ChrisBlade
Member
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2009
- Messages
- 548
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- 1,474
I understand that a great game like today creates plenty of emotions. It is also par for the course in today's times that the instant reactions will often come out on the extreme side of the equation: Really encouraging but desperately unlucky vs Wilder is a total bottle merchant. Plus a few of the woodwork WUMs add their views who couldn't lose tonight unless United won... 
But that's not where I want to go with this post. I'd rather keep it personal to me and try to place tonight's proceedings in the context of our season as a whole and the wider picture of how English football currently is.
I can remember looking at the clock when around 68 minutes were played, thinking "this is three quarters of the way through, and for all their silky footballers and pace down the wings, Leeds have hardly threatened us." I instantly stopped myself and recalled the last time I allowed myself a blasphemous thought like that. It was in a derby match against the pigs many moons ago when we were leading 2-0 on 80 minutes at the Lane and Wednesday appeared entirely hopeless. In the end we drew 2-2 as they scored from two late high balls into the box that Simmo and our defence failed to deal with.
Leeds were not hopeless, of course. But the anecdote is testament to the fact that a match I expected us to majorly struggle in, really looked winnable and a likely win for a long stretch of the piece.
I watched Leeds several times of late. They are to be complimented that they DO keep hunting for more, always more, in virtually every period of the game and irrespective of the score. That does set them apart from us or Burnley who are far more likely to sit on what they hold and administer a game rather than chase to kill.
The rest is history. Their hunger was rewarded, we tailed off a little and what still should have been a draw was taken from us by their positivity even when they were sitting on a valuable away point. It was Sunderland reloaded, in many ways.
Having said that, you always have dreams in football. I dreamed of beating Burnley over Christmas to open up a commanding lead and look forward to a straightforward promotion. I hoped for a Wendy draw on Friday and a win tonight - same motivation.
Both results could have come in on the balance of play, but didn't.
I hardly had any dreams when the season started, just fear of a drift into nothingness. We had a bad case of Post-Prem-Traumatic-Disorder. Few players, a team well past the end of its cycle. A manager in search of his mojo, and up in the air ownership.
When I put the two emotions together on my walk to cool off and processed tonight's bitter pain, I realized that I now basically have two options:
Fret every Saturday and midweek whether we can hold off Burnley and stress myself even though United has given me palpable dreams of success I did not expect to have in May.
Or combine Friday's and today's results and allow myself some enjoyment.
We are guaranteed anything between second and fourth. It is all to play for. And we are now also pretty much guaranteed that the Pigs have most likely fucked sixth or above. Too many points lost, too many teams inbetween, unconvincing form. Their unlikely run to the fringe of the play-offs wasn't really a run as such. It was more of a slow waltz built on the brilliance of a young, much heralded manager: Enter Michael Carrick whose complete inability to take hardly any points from the last 18 has seen Boro keep the target line really low for six weeks now.
Considering that (i) our new owners seem to have some money and ambition and (ii) the Prem is usually far more boring or predictable than these next twelve matches, I'll choose to enjoy what unfolds.
We are not required to get promotion. In the new set-up, another Championship season, while obviously only the second best outcome, will not hold the same dread I felt in May 2024. We also won't play Wednesday in the play-offs. Whatever comes from now to May is exciting football with lots riding on it. No gimmes, no foregone conclusions, no borefests against City, Arsenal or Liverpool who are over-resourced yet still boring to watch.
Because whoever goes up, it is pretty grim, lads. Take Leeds. Keeper is a calamity. So is Rodon and Ampadu at Prem level. Bogle and Firpo are maybes. James and Solomon are great at this level, but the one above James has tried and largely failed or at least flattered to deceive. Solomon was loaned out by a team that is soft and shit this season. Bamford, scratch. Piroe is unlikely to get more than 5 or 6 goals next year. Aaronson and that Bulgarian shy boy won't do it either, one suspects. Gnonto is great, but last time around he ended up too small and inconsistent. Their defense gets worse, goals dry up and they cannot play their hunger games...
They look a lot like Kompany's Burnley did at this level. They do, at leaast, have a slightly reckless club ethos going for them, so maybe they spend big and get a couple of Rashfords or Bernardo Silvas on the slide.
But are any of their players better than, say, Gibbs-White, Mbeumo, Ndyaye or Guehi?
Probably not. And the four above play for the unlikely lads, the safe but boring mid-tier teams, as Forest are likely to fall away a little next year.
We can run through Burnley in a similar way. The defense will ship four times the goals or more. The attack remains toothless.
Even more worrying, wherever Wilder, Farke or Parker have been, their teams got up but did not exactly survive for long, did they?
More reason to enjoy the Championship for another few months, including the play-offs if that is what we end up at. THIS is the fun part. Or supposed to be.
Here's another thought I had when Leeds had just scored the third goal. I saw a bunch of players that have fuck all association with Leeds, Yorkshire or England. Italians, a Bulgarian, an Israeli, plenty of other mercenaries. Their team could play for Parma, Alkmaar or Hoffenheim and you wouldn't bat an eyelid. They are fully globalized.
Our team is far more likeable to me. It is full of people you have seen plenty of times before. Around six of our lads will get to Wembley with us or other teams in their careers as they are certain to stay in the English pyramid, upwardly mobile some, winding their way through storied careers further down the others. Most of Leeds will end up at Parma, Alkmaar or Hoffenheim in the next five years. None (except for Ampadu?) will get to Wembley with Peterboro, Bradford or Bristol City...
I know I will be decried as small-time by some. But I can find love for a team that comes up short if it is built the way ours is. I cannot find any love or warmth for Man City if they go pear-shaped like they have this year. In success and failure, they do not represent what I grew up to buy into emotionally. I can appreciate that they are a fantastic football team. I can appreciate that football has moved with the times and has changed. They are better than us at football at their worst.
But if I throw all of the above into the mixer and shake it - identikit international teams that could play in any European league - promotions that end in almost certain relegations and do not allow for a single match where you go just leisurely expecting a regulation win, and a media machine that blows smoke up the ass of this somewhat anticompetitive money printing factory - I don't think that I am obliged to buy the hype and say that things have changed for the better.
So I enjoyed tonight. It was a great game. It was painful. It might be the beginning of the end of our automatic promotion hopes. Or it might not be.
But I love my club. I love this current team. I love who we are and what we stand for. This team is closer to what a proper United team should be than about 20% of our fan base that has bought a lot of the fool's gold introduced by social media also in other walks of life. Just my opinion, of course.
If you can't enjoy a tight promotion race where you are probably third favourite for two places all along, well, good luck in the Prem next year. It probably doesn't get much better than this any time soon. And that conclusion is based on systematic circumstance, rather than failure, mistakes or anything we could or shouldn't have done, tonight or in other games.
But that's not where I want to go with this post. I'd rather keep it personal to me and try to place tonight's proceedings in the context of our season as a whole and the wider picture of how English football currently is.
I can remember looking at the clock when around 68 minutes were played, thinking "this is three quarters of the way through, and for all their silky footballers and pace down the wings, Leeds have hardly threatened us." I instantly stopped myself and recalled the last time I allowed myself a blasphemous thought like that. It was in a derby match against the pigs many moons ago when we were leading 2-0 on 80 minutes at the Lane and Wednesday appeared entirely hopeless. In the end we drew 2-2 as they scored from two late high balls into the box that Simmo and our defence failed to deal with.
Leeds were not hopeless, of course. But the anecdote is testament to the fact that a match I expected us to majorly struggle in, really looked winnable and a likely win for a long stretch of the piece.
I watched Leeds several times of late. They are to be complimented that they DO keep hunting for more, always more, in virtually every period of the game and irrespective of the score. That does set them apart from us or Burnley who are far more likely to sit on what they hold and administer a game rather than chase to kill.
The rest is history. Their hunger was rewarded, we tailed off a little and what still should have been a draw was taken from us by their positivity even when they were sitting on a valuable away point. It was Sunderland reloaded, in many ways.
Having said that, you always have dreams in football. I dreamed of beating Burnley over Christmas to open up a commanding lead and look forward to a straightforward promotion. I hoped for a Wendy draw on Friday and a win tonight - same motivation.
Both results could have come in on the balance of play, but didn't.
I hardly had any dreams when the season started, just fear of a drift into nothingness. We had a bad case of Post-Prem-Traumatic-Disorder. Few players, a team well past the end of its cycle. A manager in search of his mojo, and up in the air ownership.
When I put the two emotions together on my walk to cool off and processed tonight's bitter pain, I realized that I now basically have two options:
Fret every Saturday and midweek whether we can hold off Burnley and stress myself even though United has given me palpable dreams of success I did not expect to have in May.
Or combine Friday's and today's results and allow myself some enjoyment.
We are guaranteed anything between second and fourth. It is all to play for. And we are now also pretty much guaranteed that the Pigs have most likely fucked sixth or above. Too many points lost, too many teams inbetween, unconvincing form. Their unlikely run to the fringe of the play-offs wasn't really a run as such. It was more of a slow waltz built on the brilliance of a young, much heralded manager: Enter Michael Carrick whose complete inability to take hardly any points from the last 18 has seen Boro keep the target line really low for six weeks now.
Considering that (i) our new owners seem to have some money and ambition and (ii) the Prem is usually far more boring or predictable than these next twelve matches, I'll choose to enjoy what unfolds.
We are not required to get promotion. In the new set-up, another Championship season, while obviously only the second best outcome, will not hold the same dread I felt in May 2024. We also won't play Wednesday in the play-offs. Whatever comes from now to May is exciting football with lots riding on it. No gimmes, no foregone conclusions, no borefests against City, Arsenal or Liverpool who are over-resourced yet still boring to watch.
Because whoever goes up, it is pretty grim, lads. Take Leeds. Keeper is a calamity. So is Rodon and Ampadu at Prem level. Bogle and Firpo are maybes. James and Solomon are great at this level, but the one above James has tried and largely failed or at least flattered to deceive. Solomon was loaned out by a team that is soft and shit this season. Bamford, scratch. Piroe is unlikely to get more than 5 or 6 goals next year. Aaronson and that Bulgarian shy boy won't do it either, one suspects. Gnonto is great, but last time around he ended up too small and inconsistent. Their defense gets worse, goals dry up and they cannot play their hunger games...
They look a lot like Kompany's Burnley did at this level. They do, at leaast, have a slightly reckless club ethos going for them, so maybe they spend big and get a couple of Rashfords or Bernardo Silvas on the slide.
But are any of their players better than, say, Gibbs-White, Mbeumo, Ndyaye or Guehi?
Probably not. And the four above play for the unlikely lads, the safe but boring mid-tier teams, as Forest are likely to fall away a little next year.
We can run through Burnley in a similar way. The defense will ship four times the goals or more. The attack remains toothless.
Even more worrying, wherever Wilder, Farke or Parker have been, their teams got up but did not exactly survive for long, did they?
More reason to enjoy the Championship for another few months, including the play-offs if that is what we end up at. THIS is the fun part. Or supposed to be.
Here's another thought I had when Leeds had just scored the third goal. I saw a bunch of players that have fuck all association with Leeds, Yorkshire or England. Italians, a Bulgarian, an Israeli, plenty of other mercenaries. Their team could play for Parma, Alkmaar or Hoffenheim and you wouldn't bat an eyelid. They are fully globalized.
Our team is far more likeable to me. It is full of people you have seen plenty of times before. Around six of our lads will get to Wembley with us or other teams in their careers as they are certain to stay in the English pyramid, upwardly mobile some, winding their way through storied careers further down the others. Most of Leeds will end up at Parma, Alkmaar or Hoffenheim in the next five years. None (except for Ampadu?) will get to Wembley with Peterboro, Bradford or Bristol City...
I know I will be decried as small-time by some. But I can find love for a team that comes up short if it is built the way ours is. I cannot find any love or warmth for Man City if they go pear-shaped like they have this year. In success and failure, they do not represent what I grew up to buy into emotionally. I can appreciate that they are a fantastic football team. I can appreciate that football has moved with the times and has changed. They are better than us at football at their worst.
But if I throw all of the above into the mixer and shake it - identikit international teams that could play in any European league - promotions that end in almost certain relegations and do not allow for a single match where you go just leisurely expecting a regulation win, and a media machine that blows smoke up the ass of this somewhat anticompetitive money printing factory - I don't think that I am obliged to buy the hype and say that things have changed for the better.
So I enjoyed tonight. It was a great game. It was painful. It might be the beginning of the end of our automatic promotion hopes. Or it might not be.
But I love my club. I love this current team. I love who we are and what we stand for. This team is closer to what a proper United team should be than about 20% of our fan base that has bought a lot of the fool's gold introduced by social media also in other walks of life. Just my opinion, of course.
If you can't enjoy a tight promotion race where you are probably third favourite for two places all along, well, good luck in the Prem next year. It probably doesn't get much better than this any time soon. And that conclusion is based on systematic circumstance, rather than failure, mistakes or anything we could or shouldn't have done, tonight or in other games.
Would be the Kiwi version.
