Agree with you. I enjoyed the match against Copenhagen. I thought it was an enjoyable game to watch; yet people here were livid we didn't beat them 5-0 - despite the fact we peppered their goal constantly, and if not for their keeper, it would have been a cricket score.
I truly don't get it. A good portion of the people here seem to get no enjoyment out of the game, and it seems the only enjoyment they get is from of being negative about anything and everything on a football forum.
It's bizarre.
I put it down to unrealistic expectations really:
You're a robot because you're paid ridiculous money:
It's almost like quite a few folks really haven't watched football that long and get a lot of understanding from video games. In their minds, players will play at the same pace in 30 plus degree heat as they would on a normal day, or after such a long season.
United players should be miles better than the opposition because they're more popular:
Because United is a big club and buys more expensive players, we should swat away all opposition with 3 goals or more. Almost like folks forget that the opposition is made up of professionals who have trained all their lives, and want the same thing - a win. TV revenue means that most top tier league clubs can buy decent players, and at the top, the difference in ability between good and better players is really not that wide. E.g. not saying he shouldn't improve, but people want AWB to attack like Trent and defend like, well, AWB. Players have limitations, even at the top end.
Exaggerated views of past teams - our heroes of the past never made mistakes:
They seem to romanticise the old SAF days where, let's be honest, those greats had horrible days at the office as well, and the standard of most of the rest of the premier league teams was a lot lower (see TV revenue comment). Just rewatch the games - our European performances give a much clearer barometer. There were times you wondered what the great man Sir Alex himself was doing. I suppose he was easier to trust because of his past successes, but, he had to be trusted in order to build that cushion in the first place. There's just no patience these days, any game less than 3 nil, and you get the "Do you trust Ole ..." (or something) thread bumped. Ridiculous
We're United, we buy and sell who we want:
Those days are gone, there were days we could just go and buy all the best players from our rivals, thus making them weaker, and us stronger. We could bully Spurs, Arsenal, whoever. Teams are a lot more financially stable now. We don't have some billionaire owner where if we buy a dud, we can just buy another player the next year, and sell the other. Other teams have scouts as well - fishing in the same pools, we're not always going to have the best in every position.
I know football better than the professionals that see each other in training day in and day out:
If you've held any position of leadership, it's clear that people looking outside in don't appreciate a lot of things like what you're actual targets are, what your measures of success are, the limitations you have to work around, and most importantly, the actual expertise to make any real educated judgement. The most recent stick is "bad coaching". Well, if Ole is so clueless, how did he end up 3rd in the league with the likes of Pereira, Lingard, James, and McTominay playing most games in the first half of the season with Martial, Rashford, Pogba, Bruno all missing huge chunks of the season for various reasons?
Also, regarding coaching, it's a two way achievement from the coach and the coachee. In football, that's 11 coachees all being in harmony! Kinks will take a lot longer to work through.
I love the idea of a youthful side and the benefits that brings, I however ignore the risks:
Young players are brave, pacy, and energetic - yes. However, they're notoriously inconsistent. They fluctuate in form, lose confidence, concentration, and make rash decisions a lot more than players in their peak. They also have a lot more glaring weaknesses because they haven't had the benefit of years of top level coaching and experience to develop the naturally weak aspects of their game. They require more patience and will take some time to become the finished article.
All managers must have a definite, single, recognisable blueprint of how they play (or should play like Pep or Klopp):
I blame pundits sometimes for this. A team could have 1 or 2 go to systems drilled into them, but they're allowed to play different ways to get a result with the personnel available. There seems to be an obsession these days with teams having an identified system which they never waver from. Sir Alex definitely didn't, and many great managers of his time didn't either. Yes he loved making the pitch wide and countering at speed but we played many different ways under him.
