Ask Southampton, Leicester or even Leeds if they would swap our progress for theirs.
And yes, Southampton have a bigger, better stadium than us and were in the top flight for longer. Building behind the scenes from sustainable foundations (like the academy, like a decent team that needs a few additions) can sometimes look from the outside like you are standing still. Football fans are laughable sometimes. No matter what they have they always want more. Yet I imagine you're going to lie and say you would not have been happy with todays progress back in 2010?

I'm not sure anybody thinks it will be 'easy' to rise up the league.

However, in the last 8 seasons we have finished between 11th - 15th and the list of sides to have finished in the top half includes; Southampton, West Ham, Stoke, Everton, Bournemouth, West Brom, Burnley, Leicester, Wolves, Sheffield United, Leeds, Brighton, Villa and Fulham. So it's understandable that people don't feel that we've hit our ceiling.

Obviously some of these are traditionally bigger clubs than us but few have been in the league as long as us and many have come up and immediately leapfrogged us.

We're never going to outspend the bigger clubs but we can climb the league if we become a stepping stone club for young players and managers, which is basically what Brighton have done.

However, we seem to afraid to depart from the safety blanket of Roy and the scouring of bargain transfers, whereas actually we probably should be trying to appoint an ambitious young coach, and selling Guehi and Eze at their peak value for £100m+ before using the money to buy 6/7 more young players with potential, thus strengthening our squad and repeating the cycle.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold...

Hodgson to be formally announced tomorrow?

Apparently Carl on Twitter has said this. I do not do Twitter but apparently quite reliable.
Altough I am sure Roy will keep us up, does this mean younger managers are turning us down? If so, why? My guess is lack of funds, not great going forward is it

They should get a move on but this is typically of Parish,no urgency!!

Roy is a safe pair of hands and will accept the loan deals and frees,coming his way from SP,without question and just buckle down and make the best of it.
Other candidates would refuse to operate under such draconian conditions,like Cooper, Rogers and Potter.