Red and blue

This has got to be the shittiest way of resuming the blogging hobby, but I suppose the way the year began, I shouldn't have expected anything better. Another loss for United, this time in the FA Cup, to go with the loss to Spurs that the year began with, and we are now looking at the possibility of having a very bad end to the season. Of course, there are still 4 and bit months to go, but you can't help look at the portents without a sense of doom and gloom. This loss has firmed my resolve, once again, to stop staying up late to watch the United games. How long the resolve lasts will depend on how long United continue down this spiral down to Hell.

I could go into some heavy analysis into what I think is wrong with this United team, and I don’t think I would be far wrong. I don’t think I’d be far right either. It is not a great time to be a United fan. These defeats had always been hard to take, and these last two especially so. Tottenham have some good players and so have Swansea. They also have smart, young, attack minded managers in Sherwood and Laudrup, but their form of late has been inconsistent. They have not been beating the top teams and haven’t looked that convincing when playing the rest either. United, till this latest loss, at least could have laid claim to winning at least against teams not in the Top 8. No longer, it would seem.

If I had been asked however to analyse this string of defeats (United has now lost 4 games at home, and we are only in January – I don’t know the stats, but I think you would have to go far down the years to find a worse record in recent years), I would have said its lack of confidence. As simple as that would seem, it is really just that. United have not had a great team for the last 3 years. Remember when Rooney made noises a couple of years ago of wanting to quit because we weren’t signing any big players? He was right, even if his motivations were probably less noble than what his statement signified. Ever since the Glazers took over, Fergie has had to do with limited budget to get the kind of players he has wanted, and I suspect the Glazers played him very well in that Fergie has never publicly said he has not had the money to buy. Suspecting the Glazers had Fergie convinced only he mattered in the long run is probably simplistic, but it is the only way I can explain Fergie’s reluctance to get into the transfer market with an purpose for his last few years at the helm. So we have this team that is not very competitive, filled with players who wouldn’t have made the starting team of most international, let alone club teams. The fact that they have been competing well for the League title for these last years has to do with Fergie’s imposing stature in the dressing room, on the sidelines, in press rooms, in interviews…everywhere really. He was the wolf that huffed and puffed and the United team sailed in that wind that his personality generated. So when he left, abruptly for many people, it created a vacuum that paradoxically sucked out the confidence from the bubble that was the United team.

All of a sudden there was a new manager, one capable on paper to handle a team of this standing, yet someone who had never won anything of note. David Moyes is a coach any team would have felt lucky to have, and he had been in the very-shortlist for the longest of times. And yet, when it came to the reality that was United, it was clear that it was not just a matter of assuming the role; it actually meant carrying on the winning habit. Which was always going to be a problem with the team that he inherited. The summer that followed was not the brightest for Moyes or United or the common fan. The inexperience of the acquiring team was not helped by the perceived fall in stature that prevailed in the minds of any targets that United had in mind, and the August window closed with confusion, chaos and humiliation – and just Fellaini to show for it.

To complicate matters further, there was controversy in the form of the Rooney drama, and then a spate of injuries to key players. Van Persie, Carrick, Rafael, and then Rooney himself fell to ailments that kept them out for long critical periods. Nothing that Ferguson did not have to contend with under his command, so what is different this year? A couple of seasons ago, United had one of their regular back 4’s available, so we had Carrick and Fletcher as center backs and Valencia as the right half back. It didn’t work and with De Gea still finding his feet, this was the weakest I have ever seen United in defence. And yet, they competed, challenged for the title, and lost out on the final day when Aguero danced past the QPR defence and scored that heart breaking title clincher.

So, problems have been surmounted with pomp and élan, and now when they resurface, pundits and fans alike expect to see the resurgence of old. For what is a United team if not resilient and guaranteed to bounce back? This season has seen a few mini comebacks that have looked like comebacks only because of the constant string of failures. The season was prefaced with an insipid set of friendly fixtures, where they lost an alarming number of games, and leaked goals in almost every one of them. The first game of the season saw hope spring anew as the very Swansea team that would knock them out of the FA Cup was bounced out for 5 goals without reply. Then came the reverse against West Brom, the losses to Liverpool and Man City, the draws with Cardiff and Spurs, and before they knew it, United was languishing in the second 5. Then there was a short burst of victories, highlighted by a somewhat surprising unbeaten run in the Champion’s League. Then came back-to-back home losses to Everton and Newcastle, followed by another string of wins against lesser teams, which rekindled hope of at least a top 4 finish. That must now surely be considered unlikely with the latest defeats at home.

Beginning the year with a tough set of fixtures did not help obviously, but at the time, the thing that surprised me was how Moyes reacted to it. Not because he did not have reason to, but just that it was unusual for him to complain like that. It occurred to me that Fergie would have done the same thing, and it slightly concerned me that Moyes seemed to have done what his predecessor would have. In the months that followed, its been a struggle for Moyes, not because of the humungosity of the job at hand, but because he is measured up in everything that he does against what “Fergie would have done”.  It was an easy trap to fall into, and with the kind of scrutiny the job comes with; any man with a weaker stomach may have crumbled. Moyes has braved the storm well, has not let his composure be shaken, but has yet to make this job his own.

And therein lies the rub. Moyes will always have a tough job at United, and one doubts he expected any less, but if he is seeking to keep up the Fergie legend, he will be out of the job faster than anything he’s ever done. It is striking that most of the losses have come at home. The Old Trafford crowd can be intimidating, more for the home team perhaps when the going goes tough. Unlike other clubs that have known failure, and can afford to be upbeat in the face of constant defeats, this crowd is not used to more than cheering the goals that its team scores. It is a well-known fact that at OT, if you silence the crowd, you tend to get a result. I first saw this in the 1-6 defeat to City 2 seasons ago. As soon as the noisy neighbours scored the first, they had the strangle on the crowd, and with that the eleven on the field. That has happened more and more this season – teams have come to Old Trafford unafraid of being aggressive, and the crowds have been unsure, not confident in their new manager, and that has been personified in their team’s performances. Away from home, the performances have not been much better, but the mistakes have been fewer, the limbs freer, the flow a little better.

So it’s a crisis of confidence, and there is now a feeling that something has to change. It is a cycle that needs breaking. Whether that is done through a influx of new faces - or one big one, like Ozil seemed to have engineered for Arsenal - or a change in tactics, it is Moyes who will need to be at the forefront and he is the one that will, at least in perception, need to drive that change. If not, the change that will inevitably occur, even with all this talk of United giving more time to its managers, will be in the name of manager. And that will be unfortunate. For in my mind, Moyes is the man for the job. It is however not I, or the millions of fans worldwide, or the pundits, or Old Trafford for that matter, who needs to be convinced. It’s the 11 on the pitch that have to believe in him the way they believed in a grey headed bespectacled grandfather with a tasty hair dryer.