the title last season after our poor start and rightly lengthened our odds for promotion.
"Most fans saw a top 3 as a bare minimum" I don't recall that at all on here, there appears to be a fair bit of attempted rewriting of history.
I think after an enforced poor start to the season, top 3 was the aim not bare minimum. It's all opinions, and whichever viewpoint you have we achieved that aim.
As for this season, delighted to see you mention 10 games. That's when I'm gonna review the start instead after every 90 mins as i961pie highlighted.
The aim this season should be automatic promotion. The expectation is promotion. So many on here thankfully agree with those statements, that was not the case last season. That hasn't been the case since the season when we finished 2nd bottom of L2 in an absolute car crash of a season.
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I think laddo is on a one-man mission to bore everyone into submission on this thread.
I also think he has the ability to do it!
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If you don't respond to his threads then he will have no one to argue with.
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