The amount of deflection going on in the Newcastle post mortem is a reflection of where fans are at.
I asked, repeatedly, who had 'downed tools' in the ETH thread to no response. Martial is what he is; Rashford, the manager could have hooked at any time, or even not started if he was suspicious or expectant of a bad performance.
People are going out of their way to excuse, gloss over or wholly ignore dire tactics and personnel deployment that in and of itself is causing morale to drop. The players aren't shirking their duty (as above, please tell me who is doing that) outside of Rashford; all of them are trying, but if this were a race, how they are being deployed and strategically placed, has them set up 50m behind the starting line in a 100m race. We got blitzed in the last game because nothing was done to cater to the strengths of the most athletic and aggressive team in the entire league. In fact, we were set up to further exacerbate their strengths and our weaknesses, and no amount of pretending or ignoring that is the case makes it not so.
There might be a time to turn on the players, but this game isn't it. If the manager constantly leaves the midfield in complete disarray how can you be astonished when physical juggernauts say thank you very much, don't mind if we do come through and plunder?
If you are in that squad and see an 18yr old with two games under his belt being set up in a way he's facing an onslaught all game from the most powerful pair of midfielders in the league, do you just go back to the dressing room and act like nothing happened or do you start having doubts about why that was allowed to happen? If you're in a team where a wide player is left to his own devices whilst his FB is constantly fending off multiple players running off him, do you have more doubts and concerns about what's being coached and permitted to happen, or do you keep your resolve as high? Outwardly, things mightn't show, but inwardly doubts arise.
Even this thing about running hard and the whys and wherefores of doing so; if you're not being drilled with solid, cohesive patterns, it is mostly human nature to question why you're doing these things again and again. Collective pressing is precisely that, and it only takes one let alone two or three not pulling their weight or being in the correct positions for that hard running to look completely aimless and redundant. If the shape you initially set out with isn't right and obvious breaches keep occurring because of that, morale will slide and players will lose faith in the plan and execution.
Players like winning. Players like praise and adulation. Players also like to be in stronger positions for contract negotiations or moves away from the club. This notion they just give up on that at the drop of a hat is absurd, not least because this same group of players got to two finals and finished 3rd last season. Players also seek redemption over being turfed out, which is why the likes of Maguire hang on for dear life.
What people seem to be confusing for conspiracy is that these players, despite giving their best aren't good enough. With the best will in the world, most of them are maxxed out and need selling on those grounds, but further still, these tactics and deployments don't give them a prayer of bridging their shortcomings.
We don't have a particularly likeable squad and I've been all for a cull for a long time, even making threads along those lines, but the deflections going on since the Newcastle game, where somehow the manager has been absolved for a horrid game in every sense of the word, displays either little objective reasoning or extremely bad faith baying for blood to explain away what was a clear as day tactical mauling.
There's irony in the culture of toxicity being directed at the players when blindly backing what can clearly be seen as shocking management is the alternative. You can rightfully be sick of these players and want them gone whilst acknowledging how dire we are set up, and further, how badly the manager responds in-game whilst most managers we come up against look like tactical masterminds for being able to run straight through us or exploit the plethora of weaknesses this set up has. Mainoo is literally by himself in deep midfield for most of the game and it's not a talking point after it? What reality is this?
If the manager does his bit, we'll see which players aren't doing theirs, but as I said earlier, if they are out there trying in a shocking set up, why would they not in a functional one?
Right now it's a case of dire management and poor players, rather than players who are indifferent or not trying (Martial and Rashford excepted). I'm all ears to who else is not trying or what toxicity is permeating this squad in lieu of us being better than we are. Players - like or loathe them - are not robots and will express disillusion even if they still go out and try to work with a poor construct. Both things can and do occur.
