Sorry but I think that's over the top. I know it hurts after a result like this, and a lot of people are making similar comments but you're normally one that offers the more considered opinions.
The drama queens on here don't realise it yet but this is and always will be the best period in our history., If anybody thinks somebody is going to come in and emulate Pep's success they're mistaken at best and deluded at worst.
Most will openly admit that we don't have the players that we once had, the ones that have brought us 18 - EIGHTEEN - trophies during his time here.
Let that sink in for a minute.
We don't have those players, yet we're second in the league, should qualify for the next phase of the CL, as near as damn it in the final of the Carabou and put 10 past a team to get to the next round of the FAC. Virtually every other club dreams of having a squad capable of that. Yet despite not having the same class of players everyone goes into meltdown after a bad spell or even a bad result.
We don't know what difference losing Bernstein has had. There's no doubt that regardless of how good he may be at his job, Viana will have different ideas about the players he and his team want to bring in to what Txiki had. But I don't think the players we have a a "huge downgrade" at all and our current status suggests I'm right. I think Cherki is good enough to reach world class status, I think Khusanov is too, and if you look at the back history of the players we've brought in they are all high quality players, but it takes time and it's extremely difficult when there are constant injuries.
We can't get a settled team as a result, we have players playing out of position and we have little, if any, recovery time. All these on their own are small issues but when compounded you get what we are seeing now. As I've said I thought we were unlucky v Chelsea, Sunderland fought like no team I've seen for a long time and the Brighton match wasn't easy either yet we came through unbeaten, put 3 past Newcastle away in a crucial match and 10 past Exeter. we're second in the table and in 4 competitions. Is it really that bad or are we just expecting too much?
A solid, calm, passionate voice of reason. Thank you.
If the good times ended now I’d still die a happy man. A very happy man. This manager and this club have given us sights that no other football fan in England has ever been able to see:
- the only domestic treble.
- the only domestic quadruple
- the only 100 point season
- the only European treble as a league champion
- the highest number of league goals in a season
- the best defensive record in a season
- the highest number of consecutive wins.
- we got to see prime David silva, prime Aguero, prime KDB, prime Bernardo, and others, who all committed the best years of their careers to this club.
- and all of the above and more were achieved DESPITE being the target of a decades long, racist smear campaign designed to bury this football club.
I have never, and will never, forgotten Pep’s press conference right after the charges were announced. Journalists from all over the world descended on the etihad, pens in hand, ready to write the eulogy of this football club, and this manager. Over 100 years of existence and they were coming to announce its end. They weren’t even all sports journalists. Newspapers and media outlets sent their “serious” reporters to pen the poison that was going to eradicate our club from existence. And then Pep turned up and fucking gave it to them in no uncertain terms. He showed them he has a backbone, and he showed the club, the players, the execs, and the fans, that they had bitten off more than they could chew if they thought they were going to destroy our club.
And then he calmly went about his business winning a treble. From a position that wasn’t a million miles away from where we find ourselves today.
I love this club more after days like yesterday. Sometimes a team puts on a shit performance. That’s always happened and always will. Remember the 50th anniversary derby at old Trafford? We were lined up as sacrificial lambs to the slaughter, our fans told before the game that they were scum who were going to disrupt the minutes silence. We all know how that timed out.
Yesterday was shit, but shit happens sometimes.
The memories of the good times more than outweigh days like yesterday.
