Aye Up, its a new season - How will it go for us ?

Thoughts on the new season folks:-

Strengths:-
Very experienced Team
Squad strength in depth

Weaknesses
Goalkeeper - There really doesn't look a top notch one from Bunn, Steer, Johnstone
Goalscoring - The only guys who could find the net last season is injured for a bit longer. Im far from convinced Hogan will find his goal scoring touch.

I can see us staying in contention for the play offs - we need to score lots more goals than last season to secure a top 2 finish.

Also the thing that gets missed when people say about Bruce's promotion record is the fact he's never actually won the league. 2 2nds and 2 play offs

For me, the goal scoring problem is fundamental and I can't believe it's not been addressed.

Got a feeling that goals will be few and far between until Kodj comes back and assumes his normal form.

Expect lots of 0-0 draws punctuated with the occasional 1-0 or 0-1.

Midtable at best by November.

I'm not sure how we're favourites to go up. It can only be other teams perceived shortcomings and the fact we have Bruce as manager, who is generally liked throughout the game. But, for me, I still see us struggling to score enough goals to gain automatic promotion. That said, there are still a few weeks left of this transfer window so maybe things will look somewhat different by September.

Obvious to say but the start is so crucial. We need to be there or thereabouts after the first dozen games for me.

I agree goalscoring will be the issue.
Hogan = a huge ?
Gabby = not a regular scorer
Kodija = injured and then will be playing fitness catch-up
Green = Raw

We need at least one of those strikers to hit the 20 goals mark and one in the 12 to 15 region with maybe Gabby on 7 or 8

Midfield could help out of course but we need 8 to 10 goals from the likes of Hourihane & Thor and 5 or 6 from Lansbury, Adomah/Elmo if we are to challenge.

The defenders will need to chip in too. between four & half a dozen each from Terry and Samba would be ideal with a few from Chester ideally.

Weirdly i have more faith in the defenders getting their quota than the strikers!

If all those come off we would score around 80 to 85 goals which you would hope coupled with a mean defence would do the job.

I think we'll do fine. We are lacking Kodjia for sure, but any club would miss their best striker. Just gotta get others to step up.

Generally from watching the preseason matches, I think we look very organised. Didn't think we had much attacking threat, which was unfortunate, but I guess we'll get there.

I think one major bit here is that you can't really give us a verdict or evaluation without considering what we're up against. You won't find any clubs in the championship that can't be beaten, that won't have form lapses, or won't struggle with injuries or a generally lack of quality.

So the question is whether we can maintain an average quality to surpass what we meet. I think we can. I wouldn't be utterly surprised to see us walk the league a bit like Newcastle last year. But since you lot would laugh at me for saying us winning it, I'm going for us second and Norwich out as winners.

The Utterer wrote:Obvious to say but the start is so crucial. We need to be there or thereabouts after the first dozen games for me.

I agree goalscoring will be the issue.
Hogan = a huge ?
Gabby = not a regular scorer
Kodija = injured and then will be playing fitness catch-up
Green =  Raw

We need at least one of those strikers to hit the 20 goals mark and one in the 12 to 15 region with maybe Gabby on 7 or 8

Midfield could help out of course but we need 8 to 10 goals from the likes of Hourihane & Thor and 5 or 6 from Lansbury, Adomah/Elmo if we are to challenge.

The defenders will need to chip in too. between four & half a dozen each from Terry and Samba would be ideal with a few from Chester ideally.

Weirdly i have more faith in the defenders getting their quota than the strikers!

If all those come off we would score around 80 to 85 goals which you would hope coupled with a mean defence would do the job.

The goals really are a concern tbh.

I guess we can take a sneak peak at Newcastle's season last year. They had Gayle with 23, Ritchie with 12, Perez with 9, before a bunch of others at a handful. This really isn't an impossible task. Kodjia had 19 last season, but however you look at it you need one person in our squad to have a great season and clock 15-20 goals. Anything else and we suddenly need a couple of players getting 10-12 and I'm not sure that's realistic. Purely for fun we can assume Kodjia will get 12 league goals after coming back injured. Lets assume Hogan has a good season and gets 15. Gabby gets (however unrealistic) 8 goals. We are 10 goals short here.
Now it's not like we need 44 goals to get promoted or anything daft like that, Wood had 27 for Leeds and they didn't get promoted, but I think it's safe to say we need to be rock solid defensively this season. This constant bullshit last year where we gave away sure wins all autumn long, that has to stop. If we can't score enough, then lets concede less.

I reckon we'll finish in a play off spot. I think we'll see out 1-0's rather than conceding late on like last season but i don't think we have enough goals in us to get automatic promotion.

bruka wrote:I reckon we'll finish in a play off spot. I think we'll see out 1-0's rather than conceding late on like last season but i don't think we have enough goals in us to get automatic promotion.

I agree with this, it will be seat of the pants a lot of the time as we see out 1 - 0's.
Not scoring enough will be our achilles heel for certain!

If we get somebody in to link up with the forwards we have I don't think goals will be an issue. I like the look of Hogan & if somebody can match a pass to his runs then the kid knows how to score.... Next signing/loanee will be critical for this.....

I really looking forward to the season with the squad we have got we have a chance of promotion or at least the play offs I agree scoring goals is a bit of a worry we look good at the back I just hope goals are not our achilles heel this season.

Glad the footy is nearly upon us, it seems like ages, we should be extremely difficult to beat, I don't think we can look forward to exhilarating fluent exciting play but I expect us to be a lot closer than last year.
Glenn Whelan looked a class act last week against Watford, I was really surprised, he could well boss this league.
We do need certain players to step up this year, Hogan, Hourahane & Lansbury starting against Hull tomorrow.
The only stat we need to remember is to gain promotion, we have to average 2pts / game, any less than this after 8-10 games & Bruce is going to be under immense pressure.
The last thing this club needs is another managerial change, lets hope we have got it right this time.
UTV

I know its nice to discuss things like this and I'm all for it BUT I would say islets not get too up tight about things, my two penneth is lets just wait and see how things go, when Leicester won the league NO ONE not even themselves thought that they would do anything of the sort, but we all know the outcome soon enough. UTV

Glad to be back, I think the team has a better feel about it with the new players. Very solid at the back, and with JT as captain he will control the team much better then last year. Just hope Bruce has a good start we do not want another manager,.fingers crossed we can sort out the attack and get some goals.UTV

I think as fans we're so used to not scoring much that it can blind us to what's infront of us. Look, I fully expect to see another winger brought in at the very minimum and if the Spurs lad isn't an attacking midfielder I hope we bring one in for sure. BUT, Hourihane and Adomah were two of the best players in the assist tally last season and Hourihane and Lansbury scored six plus goals each. Also, Thor has gotten into some very good scoring positions this pre-season and had a decent scoring record at Basel. While Elmo has gotten fifteen assists and six goals combined in his last two seasons in the championship. And we'll also have Grealish when he returns too. So all is not lost my friends. I firmly believe we'll have the best defence in this division, so if we improve our goal ratio just a little bit we should be certain for the top two or four at least.