What People Are Forgetting.

I’ve heard a lot of idiotic statements recently about Manchester United. People saying it’s an end of an era, Man City are going to walk the league and that x,y or z player is useless and should be sold. These were the people, who earlier in the season were convinced that we were about to witness something very special, even by Manchester United’s high standards. But, the last couple of months have seemed to deter the majority of fan’s optimism.

Out with the old.

I find myself agreeing that the fluidity of our play that permeated through the team at the beginning of the season has vanished. Yet, they are some several reasons why this is the case. In the summer, we lost a ton of experience. Paul Scholes, Gary Neville, John O’Shea, Wes Brown and Edwin van der Sar had all accumulated 2299 Manchester United appearances between them. Compared to Tom Cleverley, Danny Welbeck, Chris Smalling, Johnny Evans, David de Gea, Rafael, Fabio and Phil Jones who have accumulated around 660 appearances in their club careers overall.

And what do you get with inexperience? Yup. It’s inconsistency. So I reason it’s premature to be suggesting that Ravel Morrison and Paul Pogba should be just thrown into the first team. There only teenagers with two competitve appearances for United each. They need to be slowly bedded in. They won’t be able to sustain any form they might show for the duration of the season. More youth will just bring more inconsistency. But they will get there chances.

It would be lovely to see United back to their cavalier best, however, that isn’t the case at the moment and I’m fine with that. People have forgotten the psychological damage a defeat like the 6-1 loss to City can have. Everyone had been praising United left right and center up to that game. Only for us to be dismantled by the hands of City. It must have been a major pyschological blow.

Bar the horror show against Benfica tuesday night, I have been delighted with United’s defensive displays. I concur, one-nil isn’t the prettiest scoreline in the world, but it’s better then 3-3.

I have no doubt United will improve dramatically as the season goes on. So don’t be quick too jump on the ‘crisis’ bandwagon any time soon. Unless SAF decides to retire. Then were screwed.