Just one aspect to consider when 'Levy-bashing' for the start of season shambles, was that (as I understand it) Citeh delayed and delayed the sale of Ade, which meant that although he was expected to arrive in June, he missed the entire Pre-season training etc. I am guessing that as it all looked a done deal - and especially after the success of the previous season - DL was loathe to ditch the acquisition too quickly in search of another target, and it just dragged on and on.... By that time the options were gone!! Not a complete excuse but provides some balance.
Why is it doing better? The dynamics of the league change each season. Some teams do better and some teams do worse.
If you win more games and pick up more points than in the previous campaign, then surely you've done better? Another side might improve more than you have, but you haven't done worse if they finish above you. Say a team were to win every game bar four, drawing the remaining fixtures. One of the teams that you've beat wins all of their games apart from two losses to the first side. The second team would win the league, but the first team's season would be an improvement on any Premier League side's form, including Utd. Would they have done worse in that scenario, just because somebody else did better than them?
"I don't understand the Levy bashing either. A season is not won or lost in the first three games." Because of the PERCEPTION that Levy doing his usual in the summer + poor(ish) starts cost us the CL slot. Similarly with the drops in form come March-April.
Correct DL therefore if you have more points you have performed better. If that is not the case what the **** are you doing in 3rd place! Get out of there immediately.
Yes and no. I'll use another sport in comparison. Say a two sprinters ran the 100m in around 8 seconds, but one hit it dead on and the other was a tenth of a second slower. The faster one wins the gold, but the other one's still improved upon what he'd done before. Is that success, though? No ****ing idea!
If you measure success as improving then it is. If you can only measure success by winning then only Man U. might as well bother, the rest of us can go home.
Exactly. If they finish 1pt above us and they have benefited by more than that from dodgy refs and penalties, then actually the table shows we are better than them! I think there is often a case of making the evidence fit the final standings - but if the final standings are false and created by bad officials etc, then the argument doesn't work. I know I keep going on about this, but why should we keep on blaming Levy etc (when there is plenty of evidence to the contrary) more than officials who have clearly made mistakes that have counted against us?