All that talent, still we managed not to go up.

[Jackie Sewell]

I know we all blame Mr C for the current predicament, and rightly so, but thinking of the squad we had around 15/16, assembled entirely with the money he poured into the club, how did we possibly manage to avoid automatic promotion ? Can't blame him or his advisors for that. You only get one shot, two at the most, to buy yourselves out of the Championship. I don't see any club now, even Norwich, who have the embarrassment of riches we had.

[Django]

You need a good manager to get out of this league, good players alone isn’t enough 

[Sheff74]

We avoided it by 15 points, which is how far we were behind Boro in 2nd.  We weren't even close to automatic promotion.

 

Look that team were great to watch at times, and played some nice stuff, but we just about made it into 6th and were never in contention for top 2.

[Lunny1968]

If DC had appointed a proper manager to manage that squad we would have gone up.  A McCarthy or Bruce or Pearson with that squad and budget would have got us up.  Instead he went for an unknown with a dodgy CV who seemed good at the time, but with hindsight was not good enough.

[matthefish2002]

We didn't go up because the players were not as good as some fans like to believe.

 

[i used to be sc_owl]

First season under CC we played some great stuff but we were no where near good enough to go up.  

 

Second season we were more effective but lacked the real killer instinct to go after teams.  

 

If we had rolled the dice on a new manager going into the next season I think we would have done better.

[paulrs]

16/17 was the year. Best squad in the league that year, possibly bar Newcastle.

 

Carlos going defensive, players being unfit, the unnecessary signing of Rhodes... it’s all been discussed to death on here but coming off the back of the play-off final and with the additional money invested that should’ve been the year. But it’s Wednesday so we messed it up. 

[S36 OWL]

Anyone can spend a load of money, but it's spending it on the right players what's important. Chansiri has allowed himself to have his pants pulled down by his "advisor". 

[mildatheart67]

Our terrible former manager has his team knock Porto out last night and through to Cup Final.

 

Despite us throwing $$$$ at the 2015 season I think it merely brought us up to the general expenditure of upper mid table sides.

 

Depressingly there's a very strong correlation between player wages being high and success.

I started watching the Owls back in 78 , was easier being a can then after the Green Un was read ,there was only an article on back page of Star each day ,rather than the 24 hour force feed of doom of social media

[83owl]

10 minutes ago, matthefish2002 said:

We didn't go up because the players were not as good as some fans like to believe.

 

Some fans think they’re good even now 5 years later.

[areNOTwhatTHEYseem]

The whole plan to win promotion in 2-3 years was a massive gamble due to the fact that Chansiri didn't invest enough nor draw on savvy-enough contacts to make us dead-certs for promotion in the way that Wolves did. If we came up short, which we did, we needed a sensible exit strategy. Unfortunately, our chairman seems to have forgotten this part.

 

Don't forget, we were starting from a position in which at least half the Championship had a huge head-start in terms of investment in their squads over the past decade or so. To expect us to instantly rise to the top of the pile when up against teams who had been building for several years, or those with recent Premier League experience, money and squads, was a bit unrealistic.

 

The investment in many a Championship club over the past decade prior to Chansiri's arrival dwarfed ours. Their infrastructures, academies, technical teams, scouting networks etc... were funded by Premier League money and parachute payments. Many may not have spent as heavily in the two seasons where Carvalhal was manager, but we were playing catch-up in a major way after the best part of two decades being left to wither on the vine.

 

We half-heartedly went at it, spending a lot of money but with little sign of a coherent plan beyond that first season, and landed ourselves in a huge mess. In and of itself, this didn't need to be terminal, but Chansiri's refusal to sell any of our players when their value was high, and to allow them to run down their contracts and leave for nothing, has been the final nail in the coffin of our cack-handed plan to win promotion.

[TheEnchanter]

Massively disagree in terms of talent. For example Norwich on paper are much better than our team under Carlos. 

 

I don't think they were ever anywhere near automatic promotion standard. 

 

I reckon they'd be about Bournemouth level this season. Overall I think by finishing 6th and 4th we pretty much hit our ceiling. Don't forget we finished 4th in a year where Huddersfield and Reading (who were both awful) were also up there. 

[CircleSeven]

Our side was good and we spent a lot of money but it never felt like an automatic promotion side to me anyway. 
The season of the semi final defeat to Huddersfield was a disaster because I think we were probably the best team in the playoffs but we failed. With that defeat the gamble had failed. Our overspending caught up with us and it was downhill all the way after that. 
Hey ho.

[pat blondeau]

The Hull team we played in the play off final was a better side on paper than ours.

 

Plenty of premier league experience with Dawson, Davies, Livermore, Huddestone and Snodgrass.

 

Diame’s legs in midfield, Andy Robertson at left back and Harry Maguire on the bench

[TheEnchanter]

Just now, CircleSeven said:

Our side was good and we spent a lot of money but it never felt like an automatic promotion side to me anyway. 
The season of the semi final defeat to Huddersfield was a disaster because I think we were probably the best team in the playoffs but we failed. With that defeat the gamble had failed. Our overspending caught up with us and it was downhill all the way after that. 
Hey ho.

 

I remember how poor we were that season. We played defensive football and were regularly finding ourselves on the right side of tight games. We only scored more than 2 goals a game on a handful of occasions from memory. That defeat to Huddersfield had been coming. I remember feeling shocked we'd managed to get to 81 points at the time because we were bang average. 

[SiJ]

We should have gone up in 2016/2017, but went all negative and pragmatic.

 

Meant we never properly challenged for automatic like we should have done.

[TheEnchanter]

1 minute ago, SiJ said:

We should have gone up in 2016/2017, but went all negative and pragmatic.

 

Meant we never properly challenged for automatic like we should have done.

 

Just fact checked and we only scored more than 2 goals 3 times in 48 games that season. Hard to get promoted like that. 

[SiJ]

1 minute ago, TheEnchanter said:

 

I remember how poor we were that season. We played defensive football and were regularly finding ourselves on the right side of tight games. We only scored more than 2 goals a game on a handful of occasions from memory. That defeat to Huddersfield had been coming. I remember feeling shocked we'd managed to get to 81 points at the time because we were bang average. 

This is very true.

 

After last night's sorry display, I was thinking about how many times Rotherham come here and get a good result.

 

In that 2016/2017 season, we beat them at Hillsborough with a last minute pen in an awful game.

[Django]

I think Carlos looked at the style of the 3 teams who went up in 2016 (Boro, Burnley and Hull) and thought that was the way to go 

 

Still bugs me that only Huddersfield at home and a very ordinary Reading at Wembley stood in our way of the PL

[CircleSeven]

Just now, TheEnchanter said:

 

I remember how poor we were that season. We played defensive football and were regularly finding ourselves on the right side of tight games. We only scored more than 2 goals a game on a handful of occasions from memory. That defeat to Huddersfield had been coming. I remember feeling shocked we'd managed to get to 81 points at the time because we were bang average. 

Fair enough. I think all teams in the play offs that season were average though. Us, Huddersfield, Fulham and Reading were all a bit average. Some of our performances were good that season. Newcastle at home for example. We should have had it in us to get past Huddersfield IMO. Doesn’t matter now I know but there you go.