The standard of this league

Yes that's how I remember it too. Just look at our third goal yesterday agter the defender completely miss judges the ball bounces 3 times before Norwood applies the finish.

 

Can`t be that bad a division,it took Sunderland 5 goes to get out of it .

 

It is league 1. The Third Division. The standard isn't great, but you need to have a team that scores goals to get out of it. As yet the jury is out for us, but we are doing better than expected so far.

 

Plus ca change plus ca meme chose.

It's the 3rd division, what do you expect, international players?

 

It might say more about Sunderland than it does about league 1 WA

 

Took sheffield united similar

 

Interesting, I actually thought Plymouth were a better footballing side than any I saw last time we were in this division (apart from us). Some skilful, clever players and some pace, as well as a seeming abundance of strikers.

Things still shaking out though and will start to take a more consistent shape over the next month or two. Worth noting that the last time we were in this division the three teams that eventually got promoted were 5th, 7th and 11th as late as 26th October. We were still 12 points behind Portsmouth on Christmas Day!

 

Every other teams including the so called massive teams see us as a threat and to be up there

 

I dread to think what some of the comments would be like on here, if we were like Burton for example, and bottom of the table!.

For me this is a good start by us, inconsistent yes but that was only to be expected. Im trying to not get carried away, but I think my original guess of mid table might be a bit negative now. Fingers crossed that we can do better than that, and there's every chance with Duff & co.

 

Don't know what everyone else thought but the championship last season quality wise was the worst I have seen. My theory is all the money in the premier league there 30ish teams the ruling elite and the yo yo clubs that have all the cash. The rest of of us are like football used to be if you get recruitment right and the right man in charge you have half a chance of getting to the promised land. The talent pool is much smaller than it used to be aswell the big clubs and their juggernaut Academy's try to hoover up all the local talant. My answer would be don't let the top team have Academy let the teams further down the food chain do that have use of this young talant let stay local and play at lower level then sell them to the big boy's . This would lead in my eyes better rounded young players staying at home in their teens feed cash down the chain in transfer fees Chelsea having 30 odd players out on loan can't be right.

 

Great thread enjoyed reading all the posts, C,O,Y,R, keep the faith.

 

Really good post. You've been accused of moaning, but it doesn't come across like that to me at all.

One thing you haven't touched on is just how hard the team are working. We beat Sheffield Wednesday by being willing to graft much harder than them. That can take you a long way, not just in this league. We made the play offs in the Championship by consistently putting in more effort than the opposition.

We also look organised. It's nothing radical, but I can look at the set up and understand what is being asked of the players both individually and collectively. So presumably they know too.

Hard work and organisation is a million miles away from what we were last season.

I don't know where that will take us, we're not a team of super talented individuals. But if you work hard and try to do what's asked of you, you give yourself a chance and we're doing that.

 

At least somebody saw my point… it wasn’t a moan at all, it was if anything a post suggesting we can do much better than a lot of people predicted. Including several that said we’d go down to league two.

And I agree about the organisation. Those that question Duff clearly didn’t watch much of us under Schopp or Asbaghi.

We haven’t been great too many times but you can always see the shape and what he’s trying to achieve. Couldn’t be said of his predecessor’s.

For everyone else - my point is we have plenty of faults, we haven’t hit our straps yet and there is still a lot of improvement to be made in this team - and we’re sixth as we are. I think the standard has dropped a little in league one. As someone else said, I think the same is probably true of the championship.

Making how badly we did last season even more disappointing.

And no - I’m not disappointed we are where we are, to the poster who asked! I’m both happy and pleasantly surprised in equal measure as I expected a slow start but for us to only get better. If we do get better we can challenge even higher hopefully. We shall see.

 

That's an experienced striker for you. He didn't try to control the ball and set himself up, he didn't take a wild swing straight away - he let the ball set itself up then bang! - one hit and back of the net.

 

Yes he took it very well I agree. He would have been less likely to be afforded that time at a higher level that was my point.

 

See last year's Championship! The likes of Reading and Blues made it clear that even the most half-arsed of efforts would have kept us up with plenty of room to spare. In my opinion it took some doing to be bad enough to finish at the bottom of that league. It was woeful compared to the season before.

A few years ago I was worried about the championship turning into a Premier League 2, but I think post-covid finances might actually have smoothed out the difference between the bottom half of the championship and the top half of league one. It'll be interesting to see whether that turns out to be the case.