The People's Forum: All about balance

On the other hand - defence is champs league quality. So the impact of some additional goals would likely be amplified. Turn a few of the draws into wins. Goals scored is definitely an important indicator but look at Spurs for example.

CF and RW obviously the key positions. As the contribution from those areas has been so low we should be able to get more without risking bankruptcy. The shift in emphasis that moving from doucoure to Alcaraz will change the balance of the team - the art with that will be how we maintain defensive strength.

By far the biggest risk is going to be squad depth. All things being equal and a couple of good purchases - especially if the Brentfords, palaces etc get weakened we should end up in that mix which would be good progress. An injury crisis could quickly drop the team down the table though.

There’s actually a pretty decent core here - not world beating but definitely not relegation fodder. Address the glaring gaps and coach to a high level of efficiency (not genius) and upper mid table seems reasonable to me. Eighth or ninth.

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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?