Have we made any progress, post-Cortese?

I wanted to mention this earlier. This viewpoint, that we’re only so good, guv’nor, and we only want to be that good, is a common one on Saints forums. It’s half SaintsWeb’s content, FFS. It’s not one that I ever liked, and these days, I dunno why it has any credence in this day and age.

Because Leicester, basically. This was a team I went to see Saints play in the Championship a few years ago, a team that was on the verge of being relegated one season and becoming Premier League champs the next.

And it’s not just them, nor is it just England. Atletico are a huge team, but the breaking of the Real Madrid and Barcelona title duopoly was a huge achievement nonetheless. Then there’s Montpellier and going back a bit further, Wolfsburg and Kaiserslauten in Germany. Surprises happen all over the place.

How can we call Cortese’s Champion League aspirations “bullshit” when a team with a rat for a vanguard topped the Premier League?

Leicester didn’t have any CL ambitions as far as I recall, it just all happened for them. The big clubs had a mare and they had players who could crucify you on the break. I seem to remember thinking they weren’t much better than us. It was one of those once in a lifetime things that will never happen again in most of our lifetimes. Tell me which mid table club has said it wants CL football and has got it. Where are Leicester now, or last season? Back to normal. I am sure we all want to be better, but so do all the other teams like us, and we can’t all be.

It just seems to never happen to us.

Largest team arguably with the leats trophies.

Memories thats what football is all about and winning things, we’ve so few we still have 1976 players do every week somewhere and “Macca” givng his knowledge 40 years on in the Echo, its desperate.

Which is it? Memories or winning things? I’ve got plenty of good saints memories, especially over the past few years… so well done saints! Also we won the JPT, so another pat on the back.

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Yes the JPT, a great day it truly was, such has been our fucking underachievement we still look back to that great day the World of football and Carlisle said they’ve awoken, I have a framed picture of that great day in my shed, how sad is that, its actually tragically sad we have that as a memory…

I don’t understand what you’re saying. Is it a great memory or not? You’ve called it both “a great day” and said that it’s “tragically sad” that it’s one of our memories. A minute ago you said football was all about great memories.

Its a great memory but it reflects our small time attitude, the mutants went bankrupt and won the Cup, celebrating and remembering that merely confirms we’re small time, why didn’t Chelsea win it that year?

I have a lot a mates who are Palace supporters and we have a lot more to be happy about over the years than they do. There are plenty of clubs our size who would swap our history for theirs. There are (still) a lot more teams worse off than us. It’s only desperate if you have unrealistic expectations.

Name a bigger club with less trophies?

They announced them in 2014. Ridiculed at the time on podcasts, as I recall.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/27387616

Name a same sized club with more trophies? There must be dozens of them according to you.

We geta mute Chinese bloke and a woman who’s eaten too many of them and the sad part is they’re laughing at us.

The JPT was a great game. I enjoyed it because one of my top Liverpool muckers is from Whitehaven and is a Carlisle fan. They won it soon after, bless.

Besides, it gives us a chant we can use against the bigger clubs when they start giving it the large about their multiple achievements.

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Ok Barry. Time to log off.

It was but that comfort blanket of “achievement” when it really should be seen as failure sums the club and its fans up, a day out in London for countryfolk etc etc, I want more than that and any ambitious person wanting the best for their club would.

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We were ten points down before we started that season. We actually had a proper go at promotion that year. I think I might have been watching Saints in the stands when I realised we finally weren’t going to do it, but we had a valiant go at it. The JPT was the one competition we could realistically win, and weren’t hampered in. Put those points back on and we not only made the playoffs in theory, but we actually won something.

So yep, achievement in that context? I’d take that. What else we we realistically winning that season?

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True but the failure beforehand? Similar to the bigger teams not wanting to win the Europa, its a nuisance, its also arrogance but who cares.

Why bigger? Let’s have a go anyway.

Since 1863, and as founder members of the Football League, Stoke have won one major trophy, the League Cup in 1972.

A larger population and 23 years longer to win trophies, seems to fit.

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I suspect in Olden Times we used to be a smaller club than we are right now. I think we’re deffo due though! If there is any justice in the world, we should be awarded FA Cup this season imo.

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Two teams in the six towns that make Stoke upon Trent, no cigar son.