My Son and I can't decide if it's our fault we are playing so badly - after years of membership, ticket applications and getting lucky and losing out, we opted for season tickets this year! Oh my goodness it's hard to remember watching us play so badly at home (possibly Stepney as leading scorer when we were awful that season) - we are clueless in midfield and lack creativity. The defence seem to concede sloppy goals and we are not creating enough goal scoring chances full stop. Maybe in a roundabout way it will sort out the hangers on who are not genuine supporters and who seem to think we have a divine right to win, hard to tell them there actually was football before the premier league started - shock, horror. It made me laugh against Spurs someone in the Stretford End was getting stuck into our team - come on half of you are rubbish I've been here 5 years! That's about the mentality of some of our fans, clearly we just run out and should win 5-0 every week! Some of our players are ordinary and those capable of flashes of something different haven't performed for some time. (Step forward Nani & Kagawa) The demise of Scholes and the lack of a tackling midfielder (Keane/Robson) are real weak areas - Cleverly & Carrick are not enough. If we finish outside the top 4, and it is a distinct possibility, I'll be interested to see how many decide to follow a more successful club - maybe it ought to be compulsory to make those who sign up for membership watch videos of the team in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Then again of course many know nothing but the Fergie era. We are poor currently time to accept it, develop our own young players and stop shelling out millions on players that really aren't worth it. (Fellaini ? Andersen, etc.) I'll take finishing say 8th if we decide to give youth a go - doubt it will happen somehow.
To be fair, Moyes has taken over the PL Champions minus Scholes. The dip in form and style of play has been pretty shocking (from an outsider point of view) and it shows little sign of improving. You can argue that Moyes is in his first season, but then again so is Roberto Martinez at Everton! I was amazed that Moyes was picked when you had Jose Mourinho available. Perhaps Fergie was protecting his legacy?
It takes more than a squad of players to become the champions. As you mentioned, they lost Scholes and replaced him with Felliani but it wasn't just Moyes replacing Fergie beyond that either, they also changed most of the staff team and the DoF (or whatever position it is) too. Too much change in one go.
Nice to here a United fan be honest in regards to this We mention anything before the Premier League then we are banging on about history.
To be honest, I think you have been riding your luck fore the last 2 to 3 years. But the Fergie factor kept the trophies coming & fairs dos. With new manager I think some players are just not trying harder as they did under the old regime. your midfield is just above average. But You should expect a dip in trophies until he rebuild a new team. The question is will the board & the fans give him time to do so or panic & sack him. My money is on the later. As a Leeds fan I will enjoy it but this is my honest point of view.
Mid table mediocrity under Moyes beckons. Would be fun to see how fans who've only know success under Fergie react.
I'm weirdly quite enjoying the uncertainty. I think if and it's a big IF we get the right players in over the next two transfer windows we will be ok. Failing that and I agree it'll be 8th at best.
Yeah, true enough. There's an old poster from 606 we're (me, Sweats and Tunns to an extent) still in touch with. He didn't join this forum but posts his 'thoughts' as a Facebook status on a regular basis. I **** you not, he wanted Moyes sacked before the season had even started. Blamed Moyes completely for not signing any new players. A true ****ing idiot, he got a season ticket on the basis of a few good years success and happily jumped on the bandwagon and now cries at how wrong all this is on a regular basis. After the match on NYD he did his usual Facebook status, which depends entirely on the result but is 95% of the time a call for Moyes to be dismissed, and during the course of the same conversation said "I can't remember a worse United side" and "I'm not spoiled by success at all" I mean, for ****'s sake, those two sentences straight after another, it beggars belief. Well, some of us can remember far, far worse than this. Way more ****. In fact, some of us can remember that Fergie did NOT pitch up and start the team playing champagne football, the first few years we were mid table grinding out results in a pretty dire manner. The exception being Fergie's first full season, when we finished second to an exceptional Liverpool side. He THEN rebuilt, which is exactly what Moyes has to do and be given time to do right now. What that second place also disproves is that the side (first eleven) Fergie inherited was ****. It wasn't, it was bloody good, just like the one Moyes inherited. However, just like Moyes, he had to break it up and rebuild it to make is successful again. Anyone who thinks he can just walk in and say " as you were, champions" is a complete ****ing idiot.
For me that's part of the problem - the expectation that we must sign players. Whatever happened to giving young players a go ? I suspect if Fergie had still been in charge then Januzak would not have been given so many starts. Whilst I accept that many of the players we let go were not good enough or United standard, there are still a fair few of them that given time would be as good as some of the current crop and better than some big money buys. (Djemba-Djemba, Kleberson, Forlan, Veron, Obertan, Bebe, Anderson - total somewhere around 75 million) So perhaps some of the lesser lights ought to have been given a go - Bardsley, Pogba, Morrison, Shawcross, Brady, Fryers, etc. At some point shelling out 25/30 million on players has to stop - otherwise you are likely to get burnt or lose money big style - e.g. Berbatov, Hargreaves, etc. The songs we sing about the Busby Babes ought to remind us that part of the legacy of this great club is taking a risk with youngsters, of the current first choice XI probably only 2/3 can be said to have cost little or nothing and been brought through the ranks into the first team. If your squad starts ageing, as is inevitable, you cannot then simply spend 100 million to replace them - which is really what happened after we won the EC in 1968, and into the early 70s. (Charlton, Law, Crerand, Stiles - all on their way downwards.) Sadly it's all about money and transfers - yes we've had some great buys, but not enough (in my opinion) investment in youngsters coming through the youth system, after the class of 92 what happened ?
I agree the young ones should be brought through. I can only assume they weren't deemed good enough to oust the established players in any given position. The one that grates the most with me is pogba. He should have been kept and given games. Ravel should have been kept. I know there are extenuating circumstances with ravel as he was a troubled lad. I just think at the moment our midfield is utter ****. We need to sign someone of experience in the middle of the park. We also need a winger and a playmaker. Now I'm not going to pretend I pay much attention to our youth set up. But I think at the moment it's one hell of a hole to fill by expecting our youth players to step up and save the side. As for the class of 92. We got lucky. We had some truly exceptional talents. But even then depending on who you think was the best player from then. I'd say scholes. He couldn't get in the team because of cantona. Took him longer to become a regular. I think the last two seasons fergie made a number of mistakes. Whether they were forced on him who knows but pogba should never have been sold. Not when it was so glaringly obvious our midfield was weak. It certainly is as weak as I can remember and I started supporting us in about 82-83.
They'd have been unbelievable. To think instead of those two we have spunked 45m on some Japanese headless chicken and fellani who will be right up there with one of our worst buys ever.
What was football like pre 1992? Square balls and short shorts? Making it home alive from a game, be you a fan or a player was the main objective. Liverpool ruled the world and every one looked like a *****phile. Turns out half actually were. All jokes aside though, there are fans who have followedbthe club for over 20 years who now fall under the catagory of not seeing much football pre 1992. If there still united fans now, I doubt many will change. 20 years is a long time for anything. These hangers on are essential to the club. Its just the way it is. Also... Why are so many united fans looking forward to some years in the wilderness? What sort of ****ed up logic is that? Supporting a team yet hoping they dont do well because it might get rid of a few non local fans? Yeh... Because that makes sense...
We are **** in the premiership. It is time we recognise it. Paradoxically we seem to do well in the other tournaments CL, COC etc. It is true we haven't met a really strong side yet and the jury is still out there. Everything is relative. We may be poor compared to the Fergie glory teams of the mid 90s and 00s but we are not compared to the early Fergie teams and Fat Ron ones. It is ****ing time that Woodward and Moyes look at this crumbling midfield and sort it out. I said at the start of the season that our squad is not as good as any of the top 4 teams and I am being proved correct. Fergie kept a poor team playing at its optimum.
Moyes is trying to re-invent himself at present, which is making the transition period tougher than it might have been What I mean by that, is that his default setting is cautionary. You simply won't accept that style at United & he's therefore being forced into a far more expansive game than he is used to coaching / preparing for. If you'd have accepting his default setting, he'd have ground out better results so far this season IMO. But that was never going to happen
