As I see it, following the relegation, the steady decline, chopping and changing of Head Coaches (4 in one season if you count Sir Gary) and looking at the Summer transfer upheaval (particularly the loss of our best GK for years) and teams we were putting out in the first few pre- season friendlies in the Summer, then if anyone had asked us if we would be satisfied to be sitting in 3rd place (appreciate that may change later today) and scoring 44 goals in the league, then for the majority of us, we'd have definitely exceeded expectations.
Darren Moore deserves huge credit for that. He also represents the club with great dignity.
Whether it'll get us promotion, well who knows?
Looking at the table, even going as low as 12th place Stoke, you see teams who could conceivably put together a run of results to catapult themselves into automatic contention.
In addition, from the outside looking in, it does appears that there's no great pot of cash left over from the Prem era and it's a matter of wheeling and dealing on a self financing basis.
Of course there's been issues, with formations, some of the Summer recruitment of players hasn't quite worked as we'd all hoped and defensive frailties have raised their ugly head which we clearly need to work on, but as we approach the end of the year, I'm not really sure anyone could have got more out of this squad than he has.