Deluded optimism

All advertisments are hidden for logged in members, why not log in/register?

Rodley said:
We need a top drawer centre half, a quality right back and another option at RW. If we get those quality additions, factoring in the tactical premium from Selles which should give us an uplift, then top two is more than possible.
Click to expand...

Wow!

Do you really think the Selles 'premium' will be that fantastic, and if so, based on what evidence? Please don't tell me how well we pressed York, Burton and Rotherham.

We are nowhere near top 2, but wit a good RB and 2 CHs, we might make thet top 6.
 

I should coco said:
Wow!

Do you really think the Selles 'premium' will be that fantastic, and if so, based on what evidence? Please don't tell me how well we pressed York, Burton and Rotherham.

We are nowhere near top 2, but wit a good RB and 2 CHs, we might make thet top 6.
Click to expand...

I’m banking on the club knowing what they are doing. I also can’t see a substantial regression in terms of performance. If Selles doesn’t get this side contesting promotion, he never will because he’ll have far less talent at his disposal without parachute payments the seasons after.
 
I should coco said:
Wow!

Do you really think the Selles 'premium' will be that fantastic, and if so, based on what evidence? Please don't tell me how well we pressed York, Burton and Rotherham.

We are nowhere near top 2, but wit a good RB and 2 CHs, we might make thet top 6.
Click to expand...
What about Nice and fulham?

Nice which we played some really good stuff, more than matched them and only lost due to a comedy own goal (and some bad defending from a left back shoehorned into CB paired with an 18 year old).

With both aides playing strong teams.
 
6th - 10th this season IMO and wouldn't have been better with the previous manager

If anyone thinks that auto 'should' be on with new owners, management team and player turnover simply aren't being realistic

An intriguing season ahead.
 
Makes me laugh how pessimistic most of our fans are every season.

You only have to think back to last season, so many predicted mid table or even bottom half.
I was one of the few that predicted comfortable play-offs

And if we sort out the defence I’m afraid to say it’s comfortable play-offs again.

These doom and gloom merchants predicted we’d sell off Hamer and Cooper.
Just keeping the same team and selling no one automatically makes us one of the favourites.

However you suspect Ipswich and Southampton and possibly Leicester will all be better than us.
Also there’s always 1 or 2 surprise packages, could be Birmingham, so I’m predicting 5th (assuming we strengthen the defence like I expect).
 
LondonRoad said:
The level of optimism about United's chances this season, is akin to those at S6 this time last year.

We are miles of it with the current sales and acquisitions.
Click to expand...
Show me where the level of optimism is please cos all I’m reading on here is bedwetting panic and doom and gloom
 
Sheffsteel said:
Makes me laugh how pessimistic most of our fans are every season.

You only have to think back to last season, so many predicted mid table or even bottom half.
I was one of the few that predicted comfortable play-offs

And if we sort out the defence I’m afraid to say it’s comfortable play-offs again.

These doom and gloom merchants predicted we’d sell off Hamer and Cooper.
Just keeping the same team and selling no one automatically makes us one of the favourites.

However you suspect Ipswich and Southampton and possibly Leicester will all be better than us.
Also there’s always 1 or 2 surprise packages, could be Birmingham, so I’m predicting 5th (assuming we strengthen the defence like I expect).
Click to expand...
Some may say you have “deluded optimism”, but I think you are spot on.
 
Hopium and copium are just as toxic and regressive as pessimism but they rarely get the same treatment as people want and maybe even need to believe.

That said, modern society has heightened the feeling of the need to analyse football to an extreme degree. Back in the day you'd turn up and not really have a thought on what a realistic season was until.Christmas. Now we're making informed/semi informed guesses before a ball is kicked.

I think the OP is bearing the brunt of that a bit. People want to believe and have that old fashioned,non analytical optimism rather than making these evaluations already. I know I do.
 
You cannot underestimate physicality in football, especially in the Championship and below.
It concerns me that losing Moore we are left with Campbell - who is not that type of player, One - who will be in the future, but not necessarily now and Cannon - who may be bigger that’s Campbell, but is not that sort of bully that is regularly needed in some games.
Losing Ahmedhodzic at the back, again leaves the team physically lacking, we needed a minimum of one new Centre Backs (if not two) - should he go we need 2 or 3 replacements.
Our midfield isn’t big at all, they’re combative, but not physically dominating.
Hopefully Soumaré will help - but one big lad in isn’t enough in my opinion.
Not saying we need to be a team of cloggers, but we need to be able to mix when necessary.
 
Is this a coping mechanism? Expect the worst and you will never be disappointed. I get the need for caution, as we are in a period of change, but then again I haven’t seen many claims that HMS Pisstheleague is being prepped for launch. I think the “happy clappers” are just excited to see something new, I know I am. What I’m not doing is worrying about it before it happens.
Also, I suspect fears that we will face wilderness years are really fears of Wilderless years for many posters.
 
Trigger said:
You cannot underestimate physicality in football, especially in the Championship and below.
It concerns me that losing Moore we are left with Campbell - who is not that type of player, One - who will be in the future, but not necessarily now and Cannon - who may be bigger that’s Campbell, but is not that sort of bully that is regularly needed in some games.
Losing Ahmedhodzic at the back, again leaves the team physically lacking, we needed a minimum of one new Centre Backs (if not two) - should he go we need 2 or 3 replacements.
Our midfield isn’t big at all, they’re combative, but not physically dominating.
Hopefully Soumaré will help - but one big lad in isn’t enough in my opinion.
Not saying we need to be a team of cloggers, but we need to be able to mix when necessary.
Click to expand...
Campbell is our most physical striker. Moore has some qualities but that isn’t something he displayed last season. Meanwhile Campbell was terrorising defenders.
 
AnstonBlade1 said:
What’s frustrating is, we always do most of our business on the last day of the window by which time 4 games have gone.
Click to expand...

Agree it is frustrating but arguably it’s the lesser of 2 evils.

The top loans or bargain buys tend to be at clubs who say….
“Yeh we plan to sell/ loan him out but only when we have brought in a replacement, which could be in the final days of the window”.

So our choice is….do we walk away or stay patient waiting in the wings.
I suppose it’s all about balance….we need to buy many of our players before the 1st match
but unfortunately some of the very best signings are made a day or 2 before the transfer window shuts.
 

I should coco said:
Tbh, I'm a bit surprised by the pile on, against the OP. He may be unecessarily gloomy, but he is saying it as he sees it.

Several posters keep saying 'wait until the trander window closes', which is fair enough, but if I had to comment on where we are NOW, I'd have to say we are substantially weaker. Yes this may well change, but the OP does have a valid point.
Click to expand...

I agree we are weaker atm. Hopefully some permanent replacements and position fillers to ensure we are competitive

Don’t be surprised though if there’s another outgoing before the window closes
 
The title of this thread is very apt. We will be a mid table team this year and I’m ok with that. There isn’t a chance we’re getting too 6 in my opinion. We’ve lost too much.

We’ve lost Rak-Sakyi who had a decent season last year and caused defences a lot of problems.

We’ve lost Moore. He wasn’t as good as we were expecting but was a presence on the pitch and was useful at times.

We’ve lost Souza, possibly player of season and broke up many opposition attacks. I don’t think we won a game without him.

We’ve lost Souttar, I know he’s been gone a while but still a massive blow.

We’ve lost Anel, a poor player without Souttar but if you get him a good partner he becomes a great player, especially at this level.

I’ve got a horrible feeling Hamer won’t be here this season.

We’re also changing style of play, and have only brought in 1 winger to suit this. We won a lot of games dirty and by 1-0 last year, I think a lot of that was down to Wilder.

What I will say though is that Wilder’s approach would never stop up in the prem, whereas Selles, given time, patience and 2/3/4 transfer windows where he’s backed might get there. I went to see our young players develop naturally and go up with real confidence we can stop up.
 
Blade58 said:
I agree but this might fall short with your requirement for “top quality” ?
Click to expand...
The owners would be pretty silly to invest £110 million on purchasing club, selling best players and not committing to buying quality to get us back to the Prem.

To make money on United now they have to get back to Prem and sell to new owners in a few years - otherwise their £110 million is going to be worth a lot, lot less.
 
Snowflake said:
Some may say you have “deluded optimism”, but I think you are spot on.
Click to expand...

True but I’m basing my judgements on recent history and facts.

We finished 3rd last season and apart from Vini Souza (who was often injured), not sold any of our best players from last season.
Logically if we don’t do anything….we are automatically one of the strongest teams in the league,

Also we’ll have Arblaster back who will be like a new signing.
You suspect players like Peck, Cannon and One will improve and have better seasons than last season.

My only concern and it’s still a big concern is the defence.
Robinson can be good but often seems to have an error in him. Ahmedhodzic never convinces me when next to Robbo, so I’m not that disappointed if he goes.
RND was terrible last season so you can’t imagine he’s in Selles plans this season. Selles seems keen on Sereki as right back, against weak teams this should work well but against the better teams in this league I have concerns about Sereki defending.

I do agree if we keep the current defense there’s a realistic chance we’ll be just over mid table.
However history shows some of our best signings are made right at the end of the window
And I’m sure we’ll strengthen the defence in the next 3 weeks, if we don’t then I’ll understand the negativity and caution.
 
Bladesman101 said:
The title of this thread is very apt. We will be a mid table team this year and I’m ok with that. There isn’t a chance we’re getting too 6 in my opinion. We’ve lost too much.

We’ve lost Rak-Sakyi who had a decent season last year and caused defences a lot of problems.

We’ve lost Moore. He wasn’t as good as we were expecting but was a presence on the pitch and was useful at times.

We’ve lost Souza, possibly player of season and broke up many opposition attacks. I don’t think we won a game without him.

We’ve lost Souttar, I know he’s been gone a while but still a massive blow.

We’ve lost Anel, a poor player without Souttar but if you get him a good partner he becomes a great player, especially at this level.

I’ve got a horrible feeling Hamer won’t be here this season.

We’re also changing style of play, and have only brought in 1 winger to suit this. We won a lot of games dirty and by 1-0 last year, I think a lot of that was down to Wilder.

What I will say though is that Wilder’s approach would never stop up in the prem, whereas Selles, given time, patience and 2/3/4 transfer windows where he’s backed might get there. I went to see our young players develop naturally and go up with real confidence we can stop up.
Click to expand...

Just shows how memories can be cloudy. Check out the comments on this forum throughout the season.

Rak Sakyi was a minor failure, you could see the talent and he was impressive in about 3 games but overall he flattered to deceive.
Moore was another minor failure here, underwhelming and injured much of the time, some could argue no better than McBurnie. Admit he started playing well in his final 3 or 4 games of the season (excluding Wembley) and looked the player I thought he was going to be.

Souza missed a few matches with niggly injuries, never ever scores and often went missing in the big matches against better opposition.
He showed 2 year ago that he’s a long way off PL level but admit he’s very good at Championship level and was impressive against weak opposition.

Agree with your last bit. Any of our players will be sold if we receive a stupidly high bid.
I might be in a minority regards Hamer because much of the time he’s not that good, certainly no where near as good as O’Hare.
However what makes Hamer special is that he can be playing poorly….then he’ll score a long ranger out of the nothing or make a brilliant pass to create a goal.
What transfer valuation do you put on someone who can be quite poor in many matches…but has that rare ability of producing magic?

Agree that Wilder would gaurantee the play-offs but we’d struggle in the PL.
Where as with Selles it’s a risk…think we’ve taken 1 step backward in order to take 2 or 3 steps forward.
Looking forward to the new style of play and also excited by the uncertainty.
 
I really don't think you can say we're miles off it and we're deluded to be optimistic. The neural view seems to be more optimistic than our fab base. Having listened to NTT20 and Benjamin Blooms predictions (both of whom have phenomenal knowledge) they have us 3rd and 4th this season.

You have to take the division as a whole and I suspect it'll be more competitive this season, but a lower points total to get automatic. Ipswich I could see winning it quite comfortably as they have a great squad and stability. Southampton have depth but I completely untested young manager (in England), so could very much go either way. Whilst Leicester have a great squad they're a bit of a mess off the pitch and who knows who'll be sold and how bad the deductions could be.

After that we have one of (could argue the) best squad, have reasonable stability squad wise and a manager with EFL experience. The likes of: Birmingham and Norwich seem to have strengthened and will no doubt be challenging for top 6 , and Coventry are in a similar boat to ourselves.

Ultimately there's no reason to believe we aren't capable of being in and around it this season, our squad is stronger than this time last year and we picked up 92 points that season. Yes we still have business to do, but so does just about everyone else.
 
Let's insert a bit of objectivity into the discussion that isnt biased by our clapper or bedwetting leanings.

If you take the collective knowledge of the football community (Betfair where people are risking money) the 'industry' view is that we will make the play offs as our current spread is 1.64-1.90 to finish top 6 and that we have a chance of promotion with the spread of 3.35 - 3.70

On all their markets, to win, to finish top 2, to win promotion and to finish top 6 we are the 4th ranked team behind Ipswich, Southampton and Birmingham.

For the more pessimistic amongst us you can get 60/1 on us to go down but only for 2 quid.

So those of you who are convinced we have no chance of the play offs go and make some money and lay us on betfair.
 

You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

G
Biggest away win in English Football League History
Replies
17
Views
2K
coaxingstar71
coaxingstar71
Coolblade
Optimism - Parachute payments - importance of second season
2
Replies
54
Views
3K
GymClassHero
GymClassHero
R
That Jay McEveley moment
2
Replies
33
Views
3K
Greystones Blade
G
M
Finally Realistic Deals
Replies
9
Views
1K
Snowflake
S
moody1889
  • Poll Poll
COH Sports another set of Chancers
3 4 5
Replies
129
Views
10K
KMC-1889
KMC-1889

All advertisments are hidden for logged in members, why not log in/register?

All advertisments are hidden for logged in members, why not log in/register?

Back
Top Bottom