Easy tiger. I'm not stating anything - and never do - that I don't believe to be right.
After careful consideration, I've decided that I don't really give a feck about the Champions League. Are we going to win it? Not a chance. Are we going to get to the quarter/semi finals? I'd be staggered.
So what's the point? If we finish third in our group and get into the Europa knock out stage, it could become interesting but that's about it.
This is a 'brand/money' exercise for the club, an ego trip for the players and a cracking novelty for those fans lucky enough to get tickets. I love the fact that we're in it from the ridiculousness aspect. I also like to see us grow as a club and this really ups our profile. And that's all I can think of.
However, none of these positives come anywhere close to the importance of our Premier League status. That's something that really matters to me. So far, we've been pretty shambolic this season. Inconsistent, awful defending, no shape/personnel or formation that suits us, a scarily new lack of fight, and so on. You lot may be taking our survival for granted this season but I'm not. I've not seen any evidence to date that we'll be fine and so can afford to take our place for granted.
Taking all these factors into account, hopefully you can see that I'm not on the wind up. I just happen to be living in the current reality rather than the past or some sort of dreamworld.
I'd do a full rotation on Wednesday, tell the usual players that they've not been good enough to merit us over-playing them. Tell them they'd better start winning league games if they want to play in future ones. Also, it will be a big boost for those players that come in and we might just find a few players that are in form and can deliver. The squad needs a major kick up the arse and this would be my way of doing it.
