We're 9th in the Championship

[I should coco]

Sometimes teams will be better than us on the day, many teams have much more quality than us but we manage to get results by sheer hard work, some days are very frustrating because a poor team beats us, but I have yet to see a United team that hasn't tried from minute 1 to minute 91 so wherever we finish this season it will have been very "acceptable" by my standards as you can't ask anyone to give more than their best effort.

Well done and you also managed to avoid the '110%' stupid cliche.

 

[HodgysBrokenThumb]

That bloody word "acceptable" again.

If the players, to quote Wilder "run around and leave it all out on the pitch" that's acceptable irrespective of the result.

If we get beaten, or get a draw in those circumstances that has to be "acceptable" because the players did their collective best.

The only thing that is not "acceptable", irrespective of results is if the players go out and amble around a la Hammond, come in without breaking a sweat and are happy to collect their rather large pay packets for doing it.

Sometimes teams will be better than us on the day, many teams have much more quality than us but we manage to get results by sheer hard work, some days are very frustrating because a poor team beats us, but I have yet to see a United team that hasn't tried from minute 1 to minute 91 so wherever we finish this season it will have been very "acceptable" by my standards as you can't ask anyone to give more than their best effort.

Well said. I would make 2 small modifications to what you say. It would not be 'acceptable' if the players tried but were simply not good enough, because we had signed poor players. That would be management's fault, and that has not been the case for the last 18 months (obviously not all signings can work out). And in the Hull away match, there was something seriously wrong; probably a lack of confidence, and errors spreading right through the team - it was the only game where I can understand why the players' efforts were questioned.
Looking back over the season, I suspect the real positive will be that almost every game we look as if we belong in this league. Rarely have we been outclassed, and this has happened at some stage to every team in our league - who would have thought Wolves would lose 4-1 at Villa?

 

[UnitedBlade]

The table below would suggest that at present we are probably around where we belong, as the colour above us is predominantly red and below us is predominantly green, so the teams above us have generally been better than us in head to heads and vice versa. We have only beaten 2 teams above us - perhaps we should have beaten Bristol C, but equally Wolves played with 10 men and missed a pen and Derby gave us all 3 goals. The losses to Bolton and Hull are the real killers. As Tufty said - top 6 sides win those games and those 6 points would have put is in the top 6 with no losses to anybody in the bottom third. But Derby and Boro are still catchable - Derby are in particularly poor form - and we have 3 of the bottom 4 still to play. Win our next 2 home games and Derby lose to Cardiff next Sunday and we're level on points with Derby.

After all, it's Magic to even be involved in Squeaky Bum Time

View attachment 37645

A good graphic of our season. Occasionally sides can get into the top 6 by ruthlessly despatching bottom half sides. We’ve almost done that.

We’ve only beaten 4 top half sides in 16 games, all wins at home, all before Coutts broke his leg. We still have 6 top half sides to play, so we really need to go for it in those games. Plus we must despatch the bottom half sides starting with Burton tomorrow. It’s a must win game.