justsomebloke
Full Member
- Joined
- Oct 25, 2020
- Messages
- 5,948
Been a fan since the late seventies, and have seen the hard times (if not the hardest times) too.It is me and yes I have been a supporter since 1967. Not like some people who start supporting when we start winning trophies under Fergie. You would never understand winning the EC as the first British club to win it and then relegation to the second division and seeing Liverpool win all those trophies while we struggled. Unless you live through it you would never understand it. Playing in places like Oxford United in a mud hole etc.
This is not calling for the change of the Manager. I never wanted Poch and I have said yesterday's result should not be used to slate Ole. This is calling you guys who accept mediocrity at United. Ole or not we should expect to win every game we play.
On one level I totally understand you - it's about having the pride and standards not to accept that anything other than winning is good enough, ever.
On another, I don't understand you at all - because unless you have really great team, you are simply not going to win most matches. That's just reality.
Maybe the way I would put it is you should expect the players to have that attitude and not be satisfied unless they win. But I'm not sure it's very helpful to have that level of expectation as a fan. I suppose you could argue that the attitude should come through from the fan base and that the players will feel it if it does, but I must admit I find it hard to stick to expectations that the left side of my brain tell me aren't realistic.
But I wouldn't say that means accepting mediocrity. It just means I'm prepared to be patient for results, as long as I see improvement, commitment and the right direction of travel. An important point here is that it's not just about winning, it's about building a team that can challenge for titles for a protracted period. Building a core that's good enough and young enough to last, for long enough that you can maintain it by making 1 or 2 player changes each year. Also, because that's how you build a strong team and style identity, with players that developed together and learned to win together. I think that reasonably takes longer than patching together a winner from proven veterans. But I think it's probably worth the wait.
Also, do you think the players aren't showing the right attitude? It's always hard to tell of course, from the practised lines you get in post-match interviews. But for what it's worth, they generally seem to me to emphasise fairly convincingly that they embrace the high expectations they're facing. They don't sound happy with draws. I also think they're increasingly showing the right determination on the pitch, as evidenced by our propensity for comebacks. They're a young team (the youngest of any squad in the European top 5 leagues last season, in fact), they're still learning what it takes to win as a collective.
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