Yeah thing is though you're taking 1 out of 12 out of context, injuries, 40 point mark etc. Not excusing it and neither would TP but do we base judgments on the last 2/3 months of a season, or the keyword being the whole season? We are overacheivers pure and simple, I think to be honest our expectations of some fans for a club our side are unrealistic. We don't have the pulling factor of London and we're not a big club with a big stadium so it's easy to see the lure of teams like palace and watford (even though I don't believe them to be a "bigger club") over a team like west brom. That's where I think we are disadvantaged in terms of recruitment straight away regardless of pulis specific requirements. We really are punching above our weights consistently, I don't understand how fickle and unrealistic our fans can be. We'd all love to splash cash and expand the stadium and get Albion into a worldwide brand (which with the eco cities and Chinese link we're slowly laying the foundation's to improve our brand awareness). However we don't have the fanbase or revenue to do this, we have a high wage%/turnover as it is and only are capable of doing this and competing in the premier league due to the copious amounts of TV money that we absolutely rely on, it makes me laugh when people say they'd rather watch us in the championship. It wouldn't be the same as ten years ago when we were able to bounce back pretty much straight away, look at the villa. Really think we should start putting on a more united front and have a real look at the job TP is doing considering all factors and realise we ain't doing too bad at all (even though we're all in agreement we need more players - we don't want to buy any old rubbish like we have done in the past just to fill gaps)
Apologies for going slightly off topic,
We are out performing in respect to who we are, BUT, look at what we could be
a) we are one of the 30 richest clubs on the planet,
b) we are the only premier league club in a caption area of circa10 million, (w.mids 5.7m, worcs 0.5m / warks 0.5m / glos 0.8m / s.staffs 0.4 / shrops
0.3 ........
c) History, founding club, league winners, cup winners (*5)
d) international players ...
The club NEEDS to shed its small town mentality, hopefully Lai & Palm will do this, The start point has to be marketing the brand better IMHO.