The simple fact is that we are not good enough yet. There are so many things that are obvious that we lack or have little experience of that make us a long way off where too many people expect us to be already. I think everyone needs to be a hell of a lot more patient and reduce their expectations and think about their reactions (don't go to mad when we don't play well; don't go overboard when we play well - we will have both extremes and many average performances while we're still a young, fresh, inexperienced, un-gelled team).
I don't know how many times it can be said that we need to stop looking at how much money we've spent because it means exactly fuck all in a match when it's still just XIvXI. Especially when the money we've spent does not represent the quality we've got. We have some fantastic individuals (Kompany, de Jong, Silva, Tevez), we have some potentially fantastic individuals (Hart, Richards, Balotelli), we have some individuals who are superb on their day (Yaya) and we have individuals who can make a great impact off the bench (AJohnson). These individuals are not a team yet and it might take a good while until we are one (we signed SIX players added to a squad that hadn't really gelled into a team yet, six players puts that gelling back a long way; Spurs who were already more of a team than us last season signed one player!). The rest of our squad are not up to speed with the Prem or haven't settled in yet, others are just average, others are a complete liability.
I don't reckon any of these players would get into United, Arsenal, Chelsea or Spurs squads: Shay Given, David Gonzalez, Gunnar Nielsen, Stuart Taylor, Wayne Bridge, Greg Cunningham, Shaleum Logan, Nedum Onuoha, Kolo Toure, Javan Vidal, Gareth Barry, Abdisalam Ibrahim, James Milner, Patrick Vieira, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Felipe Caicedo, Jo, Roque Santa Cruz, Alex Tchuimeni-Nimely. What does that highlight about us? The main thing is that we need a bit of time to get our 'deadwood' out from our books over a few more transfer windows. With the poorer quality binned off and higher quality replacements as well as a one or two excellent quality starters (Michael Dawson and Edin Hazard/Stevan Jovetic) there will be a greater competition for places on the pitch, on the bench and in the squad in general. We will be overall a higher quality club.
We haven't once had a full strength team playing for a consistent run of games, with everyone fit and firing. This starting XI for me would be:
--------------------------Hart-------------------------
Richards--------Boateng--------Kompany--------Kolarov
------------------------de Jong------------------------
--------------------Silva--------Yaya------------------
------------Tevez------------------------Balotelli------
--------------------------Dzeko-----------------------
Let's see how good we can be if we can get a good run with this XI. Imagine it with a lot better bench forcing that XI to play well or else they'll lose their place. Imagine us having signed two to more starters:
-------------------------Hart-------------------------
Richards--------Dawson--------Kompany--------Kolarov
------------------------de Jong-----------------------
--------------------Silva--------Jovetic---------------
------------Tevez-----------------------Balotelli------
--------------------------Dzeko----------------------
with more compeition for places on the bench with a new keeper, Boateng, Zabaleta, Milner, Yaya, Bellamy and a young lad like Lukaku as the sub striker. Or for a more conservative line-up add Dzeko to the bench and put Yaya in midfield. Look at the rise in quality! and that's not upsetting the line-up too much with an influx of new players like we've seen in orevious windows
No matter who plays for us, as a team we have a lack of experience in loads of situations. We haven't played in enough big games; derby games, crunch end of season deciders, semi finals and finals all make a team a better team and we have barely played in any of these situations and certainly haven't won any of these kinds of games with our current crop of players. There is a different pressure, intensity, quality and atmosphere in all these games and it will take a few years before we get experience of winning these types of games on a regular basis (United, Chelsea and Spurs [League Cup semi win over Arse + final win, big end of season wins last season] all have experience of winning in these tougher situations and even Arsenal who haven't won anything with the team they currently have at the moment still have a far greater experience of big games than our current collection of players).
We need time as a team (as does our manager) to learn how to adapt to different situations against different types of teams. We play two ways. One is we play slow possession football; two is we sit back and make it hard for the opposition to break us down. I watched Spurs last night and in the same game they played slow possession football, quick short positive passing, route-one, long passess down the wings and the channels that utilise quick wingers/forwards, getting men forward and playing one-twos in and around the box, plus in the second half they sat back and made it hard to be broken down and played on the counter-attack. We need to learn how to play in different ways and adapt to certain situations within the same game. As i say, this will only come with time that will allow us to become a proper team and as a team we will get it right as we learn how to win in a variety of ways.
