Realistic Expectations

[London Villan]

Our full strength team won 12 games out of 14.

[Legion]

Season 1: Survival
Season 2: Mid-table
Season 3: Challenging for top 6

A cup win somewhere along would be nice.

[Richard]

It shouldn't be that tough to finish above 3 from Norwich, Sheff Utd, Burnley, Brighton, Saints for example.

Palace Bournemouth Newcastle Watford don't scare me either but let's be honest Wolves apart most promoted clubs struggle.

[Richard E]

Sod being realistic. We’ve just gone up. I want to win everything and I want it now.

[Mister E]

It shouldn't be that tough to finish above 3 from Norwich, Sheff Utd, Burnley, Brighton, Saints for example.

Palace Bournemouth Newcastle Watford don't scare me either but let's be honest Wolves apart most promoted clubs struggle.

Those four teams are very competent top-tier teams which have worked out how to compete well enough to stay up.
I'm stating the obvious, but we need to buy carefully and early in the summer, to give Smith's coaching team the best possible chance to weld a number of new recruits into the squad.
One fundamental facet of our game that we will have to improve is speed of thought and movement of the ball: in the Premier League, if we expect the time we have been taking on the ball, we will get mullered.

[Nelly]

Lower mid-table would be wonderful for me. A season of consolidation and bedding back in. Building the squad and steady, healthy improvement. We do have a lot of work to do and we might take a few spankings here and there but sod it, we have to be patient and play the long game.

[Andy_Lochhead_in_the_air]

Mid table consolidation with the likes of Man Yoo.

[hilts_coolerking]

It shouldn't be that tough to finish above 3 from Norwich, Sheff Utd, Burnley, Brighton, Saints for example.

Palace Bournemouth Newcastle Watford don't scare me either but let's be honest Wolves apart most promoted clubs struggle.

So that's basically half the Premier League being dismissed there.  That's 54 points in the bag already.

[Monty]

Stay up and I'll be absolutely delighted.  Anything more than that is a massive bonus.  It's going to be tough; we're going up without ever having set the Championship alight and indeed having struggled badly at times.  Smith has achieved task number one at the first attempt, which is amazing.  Now it's task number two.

Yep. We're going to need to really improve this squad as well, which is always a big task - especially getting a lot of new players to gel together.

[Nastylee]

Anything but a dog fight and I'll be content for one season.

[brian green]

DS apart from his managerial and coaching skills is a very good buyer and seller of players.  I would be satisfied with survival but it would not surprise me if Dean strode on to greater heights.

[SoccerHQ]

Would happily sign up for 14th now.

Main thing is to improve as season goes on and show we can improve for the following year rather than it being a depressing experience as in the McLeish/Lambert seasons.

[Toronto Villa]

Whatever happens it’s critical we stick with Dean Smith. The last thing we need is to give up on what we’ve started for perceived short term gain. Stay the course. I look at how Burnley stuck it out with Dyche, came back up and are now a much more solid club. We’re much bigger than Burnley off course and expectations will be higher. But Dean Smith has built well at Brentford and is doing so with us. We need to back him when times get tough. And it will be at times.

[CT Villan]

Ideally a mid-table finish without ever being pulled into a relegation battle.

[hilts_coolerking]

Whatever happens it’s critical we stick with Dean Smith. The last thing we need is to give up on what we’ve started for perceived short term gain. Stay the course. I look at how Burnley stuck it out with Dyche, came back up and are now a much more solid club. We’re much bigger than Burnley off course and expectations will be higher. But Dean Smith has built well at Brentford and is doing so with us. We need to back him when times get tough. And it will be at times.

I agree.  He has to have the full season, come what may.