[quote="HU8HFC":3pwaqfb1]It is nice to see some people have confidence in the squad and that a 6th place finish is achievable, but for me we would be banking on a few sides better than us to have a bad year which does feel pretty unlikely.
2025 Season - Be competitive again, get fans back onside and give us something to build on. 8-9th place will be seen as progress.
2026 Season - Challenging for top 6 will be seen as an expectation rather than ambition. 5-6th place finish would be the target.
2027 Season - Consolidating ourselves as a top 6 club whilst pushing for a top 4 finish. 6th place would be the minimum, 4th place or above would be the aim.
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I don't think it is impossible for us to be 6th come September but, as you say, we will require quite a lot to fall our way for it to come to pass.
We will need to stay relatively injury free with the team, and individual players, performing to somewhere around their optimum level for the bulk of the season. Even then, we will most likely be relying on a batch of other sides (Leigh, Leeds, Salford probably) to significantly underperform in order to open up that sixth play-off spot.
That's a fair amount of coincidence/luck going our way for us to pinch a play-off spot. Think it may be twelve months too early to start thinking along those lines.
Seem to recall I put forward a similar argument before the start of last year as to how we could sneak sixth, and look how that turned out
Agree with you, think the mid-term plan is to put some solid foundation stones in place over this year, and probably next, before making ourselves play-off contenders again in 2027. To go from eleventh (with just three wins) to a play-off spot in twelve months feels like taking two leaps in one go. As I said, it may happen, but think we're asking for a fair bit to fall our way for it to be.
I'm not setting the bar too high for 2025, we really have been burned very badly these past four years. All I am looking for this season is signs that we are once more moving in an upwards direction, even if it is only small steps to begin with.
