Will survival equal success?
Posted on August 16th, 2010 | 85 Comments |
People have differing views in where we should be, what we should be aiming for and what is acceptable come the end of the season. So why not share them?
I’ll use the game against Manchester United to show you how success can be relative. I guess given our past history at Old Trafford (1 win in 60 years) combined with the fact we are a newly promoted team would suggest that a narrow defeat would be a success for us. A draw would be an achievement and a win would be unbelievable to the point where I don’t think I would go into work this evening!
So you see, even though those targets above can be changed, to be a success there has to be a target to beat, something to measure the success against, but how can that success be related to Newcastle? What would be classed as success for Newcastle this year? For that we need to work out what our goal is.
For me the goal is simply surviving, making sure we have another year of Premier League football to look forward to next season. Once that is achieved, and if we can do it quick enough, then there is nothing wrong with wanting to kick on and see how high we can finish, but that would be a bonus.
Taking the bigger picture into account I would say survival is now the minimum marker for success. If there was going to be a fair transfer kitty made available then perhaps we could have had a target of 15th, 12th or whatever. But we haven’t, which is unfortunate and means that survival is what this season will now be judged by.
It’ll be interesting to see what people would actually class as a successful season for us. I very much doubt we are going to take the Premier League by storm like we did in 1993, and the start we have been given this time around couldn’t have been much tougher.
All the speculation can stop this evening as our season will be underway. We will be back in businesss, and after having to watch all the other teams in action this weekend it will be our turn to take a bit of the limelight.
Tonight is just one game thirty-eight and nothing will be decided by this match. After those thirty-eight games though, what would you class as success?
err – yes