Jamie Shawcross
Full Member
I am well aware that I might take a ton of flack for this, but I have been thinking it for a while and what can I lose by sharing it? Its not like things can be worse for the club right now so here goes...
I think as a club and as a fan base we have lost sight of what it means to compete at the highest level against the best teams in modern football, because we have become obsessed with "The United way". What is the United way exactly? Pacy, relentlessly attacking football? Bringing youth through? Beyond that, what is it? I am pretty certain that every football club on the planet wants to play exciting football, win every game and give local lads a platform. No? Is it really truly unique to Manchester United?
LVG's and Jose's pragmatism in games was met with genuine disdain from us fans, and a lot of us believed for some reason that these managers were "going against the united way" intentionally?? In reality, these managers were grinding out results with the resources (players) they had available, in the way they saw possible. I am damn sure neither had any interest in getting on the wrong side of the fan base. I think we severely misread the situation, and hugely underappreciated both at the time, in hindsight of course.
We are putting too much pressure on ourselves as a club, and far too much pressure on the players to PLAY A CERTAIN WAY, and our performances are constantly judged against this expectation that we ourselves have set. We have set a bar, and when the players inevitably don't meet our expectations it's doom and gloom, and "we have fallen so far from grace" and "united are not the same as they were" cries grow ever louder.
Our appetite to play this "way" has resulted in us hiring a worryingly unproven manager at the biggest club on the earth, to appease the fans demands of this "United way", failing to foresee the pitfalls. What did we expect from Solskjaer, really? I will be honest, the kid in me saw him winning everything in sight and this all being a big romantic roller coaster and us all telling the scousers and the noisy neighbours to stuff it, but this is the real world.
We NEED to drop this immediate expectation of a certain playing style whilst the club finds its feet. Once we have the bones of a decent squad, then we can progress and start playing with more freedom. Until then, if we keep on demanding it (in my opinion demanding the near impossible) with these players we have and the board we have, then we are going to be forever disappointed, and we will never stop sacking managers.
First, we need to focus on how to be hard to beat. Second we need to learn how to grind out results. Then we use the confidence from our progression as a springboard to go out and be more expressive on the ball. We are nowhere near that, a long way off. Years.
If we keep "The United way" as a requirement for incoming managers, we limit ourselves and hold ourselves back, and we get left behind.
The club needs serious, serious work before we even think about our playing style.
I think as a club and as a fan base we have lost sight of what it means to compete at the highest level against the best teams in modern football, because we have become obsessed with "The United way". What is the United way exactly? Pacy, relentlessly attacking football? Bringing youth through? Beyond that, what is it? I am pretty certain that every football club on the planet wants to play exciting football, win every game and give local lads a platform. No? Is it really truly unique to Manchester United?
LVG's and Jose's pragmatism in games was met with genuine disdain from us fans, and a lot of us believed for some reason that these managers were "going against the united way" intentionally?? In reality, these managers were grinding out results with the resources (players) they had available, in the way they saw possible. I am damn sure neither had any interest in getting on the wrong side of the fan base. I think we severely misread the situation, and hugely underappreciated both at the time, in hindsight of course.
We are putting too much pressure on ourselves as a club, and far too much pressure on the players to PLAY A CERTAIN WAY, and our performances are constantly judged against this expectation that we ourselves have set. We have set a bar, and when the players inevitably don't meet our expectations it's doom and gloom, and "we have fallen so far from grace" and "united are not the same as they were" cries grow ever louder.
Our appetite to play this "way" has resulted in us hiring a worryingly unproven manager at the biggest club on the earth, to appease the fans demands of this "United way", failing to foresee the pitfalls. What did we expect from Solskjaer, really? I will be honest, the kid in me saw him winning everything in sight and this all being a big romantic roller coaster and us all telling the scousers and the noisy neighbours to stuff it, but this is the real world.
We NEED to drop this immediate expectation of a certain playing style whilst the club finds its feet. Once we have the bones of a decent squad, then we can progress and start playing with more freedom. Until then, if we keep on demanding it (in my opinion demanding the near impossible) with these players we have and the board we have, then we are going to be forever disappointed, and we will never stop sacking managers.
First, we need to focus on how to be hard to beat. Second we need to learn how to grind out results. Then we use the confidence from our progression as a springboard to go out and be more expressive on the ball. We are nowhere near that, a long way off. Years.
If we keep "The United way" as a requirement for incoming managers, we limit ourselves and hold ourselves back, and we get left behind.
The club needs serious, serious work before we even think about our playing style.