Realistic expectations next season

Quoted from Ipswin

Relegation battle again, mid table obscurity will be a bonus

R U ok Ipswin?

intercourse it were going up as champions

on a realistic side though the improvement under jolly is emence, scored late goals in 5 of his games in charge , unbeaten in 5-6 home games under jolly won 3 of the last 4 and got a relegation fodder outfit to work hard for on another and actually work as a team that look threatening.

well done jolley UTM

Quoted from Grimsby2012

With our current squad, Look at what Jolley has done. Most people outside of Grimsby said we where certain relegation with the form we where on. He managed to bring in some of his own players in and Fox in particular has performed excellently. I expect him to vastly improve the squad as he obviously sees a good playing when he sees one. He has the brains, motivation and passions a successful manager needs and now he just needs the financial backing.

With all that said. I expect a top 7 finish. Even top 10 i would be happy with. Shows vast improvement.

agree with you. even with the chaos and dreadful squad he inherited his return is 12 points from 9 games which extrapolates to 61-62 points which is comfortably mid table. i suspect that even if he was forced to keep exactly the same squad he'd get us towards battling for the play offs

He’s found something in some of the players but let’s not kid ourselves some of them need shot of and new hungry young players brought in

Look at Newport... have done a lot better than they did last season. That'll be us next season  

Whilst we've had a good return of points in recent games, there was a big element of luck involved.  7 of those points were gained via 3 penalties, only the one against Barnet was a nailed on one for me.  You take away the Chesterfield and Swindon ones and that points return is looking less impressive.

For that alone, I'm not sure I agree that the current set-up would finish mid-table.  Jolley has made them far more oraganised and far more difficult to break down.  But this squad still has a chronic lack of pace and creativity, compounded by the fact we've no genuine goal threat.  Put it this way, I wouldn't be confident of this side going through the season grinding out 1-0's as a result of determined defending and penalties.

As for next season, the negative side of me points to the fact that Jolley will have to bring in a host of players.  For no other reasons that so many are out of contract and there can't be that many he'll want to retain anyway.  Flip of that is in 2 months Jolley has transformed a farce of a football team into one that has held it's own quite comfortably with the bigger sides, despite a serious imbalance in the squad.  He's managed to get them singing off the same song sheet in that short space of time, which is even more impressive when you consider how they looked devoid of hope, confidence and belief when he came here.  If he can do that with a mismatch of down-trodden souls in 2 months, in the midst of a relegation scrap, what can he do with a full summer with players he's actually recruited?

The budget will be key to what Jolley wants to achieve, which unfortunately may be hampered by what, I would imagine, will be relatively expensive players that are already under contract and we've little hope of shipping them out.  The likes of Dixon, Kelly and to a lesser extent Rose probably won't be in Jolley's plans but they'll be eating into whatever budget he does have.

The big concern for me is that our spine as it stands is Mitch Rose.  We've no contracted goalkeeper other than Ben Killip, no central defenders, Rose in midfield and then two strikers (Hooper and Cardwell) who aren't prolific.  Of that one player, I think we need to look at someone better than him so arguably it's a completely new spine needed.  Again, looking at it from a more positive perspective, that spine was junk for the vast majority of the season so the option to change it is a bonus.

I just hope that the style of football we've started to see under Jolley is very much part of what he wants to install as a philosophy because regardless of where we finish next season, it'll be entertaining to watch.

Quoted from diehardmariner

Whilst we've had a good return of points in recent games, there was a big element of luck involved.  7 of those points were gained via 3 penalties, only the one against Barnet was a nailed on one for me.  You take away the Chesterfield and Swindon ones and that points return is looking less impressive.

For that alone, I'm not sure I agree that the current set-up would finish mid-table.  Jolley has made them far more oraganised and far more difficult to break down.  But this squad still has a chronic lack of pace and creativity, compounded by the fact we've no genuine goal threat.  Put it this way, I wouldn't be confident of this side going through the season grinding out 1-0's as a result of determined defending and penalties.

As for next season, the negative side of me points to the fact that Jolley will have to bring in a host of players.  For no other reasons that so many are out of contract and there can't be that many he'll want to retain anyway.  Flip of that is in 2 months Jolley has transformed a farce of a football team into one that has held it's own quite comfortably with the bigger sides, despite a serious imbalance in the squad.  He's managed to get them singing off the same song sheet in that short space of time, which is even more impressive when you consider how they looked devoid of hope, confidence and belief when he came here.  If he can do that with a mismatch of down-trodden souls in 2 months, in the midst of a relegation scrap, what can he do with a full summer with players he's actually recruited?

The budget will be key to what Jolley wants to achieve, which unfortunately may be hampered by what, I would imagine, will be relatively expensive players that are already under contract and we've little hope of shipping them out.  The likes of Dixon, Kelly and to a lesser extent Rose probably won't be in Jolley's plans but they'll be eating into whatever budget he does have.

The big concern for me is that our spine as it stands is Mitch Rose.  We've no contracted goalkeeper other than Ben Killip, no central defenders, Rose in midfield and then two strikers (Hooper and Cardwell) who aren't prolific.  Of that one player, I think we need to look at someone better than him so arguably it's a completely new spine needed.  Again, looking at it from a more positive perspective, that spine was junk for the vast majority of the season so the option to change it is a bonus.

I just hope that the style of football we've started to see under Jolley is very much part of what he wants to install as a philosophy because regardless of where we finish next season, it'll be entertaining to watch.

I agree with a lot of this but I am happy for Jolley having a fairly clean slate to start with in terms of contracted players so his excess baggage at the start is quite low. I hope to see him operate to a much more quality over quantity in terms of squad and boost his squad numbers with home grown youngsters or loanees.I don`t want to get carried away especially because we don`t know what the squad will be but I have a feeling were going to be on the happy pills

Agree with most of that diehard, except that i think Jolley could get this squad to mid table as it is, with just a couple of competent strikers added to it. No one we have played around middle to top end has looked world beaters and we would have won a good few more points if we had someone who could put the chances away.

However, Jolley has the chance now to make a clean sweep and strengthen the weak areas of the team. In the short time he has been here, he's already totally changed the combinations to the left and right hand sides of the team. Who'd have thought it'd be RHJ and Clifton on the right side, with Fox and Hooper on the left? He quickly took Berrett out of the side too, once Summers regained fitness, and changed the role that Rose played to great effect. He soon worked out how to get the best from the squad he had and now has the chance to pick the squad he wants. You could say we were lucky, but you make your own luck and under Slade, we weren't even getting into the opposition box to miss chances and get dodgy penalties.

Top 5
I expect Fenty will back MJ otherwise he will soon be under pressure again