Kevin Nolan: “Last year, there were a lot of questions swirling around.
“People didn’t know who was staying and who was going, we didn’t know who the manager was going to be – people were predicting we would go straight back down again.
“This year is more stable, but you still have people saying, ‘They’re not good enough’ or ‘They need this or that’. No matter what this club does, there’s a lot of people wanting to put us down.
“I’m getting quite sick of it, but we’ll just have to prove people wrong again. There’s a lot of doubters to prove wrong, and hopefully we’ll do that.
“As long as those 52,000 fans stick with us and the squad stick together, we’re confident we can achieve what we’re aiming for, that what happened last year never happens to this club again.
“There’s a lot of lads still hurting from what happened. The scars are still there, they have to be. We had to prove a lot of people wrong in the Championship last year, and we have to prove a lot of people wrong in the Premier League.
“I’m sick of hearing ex-professionals coming on and saying that we’re not good enough. They were a bunch of nobodies when they first went into the Premier League, and they made names for themselves.
“We have a squad that have probably had more games than a lot of those had at that time. We’re confident that once we mix it up with the other teams, we’re a lot better than a lot of those around us.”