Andrew Saint’s Midweek moan

What a win at Molineux and what a great goal to win the game. Alex McLeish quite rightly has said that as you improve as a team and a club so expectation increases exponentially. He is quite right too, to set our goals as a progression rather than to leap. Middle of the table is the next realistic level to set our sights but that is only the next level not our final resting place. The previous regime had this concept that we would never rise above the mid section and as long as the profits rolled in then actual ambition was not deemed necessary.

I certainly don’t want Alex to promise Blues fans the earth but a few realistic ambitions would not go amiss. David Sullivan had a vision to turn a debt ridden club on the point of folding, who played in a toilet, and were heading to the conference, into a profit making Premiership club who had a half decent arena to play in. It took about ten years to achieve that aim. In that time Blues fans’ expectations rose from staying out of the Fourth Division and seeing 5 figure gates to establishing themselves in the top division and filling the ground every week.

If you have nothing in the way of vision after that the only way is down. The old board refused to chase the dream and without any sign of progress the fans got disillusioned. They need to buy into the new dream and so far they have had little idea of what they might be. Being big in China may benefit the club but for the average member of the Bluenose Nation it means nothing.

Now it’s not up to Alex Mcleish to start laying down the law about where Blues should be in six months or a year or 5 years time. His point about Roy Hodgson at Blackburn was a good one. Hodgson got them into Europe one year and was sacked a year later because the club was not meeting the standards he had set! Alex was also in that same position at Rangers, doubles and trebles plus the most successful campaign any Scottish club had had in the Champion’s league were forgotten when the money dried up and standards slipped.

Sadly the attempt to dampen expectation is equally doomed to failure. Steve Bruce was the master at this and would tell us that Blues would never be this and never be that. Trying to do that rather than trying to meet expectation is just a sure way to getting a P45.

So Mr. Yeung your honeymoon is over. Vagaries won’t cut the mustard. Let’s see a master plan and if you haven’t got one let’s try this.

1. 2010 – 40 points and a decent cup run
2. 2011- 50 points and 2 decent cup runs
3. 2012- European qualification either via the league or the cups
4. 2013- Repeat 2012 and move into a new Ground

After that anything should be possible and the plan is not so outrageous as to make the pressure on the manager too much. Even if the above took ten years no-one would complain. The pressure of getting out of the Championship at the first attempt was far more pressure than achieving the above.

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