Expectations
Isn’t it interesting how many Wycombe fans make reference to last summer when taking about expectations for this season. I’ve seen almost no-one recalibrate their expectations based upon the 7-point lead we had at the top of the table just 33 days ago. It’s almost like it never happened.
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I think everyone expected the bubble to burst and with just 4 points from the last possible 21- it has.
I'll play
I see plenty of posters on here and more on Facebook who are definitely looking at promotion and showing more disappointment about our current dip than I have seen in recent seasons. Therefore I think you are wrong in generalisation.
Interestingly though I would consider myself as one of the people you describe but resent the tone you describe it is in. We are exceeding expectations but bigger teams with bigger budgets are getting stronger and we've hit a wave of them at exactly the time we've weakened a bit. The big lead has gone but it was always there for such a period.
We had no hope of promotion in the summer and now we do. It is hope though and I Personally am enjoying the ride without getting too carried away by the current position or form. It would be great to see it through but I refuse to get disappointed if we do fall away a bit.
Just don't tell me how I should feel. You can't possibly know.
I certainly haven't expected to go up at any point of the season. It's been miserable recently and we've produced some poor performances in that time, but any top half finish will still constitute a successful season. It will be disappointing to finish outside the play-offs but by no means a failure.
Just had a glance at the league table. We’re 2nd, equal on points with the leaders with 17 games left to play.
Terrible, isn’t it?
Let's save all the "didn't we do well" stuff to the end of the season.
As right now we still have a superb chance of a great end to the season
@Right_in_the_Middle I wasn’t telling you how you should feel. You can’t make someone feel something wherever the situation. My perception of the Wycombe fan base is clearly skewed as I don’t have Facebook. What do you still have hope for? Automatic promotion? Play-offs? Top half?
@chairboyscentral Do you really feel a 12th place finish this season would be a success? (based upon a 7-point lead at the top of the table on December 21)
@glasshalffull Who described it as terrible?
@Malone Do you believe we’ll have a great end to the season though? Does anyone? I think they (we?) all think the same as @Vital
I think it is about keeping it in perspective, while still remaining hopeful. Of course no-one likes falling away, but if we do, we should still remember that we overachieved, and be proud of the team. I have seen remarks to the effect that it would be "disgraceful" not to go up after that lead. Not at all! We have been flying very high, and though we all wish for a fairy tale ending, falling away would not have the same context that it might have for a strong promotion favourite.
We have a small, injury depleted squad, and are always going to be walking a tightrope. I think it is possible to keep immediate disappointment in appropriate perspective with the bigger, impressive picture.
This team is fastastic, whether 1st or 13th!
Negativity and pessimism rules in your world, not in mine.
Just about, yep. Realistically, we are a mid-table team. We've overachieved for much of the season and it wasn't likely to be sustainable as we picked up injuries and better teams really got into their groove after slow starts. There shouldn't be any pressure on us. I'd love to finish in the play-offs - I never truly thought we'd go up automatically - but I won't cry about it if we don't.
I agree with chairboyscentral and Shev. Even when we had our 7pt lead, any realistic supporter would have looked at that set of fixtures in December and January and realised that we were unlikely to keep winning against some of the biggest clubs in the division, most of them away. Let’s decide what kind of season we’ve had when it’s over, not now.
@Shev What is the (over)achievement? Do we have an injury-ravaged squad? (It was just Grimmer and Fred going into Tuesday’s game at Posh).
@glasshalffull That isn’t an answer the question. You could try playing rye ball instead of the man?
@chairboyscentral Why are we a mid-table team? We were good enough to be a team 7 points clear at the top of the table 33 days ago? Why hasn’t there been any recalibration of expectations since the summer? (you’re far from alone in this) The playing budget is greater than last season’s and we have literally sold out in the name of ambition. Yet no one expects more.
Well, we only have 1 of the top teams left away. Which helps massively, as we've been fairly weak away all season, even when we were top by 6-7 points. 3 wins is it?
And the next run of games is a more realistic set of quality ahead of us.
So it's definitely still up for grabs, as long as everyone loses heart. Not you, as I don't think you ever had any (with all due respect!), but the manager, players and fans.
That rather suggests a lack of faith in the manager and players doesn’t it? Was the first half of the season a fluke then? Did we just get lucky?
I'll be disappointed if we finish outside the play-offs, but it will still have been a good season.
The way the table has squeezed in so dramatically, we could easily find ourselves out of the top 6 within 2-3 games.
I expected us to be fighting against relegation. To go top for a sustained period was amazing. The drop-off has been a little disappointing but no more than that.
Whatever happens in the next 17 games I suspect I’ll start next season with higher expectations than I started this one. And that’s progress for me even if it isn’t for you @glasshalfempty.
Did you really not understand that the word ‘terrible’ was a sarcastic reference to your criticism considering our position in the table? Why does identifying a difficult set of fixtures suggest a lack of faith in the manager and players?
Most teams have a bad spell at some stage during the season (look at WBA and Leeds in the Championship), but it should be put into context.
I hope for automatic promotion. Why not? It's right in front of us.
I don't follow why our league position on Dec 21st is so important to you. I guess it was our current high point but nothing in won in December and as such matters very little
I’m a realist.
Bit silly to make a call on where we're going to finish until we've at least played everyone once I reckon. We have now, and the league table looks magnificent.
From what I've seen I expect a few of the "big" teams to come on strongly in the 2nd half the season, particularly Sunderland and Coventry who I would predict to finish as the top two. I also think Pompey will be up there as well. All of which one could have predicted back in August.
I reckon we've got a chance of hanging on fro the play offs though, which not many would have predicted, including me. So you can consider my expectations well and truly recalibrated.
Over and above all that though, the season so far has given me real joy. Going on that run and winning every week and beating Sunderland and Portsmouth and being top was just a magical time to be a Wycombe fan. I hope it gave you joy as well. Far from it being "like it never happened", I don't think I'll ever forget it
POTY Eric.
I saw no criticism in the original post but instead a reasonable observation of the general tenor or perspective on display. Nothing wrong with either.
For what it's worth, and responding to an earlier question to someone else, I do think we had quite a bit of good luck to get to where we were just as we've been on the receiving end of the converse over the past seven(?) games.
Like you, @glasshalfempty, I think it reasonable to recalibrate expectations a bit based on league position, even if fortune had played its part in bringing that about. Certainly, and without having taken the trouble to look it up, I don't recall such a miserable set of results and performances last season, even when we were in peril, as in a number of these recent games. It is nice to be able to brush them off somewhat because of our comfortable league position - an unanticipated luxury - but I certainly don't resent the original question being posed. As ever, one hopes for a resurgence and a quiet part of oneself thinks it might just be possible, though with a lower degree of expectation than six weeks ago.
I honestly never thought in my lifetime I would see us top of League 1 for anything more than 1 week - and that by getting a good win on the 1st day of the season or something. So not a chance I would have got carried away with the 7 point lead or whatever it was. The league ends in April or May or whatever and not November. Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t take automatic promotion! But realistically a top 10 finish is very good for a club of our stature in this league. I’d love to make the playoffs and go into them as the team nobody wants to play and look to upset the odds. IMO, to sustain top 6 until the end of the season we need two things - an incoming left sided centre back with either serious potential (unlikely obviously, you don’t unearth Pierre’s and Mawsons from reserve teams too often) or an experienced old pro dropping down from the Championship taking the heat off Charles, and to get a fully fit, rejuvenated Fred back to give us that missing spark but I think this will be a bit too much pressure for the lad given his injury hit season etc.
I want to go up, and I think we’ve still got a good chance of making the playoffs.
The Facebook group is groaning under the weight of people melting down over our recent run.
Apologies, my girlfriend distracted me by talking to me. I think she’s learned her lesson now.
@Malone Thank you. That made me laugh!
@arnos_grove It’s certainly progress from May 2019 but not December 2019. Which of those sign points carries more weight?
@Right_in_the_Middle Yes, I chose December 21 as it represents the high point. I love that you still hope for automatic promotion. I want to live that vicariously through you (as I’m a non-believer).
@glasshalffull I wasn’t criticising our position in the table. I was talking about expectation and the lack of recalibration (it’s my word of the day!). We had difficult sets of fixtures earlier in the season and won them. The feeling going into them after Oxford had a whole feeling of a deflating balloon about it. I’m not sure anyone had belief going into them. The whole sense of not belonging there and an inevitability of the bubble bursting.
@drcongo Me too.
@eric_plant Presumably you’re aware that league predictions are often made before a ball is kicked. The over-hyped and over-here Oxford and the bogey men of Coventry were the only two teams we’d not faced by Dec 21, so it’s reasonable to judge our place in the division. Will the victories over Sunderland and Portsmouth still feel so magical should we finish the season in 12th spot?
@HCblue Do you feel like expectations have lowered? I’m not sure they ever got to the point that anyone believed we could finish in the top two. Thanks for addressing the substantive point of my post rather than simply calling me a moaning Minnie!
@username123 I think the first half of your post sums up my point exactly.
@floyd If we hadn’t lost you to the other side of the pond, that wide-eyed optimism would’ve been knocked out of you by now...and...you’d still be spelling things with u’s in them!
We have one fit goalkeeper. Gape has been injured recently. Smyth was out for ages. Aaron was in and out. Thompson started the season injured for many games. Grimmer and Fred are two vital players missing. Pattison was battling injury (may still be).
If you don't think injuries have depleted us this season, or that we have not overachieved by leading the table when favoured to go down, I really don't know what to tell you. Agree to disagree, no disrespect, no harm done.
Wonderful though we were in the first half of the season, the timing of some of our fixtures against the big sides was fortunate. Portsmouth were awful when we played them at AP, we were also poor as GA admitted, but we still beat them. We're now playing these sides just as they're hitting peak form and with us missing key players. I think most sensible Wycombe fans were just enjoying being top while it lasted, I certainly had no expectations of us staying there.
Even when we were 7 points clear, I'd have been absolutely delighted to finish in the play off spots and that remains the case now.
yes. Is your memory of Filbert St tainted by the fact we lost the semi final?
The answers can all be found in the novel you allude to..
Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule.
There was a long hard time when I kept far from me the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth.
I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.
That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day
Wtf????