Originally posted by @ant
For fans of my era and younger we could potentially be looking at our best League finish in living memory. Yet still I hear some noises of discontent. Mentalists…
Not a perfect season (early Europa exit, the tricky 10-game run of poor results) but you can’t take Leicester’s anomalous season as a relative measure.
There’s also the small matter of:
Chelsea (a) 1-3
Arsenal (h) 4-0
Man United (a) 0-1
Liverpool (h) 3-2
Man City (h) 4-2
Tottenham (a) 1-2i
I do find myself somewhat conflicted on this.
On the one hand, we are on course to have our best PL season - or the best season in my time supporting Saints or indeed since I was born. This on the back of another summer where we lost 2/3 of our best players from the previous season. In the face of that we have at least maintained our performance, with a chance of finishing in the top 6 - the stuff many told me I was daft to suggest was achievable.
That all said, I can’t help but look at Leicester and think that could have been us. The past few years we have been a model of how to run a club not part of that ‘elite-clique’. I heard Collymore say on twitter, if you were to back a club to break that cabal you probably would have gone Saints. So it does irksome me a bit that actually, we didn’t take more advantage of Chelsea, Liverpool and Utd not having good seasons.
We did prat around a bit in the summer, and that affected our non-existent Europa campaign. It also affected the start of the league campaign too, where we looked sluggish (granted injuries didn’t help there).
That 11 game streak where we were fucking drek is really annoying. I know, I know 'if my auntie had balls shed be my uncle", but 3 wins from that period (or the start of the season) and we’d be third right now. It’s really hard to think there isn’t a hint of an opportunity lost this season.
Plus, cups were crap (again) and other than VVD last summers signings were patchy. Clasie is starting to look like he might make it, and romeu is good but a liability with his challenges these were replacements for those we lost last year. Cedric/Cuco certainly aren’t better than Clyne and Juanmi has done fuck all.
So yeah, in some ways a good season (improvement of Shane Long a highlight for me) but I can’t help but feel it wouldn’t have taken much more for it to be so much better. In some cases, I think we could have done better ourselves.
Also, we can be more than a team that marks the success of a season on how many big boys we beat.
