It leaves a bad taste in the mouth when you read articles patting Brighton on the back because they're going up after messing it up so often, or Newcastle instantly putting last season behind them. I'm confident for next season while also not being too confident. I can't honestly say that once the dust has settled and we know who will be staying in the division with us that we'll be a shoo-in for automatic promotion. We can win, but it seems to me they've been touch and go
To be fair last year we were in free fall as a club. This year we had to arrest that decline. I know it's easy to say now but I never really thought we'd go up first time.
We were rudderless at board level with Lerner and Fox. We were clueless managerially and gutless on the pitch. It was horrible, it was the late 60's all over again.
This season with Dr Tony we seem to have people in place who have a plan at board level. The decision to get rid of RDM I suspect was a difficult one. An acceptance of failure of appointment doesn't look too good and cannot have been easy admission so early in the tenure.
The management side had to be got right. It needed to instill discipline both on and off the pitch. We needed someone who could command respect and understood the need to get that through to the playing staff. RDM seemed aloof from the players, less hands on, less pragmatic than we have seen from SB. I cannot imagine RDM, for instance, going round to McCormacks house. Maybe I'm wrong. However it is just an impression.
Once the stability is back in the club then you can push for promotion. Players have been bought and sold, a squad created which is showing determination, if not the flair and style many would wish. Did anyone really think that a team that had won three games all season was going to hit the ground running.
Newcastle managed to pull it around from the sacking of McClaren, gave Benitez a pre season spent big (although not as much as us) and fitted players into a team that had won 3 of their last 9 games last year. Brighton have built over time. Two different but successful approaches.
Our squad of last year didn't match that of Newcastles (in fact it wasn't good enough to keep us in this division I suspect) - so the option of keeping the core and building around them didn't exist, so we needed to build. SB is doing that.