Fulham boss Lawrie Sanchez is setting his players the target of Europe.
The former Northern Ireland boss wants to emulate Reading and Blackburn, who punched above their weight last season, and create a driven, winning mentality.
"What I'm trying to do is drive this set of players on and put Fulham on a more competitive basis," said Sanchez.
"This is our seventh year in the Premier League and ninth was the highest finish. My job is to push for that ninth and maybe higher."
To that end Sanchez's summer transfer policy was to focus on bringing players in who understood the demands of the English football.
And Aaron Hughes, Steven Davis, Diomansy Kamara, Chris Baird, David Healy and Paul Konchesky have all played either in the top flight or the Championship.
"Any manager in the Premier League is offered loads of players with great pedigrees but they have never seen them play in person," he added.
"The policy is to sign players who know what English football is. It's a shock to the system.
"We need to be up and running from day one with a tough game against Arsenal and we want players who know what's expected.
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"Later on perhaps I can go for players that can settle in to what we want to do, but in a short space of time we had to get this right.
"There needed to be improvements in the strength and depth of the squad. We had 15 fit players in the last game of the season.
"This year we've got depth in the squad and quality across almost all the areas and now it's down to players to prove they want the shirt.
"Only in a completive atmosphere do you get a winning team.
"Reading and Blackburn are smaller clubs with great winning mentalities who both almost made Europe last year. They are the teams I'll be comparing ourselves to.
"They've done fantastically well and have driven their players on to achieve great things. Our job is to entertain people, but fans won't be saying that when we lose. They want to see us win.
"If we play like I'd like us to play there are avenues beyond the league that open to Europe and I'd like in my time here to get Fulham playing in Europe."
Sanchez added he would be signing more players and revealed the club had received no official approaches for players despite speculation linking full-back Franck Queudrue with Newcastle.
"There'll be one or two more to come in, but until they're signed you don't want to talk about players. Until they sign its just speculation," he said.
"We need left-sided players, that's part of the reason we got Paul Konchesky.
"It's well documented that Franck wants to move on and I won't stand in his way, but he cost £3m and we want our money back."
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