Gentle paid the price for AP's unrealistic targets. Everybody knowledgeable I spoke to, yes I include some on here, knew that this wasn't a 2/3 year job. It's at lest a 5 year job this, and now we're back where we were two years ago.
Gentle concentrated far too much on the cup, and took his eye of the ball in the league, which ultimately cost him his job. The two Catalan games were the beginning of the end.
Radford will get more time because AP has had a reality check.

Whichever way you look at it, an 8th place finish, comfortable or otherwise, is an abject failure. Make all the preemptive excuses you like, but anything less than 6th will be unacceptable to the majority of fans, and many will expect an improvement (i.e. 5th or higher) in order for Gentle's dismissal to have been justified.

I don't expect us to roll over and die in any game next season!
I want to see us compete every round and any players not pulling there wight dropped. If we did that this year we could of been in the top 4 and had a CC to our names.

I have not said a position of 8th I have said top 8 comfortably.

But 8th is top 8. So if you meant top 6 (or whatever), why say top 8?

Which Pearson talked a hell of a lot about too. I wonder how much of it was possibly Gentle just trying to please the boss, in which case being canned would be a harsh outcome.

Simple really because we didnt make the top 8 comfortably even though we finished 6th. I would like a top 4 finish however I am realistic to know this is not possible currently however if Radford can make changes as I've alluded to & improve performance & consistency then that for me is moving forward.

Eh? There was never much of a likelihood of us finishing 9th. The lowest we would have finished barring an extremely unlikely run of results was 8th. We finished on 28 points and the team in 9th finished on 22. This is the very definition of a comfortable top 8 finish - we were in there by a clear six points.

If we finish in 8th next year, even if we're ten points clear of the 9th placed team, this would be a failure and certainly wouldn't constitute being 'more consistent', in any way, shape or form.

We were 3 wins clear of 9th. Dress it up how you like in relation to where in the top 8 we could/should have been with one more/less result, but if you want to talk about how comfortably we make the top 8 you can only do so by measuring against the team in 9th, not 6-8th.

Scraping the 8th is doing it on the last day, not with 2-3 games to go.

5th place . Win the CC . Win 2 playoff games.

I personally think that's exactly what happened.

As long as we see a visible improvement on the pitch, in attack. I'll be content.

I thought Pearson targeted the cup. Can't imagine Gentle did so without his say so.

To be competitive in every game.

To look like we have organisation in attack.

We could quite easily finish outside the 8 next year or as high as 5th. Depends if Radford is any good