Have to agree with Wardy, i don't think we were good enough to survive the prem if we'd been there with this squad.
There was a good deal of panic at times in several games this season when we were overrun on the break, despite the fantastic attacking play that got us promoted.
Quite a few teams were able to soak up that constant attacking, because either we weren't 'tricky' enough to unpick their very solid defending, or we missed a hatful of chances.
So IMO there are three areas to work on to be a premier league quality team that doesn't get picked off like Norwich did: better quality defending (starting in midfield and through the defensive zone), at least one striker with a much better strike ratio to chances, and more consistent quality on the ball in the advanced attacking areas (to replace Costa/Bamford/Harrison when he's not 'on it'). This latter one was fine for the championship, but these players don't seem to have the quality to unlock very good PL level defences - as someone else pointed out, even Pablo struggled a bit at that at Swansea in the PL.
hopefully we will get a promotion bounce from the confidence of going up. Striker and Ben White the priorities for me.
interesting Phil Hay piece where he was saying Costa played more defensively last season as he was adapting to what MB wanted but towards the end was showing his quality.
i really hope 3 or 4 of the youngsters make the transition too. Snacks and Struijk looked ready and 2 more from the rest of the talent would be nice.
This is all starting to get a bit cheesy now.
Bielsa signed on for 1 year. Meslier signed on for 3 years. Augustin no transfer/transfer now in hands of lawyers. Linked to so many different players. Difficult to predict what will happen. History shows that Bielsa stubbornly sticks to positions he feels need to be strengthened. He wanted Daniel James to strengthen the right wing. When that fell through he got Helda Costa. He needed a striker after Roofe left, so we got Nketiah and then Augustin. We needed centre back after Pontus left so we got White. I think the same thing might happen. If White leaves we get a replacement. If Augustin leaves we get a replacement. I think that's all the business we are going to do. That's my guess.