ToffeeWeb - Season 2007-08

The Mail Bag

How Much Improvement?

In the absence of any transfer news at GP, I decided to take a few minutes to pick out my bets for the opening games of the season as I have come up with a system that has a chance of making me rich (FYI-if you bet on one game each week at odds of 1/2 on, starting from a tenna it will snow ball to over a million after 30 games).

Anyway, my point is that I came across the odds from Sky bet for EFC to win the Premiership without the top 4 and it would seem that although we have finished 4th, 5th and 6th in the last 4 years, that the bookies do not hold much faith in us for next season as the betting is as follows:-

Tottenham 9/4
Villa 4/1
Man City 5/1
Everton 6/1

Now my initial thought's were, cheeky bastards, what do we have to do to get some respect, but thinking about it, do they have a point as Tottenham are spending big and to be honest Villa ran us close last season and have a fair amount of cash and Man City are believed to have a titanic amount of cash to spend.

Are they right? Especially with Moyes not signing a new contract yet and rumours of us having little cash to spend, coupled with the fact that the other teams mentioned could well strengthen in depth and quality or does it simply come down to complete lack of respect for how good of a team we have become?

How much do we really need to improve?
Mark Griffiths, Chester Posted 26/06/2008 at 14:13:53

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Comments

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Paul OHanlon
1 Posted 27/06/2008 at 08:36:07

We never are tipped to break into top 4 Mark. Last summer every single football pundit would have you believe that Spurs were the team to break into the top 4, with City and Villa to run them close. Seems its the same again this summer.

My advise? Don’t worry about it, just lump a tenner on us at 6/1 to finish 5th! ;)

Andy Callan
2 Posted 27/06/2008 at 11:39:00

Well to make progress we need 4th, Final of the League Cup, Quarters of the UEFA and / or 4th rd of the FA Cup don’t we?

Will we get 4th - will we shite.

Just hope for a decent UEFA run, visiting somewhere in the sun this time though.

Lovely.

Garry O'Doole
3 Posted 27/06/2008 at 11:50:49

Lads,

Get your money on us to finish 5th - what a price. These clubs can spend what they like - City spend in the region of £75 million last year - where did they finish. All you have to look at is player for player, IE: Lescott or Knight? Arteta or Lennon? Yak or Enji Benji or whatever the City fella is called. Our team is strong - very strong, with a couple of additions it will get better

6/1 where is this by the way as I can onyl get 9/2?

Ian Tunny
4 Posted 27/06/2008 at 15:28:06

I think they are cheeky bastards, I can only see us improving on last season considering the injuries to our 2 best players for large parts of the season, aswell as the loss of points because of cheating refs. The Yak and Jaggs have now bedded themselves in properly and I have confidence in moyes bringing in a couple more gems. Everton have pleasantly surprised me over the last few seasons and I expect them to do so again.