Quote Originally Posted by hobson's choice View Post
This annoys me right here, yes City and United spent a good bit, but in all reality, they really aren't that much better than us, and, neither are the other so-called big clubs in Europe(Barring Barca). And what frustrates me, is that with better signings over the past couple of years, we easily could be competing for major titles.

The fact there aren't any truly great teams out there, and we have the ability to get back up to the elite elite level right away, if they do their jobs well, and sign some good quality, and they don't have to spend silly to do that.
What? We slumped when we lost all our full backs. We raised our game when they returned. Before that we were all over the place when we lost all our central defenders. If we had bags of cash (which we do) we could buy quality replacements. But we don't spend the money and we make do with players like Djourou and Chamakh. And other lightweights too, to be fair, but hard to criticise them for their efforts over recent weeks. We're nowhere near either of the Manchester clubs and take a look at their goal difference too. They have the squads to compete across a full season, we get a few key injuries and we're screwed. A few more points here or there and we still would be third. I think people are underestimating the value of those 21 points we've recently picked up. If a few weeks ago anyone had been asked will we have 21 out of the next 24 points they would have said no way because it seemed too fanciful. 21 out of 24 is not grounds to get on the team and manager's back again. They've hit third despite the lack of investment and that's pretty good really. Thought it was going to be a lot worse.