This is honestly nonsense from start to finish. First if the players are stepping up whenever the manager is under pressure proves they aren't shirking any responsibility. If they were, they will sulk whenever we are under pressure too and Ole would have been sacked months ago. You just repeated the same point without providing a reply on the argument? If they were shirking responsibilities they will keep sulking to get the manager out eventually.And? Ole can get sacked at any time. It won't make a difference to the scenario as the new manager can come in and the players know they can shirk responsibility and play to the crowd who ultimately absolve them. Their job is to turn up on match day and win games. When they win you can't go "they saved the manager" and when they lose say "stop basing the players" those two scenarios cancel each other out. This is the sort of responsibility shirking that I'm talking about, people jumping to their aid to shout about the manager and absolve them. They're well paid professionals at one of the biggest clubs in the world, not a pub team of tradesmen that need wrangling to turn up on match day not half pissed up from work drinks the night before.
Back to the point at hand, it isn't the manager. It's the players and we're miles off. We're miles off mentally, technically and in terms of personal responsibility. As long as this crop have an audience to play the violins too they know they can play themselves into the bin and come out the bottom into the car park and drive home without a care in the world.
And second, the whole notion of players avoiding blame in defeats is not true at all. I don't even know from where some of you are bringing this. Just have a look at performance thread after losses. They all get slaughtered. The likes of Maguire and AWB have been slaughtered after RB game.
You are just rehasing points that are said previously which are simply not true at all. Just repeating them won't make them true as well.
And it's the manager, when you set up in a crucial gamer with 5 defenders and 2 defensive midfielders you can't blame the players for being serial losers after we lost. We set up cowardly to try and play for a draw. It's the manager's responsibility.