Pardew finished 5th once. I appreciate the PL now is a little stronger with all the top managers as compared with 5 years ago, but of course Rafa can get us top 8. If Ranieri can win the league last year with Leicester's squad, we can finish top 6 easily within 3 years. The question is can we finish top four? We'll be good enough in 3 years' time to be top 4, the problem will be that there'll be 7 teams good enough for top 4. Someone has to finish there and someone has to miss out. Why not us finishing there once or twice?
Next year i'd expect top 14, year after top 8, year after to be one of the teams that's in the so-called top 7 league.
The season we finished 5th had more quality than last season, imo.