Well William Hill have Barnsley as favourites to go down. There's incentive to the lads. Seems a little odd that they're favourites above all the newly promoted teams and the other less wealthy clubs. Do they know something we don't?
.............why should the bookies be wrong?? Scunny and Blackpool, for example, will both have the promotion feel good factor - Colchester syle- that could well see them avoid a relegation battle. Most other teams are ex prem with shed loads of money and stacked high with ex prem players....................we on the other hand are a team with very few known players and some big gambles taken by Davey on the likes of Mossto, Odebayi etc...............................personally, I have the feeling we will do marginally better than last year but reckon it will still be a struggle. I think the bookies are right to put us down as favourites but BFC have a good history of proving them wrong. If we can survive again, the next pre season is the BIG one for me. We would have most players still in contact and a real opportujity to add just 2 or 3 additions - without wholesale changes - and a great chance to really progress rather than starting with a brand new , unknown quantity of a team.
The only way that you should believe the bookies are right to make us favourite for the drop is if you believe that we are going to get relegated - because in any other sense the bookies would be wrong to make us favourites. I think that is an extremely pessimistic view on next year. I think last year we were much weaker at the start of the year than we were at the conclusion - and the thing that caused us more trouble than anything else was that long run of defeats that we experienced before Andy Ritchie departed (I'm not having a go at Ritchie there because I remain grateful for the play-offs). I'm pretty confident that the team that finished the season would not have done quite so badly through that period with Davey in charge. But that's just my opinion. As for next year - I think we have strengthened - yes they might be unknown, but immediately they look like decent players. We have focused on our weakness and we are showing an amibitious, positive attitude. The mentality on display is not a relegation dog fight attitude - it is much more ambitious than that. I don't think (touch wood) that we'll be involved in the relegation struggle this year, and we might even do a fair bit better than avoiding that. The year we went up I remember you could get 300 - 1 for us getting promoted to the Premier League. The bookies got it wrong that year, I think they've got it wrong this year too.
Who cares if we're favourites to go down? Just means we can go put £50 down on us staying up and rake in the cash when we prove them wrong. We're always the favourites to go down, always the ones overlooked by the media, never in the spotlight. Leave it that way, it's perfect.
Are you sure it was 300-1 to get promoted? I seem to think we were about 30-1 to win the league that season. It was the first season I'd not had an each way bet on us after having one the last 5 or 6 seasons.
You've been watching too many videos of the Prem season!</p> We have no idea if it's a stronger squad as we know nowt about most of the new signings,it's as simple as that. I could argue that Ricketts is a significant come down to McIndoe from last seasons starting line-up (Wolves bought McIndoeto replace Ricketts after all for example as Ricketts is one of the few I've head of). But in reality no-one knows how the team will perform. Might have some idea by November though. Just hope we don't go into quite so many games where we appear to have given up before kick-off.</p>
I agree. I think they're worth a few bob as we will probably end up half-way this season. On paper we look better than The Irons and the Seasiders.
