Biggest underachievers in Europe in 17/18?

Lako42 said:

Football isn't played on balance sheets, a team proved that a couple of seasons ago, name fails me.

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David Gwilliam said:

I must admit BN had me confused. When he chose a title about Leicester underachieving I had not realised he was being positive. A lesser man than BN would have chosen a title about how far we have come as a club.

Obviously the suggestion that the owners might as well sell up; and move on is also positive.

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Lako42 said:

Football isn't played on balance sheets, a team proved that a couple of seasons ago, name fails me.

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Brown Nose said:

For a fellow devotee of Bettany Hughes Mr. G, it disappoints me when you resort to lame sarcasm instead of rational debate. You ought to be above such nonsense.

You could of course choose to pitch us being the 15th biggest club in Europe as being a positive in itself. It is an extraordinary achievement if we only look at our recent history. If we look beyond this, it is still a very rare thing.

But I take this as old news. We've been here for a couple of years now. There is nothing new to say about it. We have fought and bought our way to a different place. Unlike Bettany, I am not one that likes to spend too much time looking back.

What I do think is worthwhile is establishing the reality of our position in 2018 football. We are either going to stay at this party or we're going to leave it. It is either a party we belong at, or one we are temporarily attending.

Our owners want us to be at this level. The owner was lampooned for stating as much in 2014 when we achieved promotion. He has done a remarkable thing. He bought a provincial, underachieving, and fairly decrepit club for less than £40m and made them Champions of the land and worth half billion more. He had to buy a lot of lottery tickets in the first couple of years of his control, but he sure as hell won the jackpot.

I pitched this topic in the way I did assuming that people on this board were intelligent enough to know our recent history and be able to accept it and contextualise our current position. Maybe I give people more credit than they merit. It is a positive that we're the biggest underachievers in Europe because we'd have taken that role like a shot three years ago.

However, the reality for our owner is that he's funding for something that wasn't achieved last season. He absolutely will be disappointed in our season. He will also look at what he's spending and see that it isn't getting the return that it should be.

I think we should positively accept our position as the biggest underachievers in Europe. It gives us a target and a level of expectation. We are not little old Leicester glad to be in this league. We're here to compete with the lot of them, and on pretty much level terms with them, except the two Manchester clubs.

So, it is both a positive and a challenge. It reflects where we've come from and where we are now. It is all about our owners vision and ambition and determination. He is looking at his peers that are all preparing for European campaigns next season and he's not. So what is he going to do about it?

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