How is it unrealistic to expect a team who spent nearly £100 million on players in the last 18 months to challenge? It's very early days obviously but it feels like we've made no progress. We're already out of one competition and if our embarrassing performance against Dortmund is anything to go by, we're just making up the numbers again in Europe.
Ok, firstly spending nearly a hundred million over two summer transfer windows is nothing compared to the spending of our rivals in the same time period so that's not a reason to think we should automatically be title challengers. And secondly, no, I don't think it's unrealistic to expect us to challenge. I expect us to put in a league challenge as well. And it's far, far too early to know if we will or not yet. If your writing us off after six games your an idiot with ridiculous expectations. If you write us off then I guess that's everyone bar Chelsea ****ed for the season even though there are 32 games yet to be played. We have had some disappointing results but we are yet to even lose a game, we are ahead of all our rivals except city (1 point ahead of us) and Chelsea. And it's still only six bloody games into the season! I just don't understand how people have already made there minds up about how well we will do this season.
Expecting to be challenging for the league and the CL on a regular basis should be the expectation of a club with our income and resources and our standing in Europe. if you personally don't expect that, or think it's an unrealistic expectation to have that... then fine don't. Schools spend years trying time after time after time trying to instil young people to have high expectations in life. Having low expectations is a mark of the uneducated, of being too afraid to make mistakes or to let things go wrong. It's for people without the resilience to deal with things when they do go wrong.
Actually, schools have been frowning upon competition amongst pupils for years now. 'Aim low & have more chance of meeting your expectations' seems to be the future of our education system. Regards my ambitions for AFC, I do expect us to be able to challenge for the league now and there is still plenty of time to do so this season, but believe we only have an outside chance in the CL as a number of clubs are just too good for us. COYG yacontchas!
Well, I think even though we have had a lot of disappointment in the past you have to go into each season neutral. The only game where we have looked really poor with our top side, is the Dortmund game, and they are (arguably) a very good side playing at home. I am not sure that we can start to judge our stagnation by that performance. I think we have played 3 games now where we looked really good, much better than in years gone by. Ozil is looking great, Sanchez has a lot more to give, but is scoring anyway, Welbeck looks like a good pick up. I wouldn't be in the least bit worried if it wasn't for the injuries. People were not happy last year when we were top and they aren't happy this year either. I get that our fans are desperate for success, but this stuff isn't easy, no one can promise that we will definitely win and no kind of performance would persuade anyone of that. This is the real world, not some fantasy. I see what I see on the pitch and the team looks good. If we can get our players back from injury and hang on until then, we are still right in this. This league is never easy, there were times last year when Man City looked like dross, 8th place after 11 games last year, losing to Bayern Munich (at home), Aston Villa and Cardiff. We look better than they did and they still went on to win it.
Utd are clearly a top tier team. In danger of slipping down, but until last season they were the top team in the country.
Right now they're not a top tier team. But they are the most likely of the challenging pack to get right back up there the quickest.
A contradiction in the same sentence. Until last season...... They finished 7th last year and are currently getting crappy results again.
BTW as for the money thing, that sounds so ridiculous when you consider WE HAD THE CHANCE TO HAVE FABREGAS BACK, one of Chelski's current best players and one of the main reasons they're doing so good....So it's a load of bollocks to bring up this issue of oh their finances are waaay ahead of us so they can assemble X Y Z, we ALLOWED them to get Fabregas because Wenger didn't want him. Plus Chelski and Mancity's finances had NOTHING to do with our INACTION in bringing in a top DMF and a world class proven striker, we had the money there to do it, but didn't do it, so hows Chelski and Mancity's finances have anything to do with that? Sorry folks, it's a load of rubbish to bring up Chelski and Mancity's finances these days, we had the money to spend and we didn't, it's not like either of those 2 teams went after the 2 players we were after and overbid the s**t out of us to get them.....Heck we could've even matched Chelski's bid for Costa if we really wanted him, and could've matched the wages they're giving him, but off course we were never interested in him, so Chelski and City never directly rivalled us for any of our wanted targets, so AGAIN bringing up their financial power is null and void. We just decided to sit on our arses and our massive pile of cash and not go out and buy the needed requirements, that's THE REALITY of why we are where we are.
He probably meant that they were THE top team in the country a year before i.e. the best, but now they're no longer THE top team but still in the top tier.
United not a top tier team? So theres no top tier teams in english football and only 3 in world football? Righto. I'll presume our defintions of what a top tier team is differ hugely. For me a top tier team is based on more than one season, those sides who can maintain standards over a long period, can dominate their league and the trophy haul to go with it. It would take a decade of failure before united drop out of that bracket.
Don't take it personally, the problem is that if they admit United are still a top tier team, then they cant rip into Arsenal for not being a top tier team.
The goons are top tier, city are borderline unfortunatley for football and sadly we have to include chelsea. Thats it in england though. Below is liverpool who have some work to do in order to get back in the group. The rest are miles off. If i say everton are next inline, you get the idea.
Our net spend was/is higher than Chelsea and City's in the last transfer window. We're really not that far away from them anymore in terms of spending. The reason why I'm already 'making my mind up' is because tactically and mentally we still haven't changed. I've seen nothing to suggest that we can deal with the big games any better than last year. Nothing seems to have been done about our defending from corners and we're still getting destroyed in the centre of midfield on the counter. If we're not willing to sign the personnel to deal with these issues then can't we atleast address them in training? It's true that we can only really improve but we're always waiting for this team to improve. We're always waiting for these players to 'click'.
in fact . Not only has nothing been done to improve defending corners ( remember that one last year , OUR corner , and 15 seconds later it was in our own net ) Nothing gets achieved by corners ...they are wasted Nothing gets achieved by free kicks ..they are wasted Liverpool have scored a LOT from free kicks . For us they are pointless to even win .
