They will certainly do so if they buckle so visibly a second time under the weight of home-town expectation.
At least three of the top six are pretty big surprises, with Reading, Leeds United and Huddersfield Town exceeding expectations, under managers who have found solutions to long-standing problems.
So much for Warrington's pre-season hopes of keeping a lid on the town's great expectations.
The acquisition of Dickey, and of several Miami Marlins, including the ex-Met Jose Reyes, in a firesale by the miserly Marlins owner, Jeffrey Loria, over the winter, had Toronto feeling like a big-league baseball town again, with expectations higher than they'd been in twenty years, since the World Series heroics of Joe Carter.
Three relatively high-profile electric car ventures fizzled in the town despite high expectations.
As noted by Town and colleagues, expectations about the future stability of new incentive schemes may influence whether providers will be responsive to these schemes.
When the burghers of the ultra-respectable London suburb of Bromley offered H G Wells – its most illustrious 19th-century scion after Charles Darwin – the freedom of the town, the firm expectation was that he would graciously accept.
The citizens intend to rebuild the town with the expectation that the newly discovered gold mine will soon bring many new settlers.
For the solidly middle-class, overwhelmingly white population, this was the adventure of a lifetime, the chance to start over in a town paved with great expectations.
"Yeah, it's a tough town and we raised expectations real quick here," Randolph, the Brewers' bench coach, said Monday, standing outside the office of Ken Macha, the Milwaukee manager.
