Pretty philosophical. Deliberately abstained from looking at this thread until now.
Now we can talk about this player and that player. We can talk about formations. We can talk about Pep's choices.
It may be partly about all that, but not essentially. Sorry, but in the final analysis, it isn't.
It's about hunger. And complacency. We can all look at ourselves, as well as the players and manager. How hungry are we, even as fans? I've got to hold my hand up, and in my heart of hearts, I realise that last night in the lead-up I was thinking, “Ok, business as usual, routine victory, maybe one or two sticky moments, but on to Wembley. Another trophy. Here we go. How can we lose to Southampton?”
At the final whistle I honestly thought — to myself, about myself — “You deserved that, mate. You were asking for it.”
We can lose to anybody.
You achieve something, you relax. It's human. You achieve many things, and you start to feel pretty good about yourself. You look back at what you've done, and say “Hey, that's some pretty hot shit, eh?” Once you do that, you're dead.
It is incredibly difficult to stay hungry. It is incredibly difficult to stave off complacency. That's why to this day I don't think what was done in 2019 has been appreciated for what it was. I will, though, briefly break my rule and mention one player. We had one player on the pitch with qualities of hunger and leadership that are extremely rare, and I'm afraid we haven't really found a replacement. That man was Vincent Kompany.