Kaizen should be our aim for next season and beyond!

As many of you will no doubt be aware of, I used to work for a well known Japanese car manufacturer that started with the letter "T" and had the slogan of "the car in front...", well you get the point.

Slightly worrying when that malarkey with the faulty brakes was going about a year or so ago but still... As long as it was in front!

Anyway, getting back on point, I learned some great stuff whilst I was there and was one of their Professors of Kaizen, which is a basically a process of continuously improving. They spend a fortune on that every year and I was one of the guys responsible for keeping it all organised and running.

It struck me earlier that this is something that we need to do at at NUFC. It sounds simple, but is it really going to be that straight-forward?

On the surface of it we have improved the squad from the one which finished last season. We've added players that will play in the first team and haven't just been signed for cover meaning that we have a bit more quality in depth. Of course the window is still open so things could change on that front!

In terms of league position we have room for improvement. For me anything above 12th next season will be success. Ideally I'd like a top ten finish at least (in actual fact I want us to win the league but it just isn't going to happen) but as long as we are progressing and improving where we finish then I'm not overly fussed whereabouts we end up in the league.

That's the rather short-sighted view though. What about beyond next season? Alan Pardew touched on it earlier on when he blathered on about having to improve to keep hold of our better players. The new guys, like Yohan Cabaye for example, may have brought into the "project" to start with, but if they aren't seeing many signs of that project coming to completion they won't stick around.

This is why it's important to keep continuously improving. The ambition of the club won't be proven in just one transfer window. To some it will of course, but the real proof of the pudding is going to be in one, two, three years time and beyond. Success, or relative success for a team who is looking to establish itself in the Premier League again, will not be achieved overnight.

I guess that's kind of my point. No matter how long it takes to get to where we want to be, we need to keep improving at every step of the way. Slip ups will happen, and they could be costly, but as long as we are showing signs of improving you'll not hear me complaining. Well, not too much anyway.

Would you be happy with steady progression? Continuous improvement? Kaizen, even?