This team is mentally and emotionally damaged. MUFC have PTSD

[Scandi Red]

Post Traumatic SAF Syndrome?

 

[Rood]

There is undoubtedly a mental angle that our players have to deal with, you have to be mentally tough to survive at Man Utd and many can't handle the pressure - more so than any other club in the world IMO

Fergie used to tell players not to read the papers but nowadays with social media, 24hr sports news, YouTube etc it's simply impossible for a player to escape the scrutiny

 

[noodlehair]

The problem is when you have players who aren't as good as the expectation levels. Or maybe are as good but only when they're performing at 9/10 or better.

The criticism is brutal. No one ever tries their best but isn't quite good enough. Its always they're shite and don't deserve to wear the jersey, etc. Or, you know, vile possibly racist abuse if its twitter.

Pressure is easy to handle if you're good enough and your team mates are all good enough, and the suppoeters are, well, supportive.. When half of you are only nearly or not quite good enough, and half of the other half of you are injured all the time, and the supporters hate everything about the club including you apparently, its not so easy.

That said we're astonishingly fragile. We make late era Arsene Wenger's Arsenal look like a team of Roy Keanes. I mean the other night its not like we gave up, but even if we'd scored to make it 3-3 in the 96th minute you'd still have fancied Galatasaray to score with a shot straight from the kick off or something.

 

[justsomebloke]

It was clear to me after the collapse today that this squad have just been through too much. Too many different managers, too many punishing defeats, too much criticism, too much disappointment. They have PTSD.

They are shot, they are fragile and they are maybe the easiest team in the league to beat.

All it took was the De Gea mistake and we were cooked. The players can see what is next and they completely implode and lose any confidence that the manager may have been trying to instill in them during the week.

Individually, the majority of the team are good players, they could go on to play in an organized Premier League team. But put them together and they look like a bunch of shell shocked veterans coming back from war.

The only answer is to rip the heart out of this team. I dont care if it means selling some of these players for next to nothing, or leaving highly paid players on the bench.

I would rather ETH assemble a team of no names and drill them hard. It seems to work for Brighton, Brentford and many other Prem teams.

That could have been written right now, which is chiefly very depressing, but also slightly hopeful - they bounced back from this last time, and could do so again. Of course, that was two games into the season, now it's seven.

It seems obvious that there are issues of confidence, trust, collective failure. And that it's a recurring thing. Maybe it's not too surprising, if you try to patch together a theory of why this is happening right now, there are almost too many potential plausible elements to mention. Club sale, Greenwood, Sancho, Antony, the manner of De Gea's departure, whisperings of a difficult preseason, key injuries, individual dropoffs in performance, the possibility that Bruno's leadership style isn't what's needed in these circumstances. But then of course there's the "recurring" part, which none of these things explain, so it's unlikely to be only situational.

What really worries me is that EtH increasingly seems to be communicating with his squad through the media, as shown again by the clipping above. That indicates he's not getting through, and, unless mind-games are part of your basic toolkit, is usually a final resort, a gambit taken on the precipice.

In the past I've thought that the notion of having to blow it all up, and that some players are mentally damaged by repeated failure, is rather frivolous. Signifying fans' need for some kind of destructive release rather than a way forward. But I have to admit that now I'm beginning to wonder. If they can't fix this now, maybe there's something in that.

 

[Skills]

People probably do underestimate what it's like to play for Man United. The fans in this country are vile and nothing gets the dribbling masses excited like United in crisis.

The players seem to get engulfed in this and it almost becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. The players are almost guided by hand into a crisis by the media bullshit and the laughing hyena oppo fans.

Fergie never had this problem as firstly he had players with a much stronger mentality but also didn't have the ridiculous social media circus and every moron having a sounding board for their ridiculous opinions.

Our own fans are behind the worst of the abuse.

 

[SteveCoppellFan]

Probably some truth in this to be honest.

The sheer level of criticism United as a whole gets from everyone is ridiculous, the media cannot help but put the boot in whenever they can, the United YouTube channels are the same, just headline after headline of negative nonsense to get clicks.

Even our own fanbase is borderline toxic these days, so many on here just constantly moan and insult everything about the club, these things filter down to the players, especially the younger ones who are always on social meda.

Maybe the older guys are as well, but the longer you have been at United over recent years the more negativity you have had to stomach.

Accumulated disaster.

 

[Champ]

Our own fans are behind the worst of the abuse.

Definitely.

Just a quick browse through some of the player performance threads shows the vile nature of some of our 'fans'.

 

[AndySmith1990]

Why does this problem transition and persist through each manager and different groups of players though?

 

[Counterfactual]

Why does this problem transition and persist through each manager and different groups of players though?

Because a fish rots from the head down.

 

[Born2Lose]

Criticism and adversity either makes or breaks you, the problem is we've got far too many players who it breaks. It doesn't happen at City nor did it at SAF's United because at the core of any winning team is resilience and the ability to return stronger.

It's tragic that the two players I have the most faith in to show some backbone on Saturday are Hannibal and Hojlund who are two of our youngest players. Hannibal might not even start.

Things don't go well and the worst traits come out, Bruno becomes a headless chicken and Rashford becomes even more selfish and his decision making becomes even worse.

In each iteration of this team, we keep building the foundations on these type of players but it always shows in pressure situations. Getting rid of De Gea was huge, but we seem to have replaced him with another goalie who folds under pressure.

We repeat the mistake of paying top level wages to players who don't have the mentality to be top level professionals. Sancho's a great example of this. Is it really that surprising how it's ended up with him?

I suspect Ten Hag knows if Rashford and Bruno were dropped then instead of rising to the challenge they'd proabably throw their toys out of the pram too like Sancho has.

Ten Hag's job is on the line, he's in a much better situation than Ole was because he has credible replacements such as Garnacho and Mount for Rashford and Bruno. United fans are some of the most patient fans around, but they're not stupid and I think it's clear many on the forum have had the boom and bust with certain players.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Why does this problem transition and persist through each manager and different groups of players though?

There's a core of players that have been here throughout that whole period. Rashford, Martial, McT, Shaw. I think Lindelof too?

 

[justsomebloke]

Criticism and adversity either makes or breaks you, the problem is we've got far too many players who it breaks. It doesn't happen at City nor did it at SAF's United because at the core of any winning team is resilience and the ability to return stronger.

It's tragic that the two players I have the most faith in to show some backbone on Saturday are Hannibal and Hojlund who are two of our youngest players. Hannibal might not even start.

Things don't go well and the worst traits come out, Bruno becomes a headless chicken and Rashford becomes even more selfish and his decision making becomes even worse.

In each iteration of this team, we keep building the foundations on these type of players but it always shows in pressure situations. Getting rid of De Gea was huge, but we seem to have replaced him with another goalie who folds under pressure.

We repeat the mistake of paying top level wages to players who don't have the mentality to be top level professionals. Sancho's a great example of this. Is it really that surprising how it's ended up with him?

I suspect Ten Hag knows if Rashford and Bruno were dropped then instead of rising to the challenge they'd proabably throw their toys out of the pram too like Sancho has.

Ten Hag's job is on the line, he's in a much better situation than Ole was because he has credible replacements such as Garnacho and Mount for Rashford and Bruno. United fans are some of the most patient fans around, but they're not stupid and I think it's clear many on the forum have had the boom and bust with certain players.

I'd be very surprised if EtH considers Bruno as essentially a part of the problem, given everything he's said about him and the fact he's been his preferred choice as captain all along (even last year, when Maguire wasn't playing which was most of the time). Also, while it's obviously concerning that Rashford's scoring has dried up, I doubt his performances is all that high on his list of worries. Our attack is clearly a work in progress, but it was that all of last season too. The obvious major problem areas regarding our regression is the lack of control and confidence in the midfield and particularly in the defence.

 

[Red the Bear]

Sureley you realise there's several factors as to why this happens. Although with such simple view maybe you don't

Mostly tongue in cheek on my part and while as you've mentioned several factors contribute to why we are in the state that we are i don't think the idea that our players have some sort of ptsd is the most major factor as true as it may be.

 

[jadaba]

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

One of the things that's common to every new player or manager who signs for this club is a comment they make in early interviews. It's usually some variant of 'This club is absolutely massive, and you don't expect it.' I don't think it's a typical fan serivce comment, I think it's a crucial insight into what we're seeing on the pitch today. Show me another club which has won jack shit in over a decade despite spending over a billion pounds, and still has the third largest fan base in the world (I'd say higher because those numbers are from a limited source).

What this means is that a very unique additional challenge that each manager and player faces at Manchester United, is the amount of publicity and exposure for what are usually the routine ups and downs at most other clubs. Given the way social media works, it's usually reflected mostly in the negatives. I keep thinking of this infographic - no other group of players receive as much online abuse as those at Manchester United, literally. I am sure that if there were quantitative ways of proving it, we'd come to same conclusion in terms of online football content, percentage of talking time on talk shows/punditry, Reddit activity, news article coverage, etc.

Every mistake that a player makes is amplified a hundred times over and fed back to them in all the different avenues possible for consumption. These players are contractually obligated to use their high visibility to provide publicity for brands, but the same visibility feeds them with all this negativity and high pressure. They work in an environment that pummels their confidence after each mistake and requires serious fecking balls to survive and perform the same simple things that would be so much easier to do at most other clubs. Onana may have shown similar errors at Inter, but he was also instrumental in Inter's success last season. Similarly, there's a reason Maguire has fewer errors when in an England shirt, and it's not just because he plays in a lower block.

I wouldn't use a term as extreme as PTSD, but I firmly believe that the reason we can't hold on to leads beyond a few minutes, the reason players like Casemiro or Onana or Lindelof make schoolboy mistakes in defence, the reason the likes of Rashford or Antony overthink their decisions and implement them poorly, and the reason the team falls apart under pressure is because of mental issues.

I think the patches of football that are good in games under ETH are really good - we play fast, direct, attacking football. In almost all the games we've lost this season, we've had moments where the next goal feels inevitable. But it is all too predictable when our heads drop. One thing I've become aware of when watching games is notice how I'm feeling at points in the game - when we're going to concede next or make an individual mistake in a high stake situation. The extremely alarming reality seems to be that the players feel the same in those moments, too. You can see Onana's shakiness right as he's about to make that mistake, you can see defenders being shaky and get caught out of position right after conceding. You can see Rashford being hesitant before a call, and Bruno's low-chance through balls and crosses become more and more reckless as he loses his head.

I firmly believe that if ETH's (and the club's) fortunes can swing to either extreme depending on the teams mentality on the pitch, in the moment. When we are on song, we look really good (a fact that is so surprisingly dismissed in the ETH sack poll thread), and when we struggle, we simply collapse.

Really good post. I was struck by the infographic about player abuse and while I'm assuming it's only for Premier League players, I'd imagine that our players would dominate the list if it were across Europe. I don't believe it's to say that our fans are uniquely toxic towards our players, but rather because no other big team has fallen so dramatically from grace to the extent we have over the past decade. Looking at that list of the top 10 most supported teams, we're the only ones on there to drop off a cliff while the others have either improved or achieved roughly the same levels of success.

So what's the way forward? Even if we have a decent run and show signs of life, we as fans will also be acutely wary that it's likely yet another false dawn, and when the team eventually goes through another difficult run the fanbase will jump on the players' backs.

The more we decline or stagnate, the more impatient we'll become. The more the players feel our frustration and impatience, the more we'll decline and stagnate.

 

[UnrelatedPsuedo]

No left backs, injured centre backs, routine injuries to a desperately thin midfield, mad off field issues and no opportunity to play our best/first choice 11-15 players is all that’s wrong. Constant chopping and changing. That’s it.

 

[onemanarmy]

No left backs, injured centre backs, routine injuries to a desperately thin midfield, mad off field issues and no opportunity to play our best/first choice 11-15 players is all that’s wrong. Constant chopping and changing. That’s it.

Amen. We just need a periode of 2-3 months with our best players available an no off-field drama basically. Ronaldo drama, Sancho, Antony, Greenwood, the club's sale etc... It's just too much.

 

[croadyman]

Amen. We just need a periode of 2-3 months with our best players available an no off-field drama basically. Ronaldo drama, Sancho, Antony, Greenwood, the club's sale etc... It's just too much.

Temporary restbite unless we get new owners

 

[Zed is not dead]

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

One of the things that's common to every new player or manager who signs for this club is a comment they make in early interviews. It's usually some variant of 'This club is absolutely massive, and you don't expect it.' I don't think it's a typical fan serivce comment, I think it's a crucial insight into what we're seeing on the pitch today. Show me another club which has won jack shit in over a decade despite spending over a billion pounds, and still has the third largest fan base in the world (I'd say higher because those numbers are from a limited source).

What this means is that a very unique additional challenge that each manager and player faces at Manchester United, is the amount of publicity and exposure for what are usually the routine ups and downs at most other clubs. Given the way social media works, it's usually reflected mostly in the negatives. I keep thinking of this infographic - no other group of players receive as much online abuse as those at Manchester United, literally. I am sure that if there were quantitative ways of proving it, we'd come to same conclusion in terms of online football content, percentage of talking time on talk shows/punditry, Reddit activity, news article coverage, etc.

Every mistake that a player makes is amplified a hundred times over and fed back to them in all the different avenues possible for consumption. These players are contractually obligated to use their high visibility to provide publicity for brands, but the same visibility feeds them with all this negativity and high pressure. They work in an environment that pummels their confidence after each mistake and requires serious fecking balls to survive and perform the same simple things that would be so much easier to do at most other clubs. Onana may have shown similar errors at Inter, but he was also instrumental in Inter's success last season. Similarly, there's a reason Maguire has fewer errors when in an England shirt, and it's not just because he plays in a lower block.

I wouldn't use a term as extreme as PTSD, but I firmly believe that the reason we can't hold on to leads beyond a few minutes, the reason players like Casemiro or Onana or Lindelof make schoolboy mistakes in defence, the reason the likes of Rashford or Antony overthink their decisions and implement them poorly, and the reason the team falls apart under pressure is because of mental issues.

I think the patches of football that are good in games under ETH are really good - we play fast, direct, attacking football. In almost all the games we've lost this season, we've had moments where the next goal feels inevitable. But it is all too predictable when our heads drop. One thing I've become aware of when watching games is notice how I'm feeling at points in the game - when we're going to concede next or make an individual mistake in a high stake situation. The extremely alarming reality seems to be that the players feel the same in those moments, too. You can see Onana's shakiness right as he's about to make that mistake, you can see defenders being shaky and get caught out of position right after conceding. You can see Rashford being hesitant before a call, and Bruno's low-chance through balls and crosses become more and more reckless as he loses his head.

I firmly believe that if ETH's (and the club's) fortunes can swing to either extreme depending on the teams mentality on the pitch, in the moment. When we are on song, we look really good (a fact that is so surprisingly dismissed in the ETH sack poll thread), and when we struggle, we simply collapse.

You sir, fully deserve your username, Mithrandir.

I think this aspect of playing for United is so underrated. That’s why I never buy into « look at what coach X is doing at team Y ». Put any flavor of the month coach with the exact same staff and players but with a United shirt, and you’d still have players crumbling under pressure.

And that’s actually one of the things Ten Hag said early on : to play for United you need to have the right mental aptitudes. It means you need to be able to perform when you know you’ll get absolutely destroyed if you miss a pass or miss a shot, where you’re called a flop after two games.
Where else have players been turned into memes and jokes in parliaments around the world?

The only club where players may fell even more pressure is Real Madrid.

Now this is not me absolving players from any wrongdoing, but if we want to understand why players have issues performing once they join us, pressure is part of the explanation.

 

[fps]

You sir, fully deserve your username, Mithrandir.

I think this aspect of playing for United is so underrated. That’s why I never buy into « look at what coach X is doing at team Y ». Put any flavor of the month coach with the exact same staff and players but with a United shirt, and you’d still have players crumbling under pressure.

And that’s actually one of the things Ten Hag said early on : to play for United you need to have the right mental aptitudes. It means you need to be able to perform when you know you’ll get absolutely destroyed if you miss a pass or miss a shot, where you’re called a flop after two games.
Where else have players been turned into memes and jokes in parliaments around the world?

The only club where players may fell even more pressure is Real Madrid.

Now this is not me absolving players from any wrongdoing, but if we want to understand why players have issues performing once they join us, pressure is part of the explanation.

Ironically the crowd in the stadium doesn't put enough pressure on the players. Think of how the Real or Barca faithful would react to the kind of rubbish United fans have to put up with.

 

[gaffs]

Ironically the crowd in the stadium doesn't put enough pressure on the players. Think of how the Real or Barca faithful would react to the kind of rubbish United fans have to put up with.

Or the Lyon fans...


We need a fan with a megaphone. Andy Tate from Stretford Paddock would be good at that !

 

[Winrar]

Criticism and adversity either makes or breaks you, the problem is we've got far too many players who it breaks. It doesn't happen at City nor did it at SAF's United because at the core of any winning team is resilience and the ability to return stronger.

Interesting point. At city for example, you have/had players like De Bruyne and Gundogan at the heart of the team who went through all sorts of new lows before bouncing back stronger for it.

Only player I can think of here off the top of my head that’s dealt with such negativity and come out better at the end is Shaw. And he’s injured.

 

[Zed is not dead]

Ironically the crowd in the stadium doesn't put enough pressure on the players. Think of how the Real or Barca faithful would react to the kind of rubbish United fans have to put up with.

Indeed but Im not sure that would help the club or the players if even the stadium were booing all the time.

 

[Mailo]

Of all the threads in here, this hits the nail on the head.

 

[Cloud7]

Really good post. I was struck by the infographic about player abuse and while I'm assuming it's only for Premier League players, I'd imagine that our players would dominate the list if it were across Europe. I don't believe it's to say that our fans are uniquely toxic towards our players, but rather because no other big team has fallen so dramatically from grace to the extent we have over the past decade. Looking at that list of the top 10 most supported teams, we're the only ones on there to drop off a cliff while the others have either improved or achieved roughly the same levels of success.

So what's the way forward? Even if we have a decent run and show signs of life, we as fans will also be acutely wary that it's likely yet another false dawn, and when the team eventually goes through another difficult run the fanbase will jump on the players' backs.

The more we decline or stagnate, the more impatient we'll become. The more the players feel our frustration and impatience, the more we'll decline and stagnate.

Get better. Literally. That is the only way forward. Find the right combination of manager and players and get back to somewhere close to where we were before, and everything else falls into place. We need more than a decent run and signs of life. If we get something consistent going, then the atmosphere around everything changes entirely.

 

[Lost bear]

This is why I think we need a manager that is good at building people up, amongst other things. I don't think this would happen under Fergie, and I'm sure there are others that share the same leadership traits that can build a player up. Klopp does it, Ange has done it. It's all well and good saying 'you need to change your body language' but that body language is a symptom of something deeper and our managers are failing badly at part of their job with regards to building confidence, belief, resilience in players. They have to truly believe what they are being told and buy into it. If you convince a player he is better than he is, you will get more from that player than a player that is lacking in belief. If you do that with a whole team then that's when special things happen at clubs. Jose used to be great at this pre United. Let's not forget many of them are still young guys in the grand scheme of things.

Yes. It’s totally pointless and betrays a lack of understanding to tell players to improve their body language. The body expresses how human beings feel- no one can consciously choose their body language. That will come when the players feel better. ETH needs to be a supportive figure as well as a disciplinarian. Not an easy job, no doubt.

 

[rimaldo]

i spent many years qualifying as a mental health professional, and that allows me to diagnose the majority of the squad as bitches.

 

[eire-red]

I think that's always an easy thing to throw at a team that's underperforming, and when it's going well the narrative changes.

We do seem to throw the towel in when things don't go our way, which points to mental shortcomings of the squad.

However, we're also not good enough in terms of quality when things don't go our way to get a handle on the game, get the ball down on the ground and start playing some football to wrestle control back.

It's like we have no plan for how to get back in a game when crazy things are happening. It's not just having mental strength, it's game management and having that astuteness to manage a difficult patch when we might concede.

Our players panic and start doing the stupid hollywood passes and force the issue, we don't keep our cool and make the right decisions on the pitch. I think that's also down to the quality of the individuals we have on the pitch.

 

[el3mel]

I do believe the 7-0 ruined this team and their manager for good. We never recovered from this night up till now.

 

[Winrar]

I do believe the 7-0 ruined this team and their manager for good. We never recovered from this night up till now.

I thought we actually looked solid towards the end of last season after we dropped out of EL and began to consolidate our position in the top 4. Be strange if that result is still on their minds but wouldn't be totally surprised.

Goes back to the OP's point though if one terrible result can derail the manager and the entire team. As painful as it is to remember, after THAT game against City in 11/12 we tightened up, grinded out results, and eventually fought until the very last minute of the season.

 

[AFC NimbleThumb]

I’ve said it for a long time. When players who have been on the end of humiliating defeats like 5s,6s,7s like many of this team have multiple times it certainly scars them as players.

I don’t think we’ll be truly successful again until the Bruno’s, Rashford’s, Shaw’s etc. leave. As players in their own rights I rate them but I think as a squad they’ve seen too much ‘trauma’, once things go wrong these are the less players we look to & they’ve all been humiliated too many times.

 

[Zed is not dead]

I thought we actually looked solid towards the end of last season after we dropped out of EL and began to consolidate our position in the top 4. Be strange if that result is still on their minds but wouldn't be totally surprised.

Goes back to the OP's point though if one terrible result can derail the manager and the entire team. As painful as it is to remember, after THAT game against City in 11/12 we tightened up, grinded out results, and eventually fought until the very last minute of the season.

I think this is something us fans need to decide: do we want fancy football or results?
I remember lots and lots of games under SAF where we grinded out results and playing not so good football.

It’s my personal view, but clubs with stature like Real and United are clubs with so much pressure to perform that you can’t afford to try and play cute football. You need to play winning football.

City maybe can do it but 1- they have Pep and 2- no one cares whether they win or lose. Bayern play good football but in Europe it’s not enough.

 

[Moriarty]

We need a fan with a megaphone. Andy Tate from Stretford Paddock would be good at that !

He'd sound like someone on day release from the madhouse.

 

[Moriarty]

Our players panic and start doing the stupid hollywood passes and force the issue, we don't keep our cool and make the right decisions on the pitch. I think that's also down to the quality of the individuals we have on the pitch.

They get too anxious and try and force things to happen instead of keeping calm and playing to their strengths. It's like panic sets in.

 

[Judas]

I’ve said it for a long time. When players who have been on the end of humiliating defeats like 5s,6s,7s like many of this team have multiple times it certainly scars them as players.

I don’t think we’ll be truly successful again until the Bruno’s, Rashford’s, Shaw’s etc. leave. As players in their own rights I rate them but I think as a squad they’ve seen too much ‘trauma’, once things go wrong these are the less players we look to & they’ve all been humiliated too many times.

Been feeling this way for a little while, and genuinely think it might possibly be the final massive dice roll left. It's not that I think they're shite or anything, but things don't feel like they're truly be fresh and cleansed till they're all gone.

 

[Skills]

Really good post. I was struck by the infographic about player abuse and while I'm assuming it's only for Premier League players, I'd imagine that our players would dominate the list if it were across Europe. I don't believe it's to say that our fans are uniquely toxic towards our players, but rather because no other big team has fallen so dramatically from grace to the extent we have over the past decade. Looking at that list of the top 10 most supported teams, we're the only ones on there to drop off a cliff while the others have either improved or achieved roughly the same levels of success.

So what's the way forward? Even if we have a decent run and show signs of life, we as fans will also be acutely wary that it's likely yet another false dawn, and when the team eventually goes through another difficult run the fanbase will jump on the players' backs.

The more we decline or stagnate, the more impatient we'll become. The more the players feel our frustration and impatience, the more we'll decline and stagnate.

Our fans are uniquely toxic though. Manchester United fans dislike modern football and dislike the players that play it. The only part of football that Manchester United fans enjoy and root for is managers.

 

[el3mel]

I think this is something us fans need to decide: do we want fancy football or results?
I remember lots and lots of games under SAF where we grinded out results and playing not so good football.

It’s my personal view, but clubs with stature like Real and United are clubs with so much pressure to perform that you can’t afford to try and play cute football. You need to play winning football.

City maybe can do it but 1- they have Pep and 2- no one cares whether they win or lose. Bayern play good football but in Europe it’s not enough.

I want results. United's issue is that both football and results are shit. If there are results and we're challenging for the league, I won't care if we're playing defensive football. If we're not challenging for shit though, at least give me some some good football to watch weekly. United give their fans neither.

 

[Abraxas]

We don't have PTSD, it's fecking football and a bunch of thrown together players of all different backgrounds, they don't all have collective PTSD we just don't have the quality which is far simpler to explain things. Technically, physically, mentally - we don't have the ability needed to meet the demands of this club. Which exacerbates things because the pressure is huge.

Who's fault is that? The manager has to do better because we're better than what we're showing, we have more capability than home defeats to Turkish sides and mid table. But we're not doing it and we're making rookie mistakes. We're also going backwards on a baseline performance of last year. So that's a manager's remit for sure.

But within the bigger picture I think it's obvious where the blame is because there's a common denominator and repeating themes over long periods of time.

 

[Van Piorsing]

Victim mentality. Seen it before in Pool / Rawk for many years, and definitely not what we need.

 

[Winrar]

We don't have PTSD, it's fecking football and a bunch of thrown together players of all different backgrounds, they don't all have collective PTSD we just don't have the quality which is far simpler to explain things. Technically, physically, mentally - we don't have the ability needed to meet the demands of this club. Which exacerbates things because the pressure is huge.

Who's fault is that? The manager has to do better because we're better than what we're showing, we have more capability than home defeats to Turkish sides and mid table. But we're not doing it and we're making rookie mistakes. We're also going backwards on a baseline performance of last year. So that's a manager's remit for sure.

But within the bigger picture I think it's obvious where the blame is because there's a common denominator and repeating themes over long periods of time.

I don't think lack of quality alone can explain these two shortcomings that normally don't happen to any other top division club with such alarming frequency:

1. Conceding shortly after scoring (Arsenal, Bayern, Galatasaray)
2. Conceding more than 1 goal inside ~5 minutes (Arsenal, Bayern, Forest)

Sure, these above 2 things can happen but are we just unlucky that these things happened to us so often this season? Do these things happen this often to clubs that are fighting to stay up in the PL, let alone any club in the top 4/6/8? Do you trust us to hold a lead for more than couple minutes against any team?

 

[croadyman]

I don't think lack of quality alone can explain these two shortcomings that normally don't happen to any other top division club with such alarming frequency:

1. Conceding shortly after scoring (Arsenal, Bayern, Galatasaray)
2. Conceding more than 1 goal inside ~5 minutes (Arsenal, Bayern, Forest)

Sure, these above 2 things can happen but are we just unlucky that these things happened to us so often this season? Do these things happen this often to clubs that are fighting to stay up in the PL, let alone any club in the top 4/6/8? Do you trust us to hold a lead for more than couple minutes against any team?

No I definitely don't trust us to hold a lead for more than a couple of minutes because unstable