Scottbot wrote:peewee wrote:as for poor, yes we were playing poorly and we have remained playing poorly hence another trophy less season, out the FA cup to barnsley ffs, struggling to beat much weaker cheaper teams in the PL, if thats not poor then I don't know what is. The CL run has papered over a few more cracks and this is football related, not boardroom related.
We've been playing poorly the last 2-3 months? I agree with some of what you say but you ALWAYS overplay it. I'm not happy with the way the season has gone but at least I can acknowledge that we have played well during the latter part of the season. You'd rather not say we've shown some good form or even recognise our Champions League turn-around on the grounds that it might weaken your 'everything is shi...i...te, Rafa sucks' argument.
Fair enough if you have that opinion but you've turned into the grumpy grandad that no-one wants at family parties. If you were a pundit it would definately be Mark Lawrensen.
I don'y know how anyone can claim this is down to the boardroom. We've drawn way too many league matches, were unlucky against Barnsley, expected to get beat in the league cup away to CHELSEA and lost away to CHELSEA in the Champions League SEMI. Not a bad season bar the league performances.
And you're right, recent performances have been improved. We had a mid season mare. The problem was we drew so many games early on, about half, that when we had a bad run it left us too far behind in the league. We've only lost four league games, but if you look at how many points we've dropped it tells the story accurately
Wins (19) : 0 points dropped (0.00%)
Draws (13) : 26 points dropped (68.42%)
Losses (4) : 12 points dropped (31.58%)
So two thirds of our dropped points have come through draws. And by 9 game splits :
01-09 : P9 W5 D4 L0 F16 A5 (clean sheets : 5)
10-18 : P9 W5 D2 L2 F17 A7 (clean sheets : 4)
19-27 : P9 W3 D5 L1 F13 A8 (clean sheets : 3)
28-36 : P9 W6 D2 L1 F18 A8 (clean sheets : 4)
Never consistently prolific in goalscoring, never consistently tight defensively. If performances were affected by boardroom how come it wasn't showing in defeats? What I mean is we're saying it was bad enough to make us draw more games and not lose that many?!?
We had a spell after we got through in the Champions League of two defeats followed by two wins then five without a win, including four draws so P9 W2 D5 L2. That did come about the time Rafa was fuming over lack of communication regards transfers with the January window fast approaching. Maybe that weighed on the minds of the players, but the defeat at Reading was down to Rafa, loss to the mancs was poor defending at a corner, and the draws were equally feeble.
So I'd say yes, maybe there was a little influence, but it isn't an excuse. The players went on a poor run, but have done so pretty much every season since Rafa got here. Wasn't it 10 points from 21 every previous start to the season? We simply didn't win enough games we should have, draws at home to Wigan, Brum, villa and spudz, plus a few lacklustre away displays against Reading, Man City and Boro. The difference between the mancs and ourselves is 11 points, the home form shown below shows clearly why we're not up there with them :
Home record 2007/8
Man Utd P18 W16 D1 L1 F43 A6 PTS 49
Liverpool P18 W11 D6 L1 F42 A13 PTS 39
So the difference is they won five more games and we drew five more games. Goals for about the same, they've conceded a ridiculously small number of goals so you could suggest their tighter defence at home is the difference. And those four home draws I mentioned, three were 2-2 and one 1-1 - we should have won all of them and if to nil, then we'd be P18 W15 D2 L1 F42 A6 PTS 47 so difference negligible, an extra goal in another draw and they'd be identical records. So careless dropped points at home have cost us, not the boardroom.
