The People's Forum: I don't mind a touch of realism - for me, my expectations are fairly middling...

...as there are just so many variables and fundamental changes between the end of last season and the beginning of the next one that I think lots of the usual analysis just goes out of the window and it pretty meaningless.

The new stadium is obviously a once-in-a-lifetime situation for most football clubs and their fans, and it's virtually impossible to predict the impact of that on next season - it could be hugely positive or hugely negative. Combined with all the other variables including the new CEO, new backroom staff, new(ish) oners, new(ish) manager and the squad departures/retention/recruitment situation then I think that any kind of analysis like this kind of loses it's value as everything is just SO different for us this summer.

I'm looking at the situation both on and off the pitch with pretty much zero expectation of vast improvements in either next season, but obviously, now that we have some more stability (absolutely crucial and something we haven't had for a long time) I definitely have the hope that things will improve gradually in both areas as we settle into the new stadium, and all the other variables listed above.

Previous Message

There seems there’s an expectation that the Summer will bring in a whole new revamped team that will be filled with of goals and creativity and rocket us into the top half of the league.

I think it’s nigh on impossible to make such a big leap. It’s not the league position of 13th we should concentrate on, it’s the number of goals we score.

We were the 4th lowest scorers last season with only the 3 relegated teams scoring less than us. In 23/24 we were the 2nd lowest scorers and also 2nd lowest in 22/23.

Look at the league table attached here and the correlation of goals scored vs points won. In most cases it’s 1 for 1 i.e. 1 goal scored is 1 point earned.

Over the last 3 seasons, you need to score approximately 60 goals to secure a Top 10 finish.

We’ve averaged 38 goals over the last 3 seasons.

So if you believe we can “challenge for Top 10” what in effect you’re saying is we can go from a team that’s more or less averages 1 goal a game to one that average 1.5 goals a game and approx add 20 goals on top of what we usually score.

Think about that for a minute.

We’re potentially expecting a whole raft of new players to come in and gel together quickly in a new stadium and outperform all previous seasons since 16/17 when we scored 62 goals and Lukaku got 25 of them.

I say it’s nigh on impossible to make such a big leap in a year of transition.

I’d gladly take 13th again whilst hoping to improve our goal output to be more in line with points earned. We’ve got a huge amount of points for our goals scored these last 2 seasons.

What about you? Are you really expecting an avalanche of goals and a Top 10 finish?