By the way, promotion from this league despite playing like pants for much of the season?

It's been done, you know. West Ham fans spent most of 2004/5 not merely on Pardew's back, but desperate for him to go. Square peg in a round hole, or so it seemed. They lost 15 games, somehow scraped into the play-offs... yet a year later, had finished 9th in the Prem and come within seconds of winning the FA Cup.

Or what about Leicester under O'Neill? Their fans were protesting against him after matches and he was even getting hate mail. His first 15 games or so were shocking: terrible results, hideous to watch. Yet there followed the greatest spell in their entire history.

That doesn't mean we WILL emulate this; only that we could. Both those clubs had that chance because they'd only just been relegated, so had higher quality squads than most of the rest. So do we - but what happens over the rest of the window will be very telling.

Posted By: thebigfeller, Jan 24, 19:28:00