My twitter followers may have been aware, but I was away for the weekend on an important trip, which resulted in me being cut off entirely from the telly, as well as having only brief shots at the internets. The upside from all that was I got to sidestep another rubbish result that somehow contrived to turn, what seemed like another title at a canter, to a sack race that entails much huffing and puffing from here on.
Despite the gloomy nature of losing to Fulham (I can’t believe I’d be writing this after we pummelled them into submission in the cup), I had to see the recorded game at least to see what the boys were upto. I really don’t have much to say on the game though. It seems as inexplicable now as it was when I first rubbed my eyes upon looking at the scoreline.
The loss to Liverpool was something that could be instantly dismissed as a blip had we won at Fulham. But, more than Liverpool, the Craven Cottage defeat would have stung. If anything, it seems to have given other sides encouragement to have a go at us. It’s what rewarded Fulham the other day; home games against Tottenham, Villa, City and Arsenal beckon. A few days ago, we would have dismissed at least half of those names. It’s not so right now.
So should I blame someone? Well, I’m honestly tired of finding people to blame. Because if I start I wouldn’t know where to draw a line. I’ll only say this: I would have expected a response from the United players. What I saw was petulance. And I will say no more, because, as I said I could go on about it.
What I think we, as fans, should do right now though, is to give our wholehearted support to the club and players. This is when we need to absolutely get behind our players. It’s been smooth sailing until Liverpool. Of course, it made me cringe when fans were in for Fergie/Phelan’s head when we had an underwhelming start to the season. But all that’s behind. Yes, we’ve fucked it up ourselves, and we need to get ourselves out of it.
As fans, all we can do is get behind our team as best we can. I’ve skimmed through some of the other United blogs around, and there was a sense of a witch hunt against certain players, some of whom are our best ones. I know they haven’t been perfect this season; in fact, after Vidic’s balls-up against the dippers, no one’s been perfect so far. But I still can’t spew this much venom. Not yet. I was disgusted with some of the conduct of the players on the pitch, and I don’t condone it either. But I’d save my venom for now. We still have the title technically in our hands, and I’ll wait for an actual suicide mission to unfold before I make random utterances of “this player is shite”, and “Fergie out!”
At the end of the day, one would have to hope the experience of the manager in this situation (like us gifting it to Arsenal in 97/98) would help us through this mess.
I feel terribly disappointed about our boys not responding against Fulham, but my kitchen sink will still be with me; I’ve got dishes to wash.
Note: Regarding the slowness of the thread over the past couple of days, sorry, my mistake. I wasn’t near the system for prolonged periods. Regarding the writing contest that was up, certain things came up over the past month that made me rethink some of the things I was doing with the site. I have some other ideas that I thought might be better alternatives. So if my dilly-dallying has offended people, which I’m sure it may have, I apologise profusely.
