I think that the greatness will start to establish itself properly next season and become an established fact in the season beyond.
Let's face facts; no club has every gone through a rebuild of this magnitude without having a few difficult seasons while they fully induct new players into new systems, new managers into a new club /country etc. I would have loved to see us rip up the form book and race to the top this season but it was never going to happen and I'm pleased with progress so far because we're more on track than I anticipated.
I 'thought' that we'd be sat at 4th and out of all cup competitions because they would distract from the main aim of european football but we're very much in the Europa league and still doing it in the FAC . . my only concern is that by fielding strongish sides in the cup comps we'll leave ourselves without sufficient resource to maintain our PL aspirations.
Whatever the case; I'd buy my 2011/2012 season card today if they were on sale so early because we have some really exciting new talent that will only start to show it's best when the guys have sufficient PL experience and have had the benefit of a full pre-season together at the very least.
Dzeko, Balotelli, Silva, Kolarov, Boateng and even Johnson (another new to the PL player) will all be so much better after the summer break and the youngsters coming through will have more to offer by then too.
The manager will know their strengths in 'group dynamic' terms by then as well and he'll modify base systems of play to bring the best out of them.
Am I the only poster on bluemoan who isn't moaning?
