I've always believed that you learn more from a defeat than you do winning.
"Failure isn't an option, it's a step."
It's a step towards improving yourself in the long run.
We need to go back to the basics and we need to toughen up.
Be the last to hit the floor and the first to get up off it.
Do a week or two of rugby conditioning pre season, in the spirit of the 6 Nations, I'm not talking about full out rugby tackling or anything like that, but learn to suck up a bit of battering, instead of rolling around on the floor like idiots. Everyone does it, yes, but we don't have to.
You see these small little guys taking massive hits and just getting straight back up and throwing themselves into another ruck, another tackle. That's the commitment we need to see, that's the level of fitness we want, that should be demanded. We should be fit enough and strong enough that we don't get pushed off the ball, and we win more 50/50 balls.
We need to have the fittest team in the league, there's a reason that the rags score a lot of late goals because they don't give up and their fitness is there.
We need to have the ability to run with the best of them and run for the longest.
The Rags today against Reading, Welbeck (I think) had the ball up front one minute and had ran the length of the field the next defending, and the commentator said he was doing what he's expected to do as a United player.
They have the ability to track back, and then break forward over and over again. We don't or else we don't try as hard.
You can be an average group of players who can be turned into an excellent team. Once the foundations are there you can build and move forward.
The USA hockey team that won the 1980's Olympics weren't the best but they were fittest and the most determined, they outskated the Soviet Union which was unheard of. Nobody worked as hard as they did. Despite constantly falling behind in games, they were always able to come back and win, they were relentless. These guys were amatuers, college students, but they never gave up.
Hard work will get you to where you deserve to be at the end of a season.
Hard work always beats talent when talent fails to work hard.
How good are these "superstar" players to us if they wont work? Your talent on it's own only gets you so far.
Work hard and work yourself into the ground, don't go off celebrating for 2 months. It's not good enough, not in this day and age at this level.
Forget about ridiculous wages and trying to attract more players, or worrying about politics behind the scenes. We need to resist the panicking which I know we'll do, not sell half our team and spend 100 of millions. Just work.
That poem If sums it up for me
if you can..lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son
This season is all but gone. We all know that, with the exception of a miracle, we've lost. So we need to suck it up, go away and work bloody hard. Harder than they ever did.
And come back better and fitter than ever and get rid of this attitude of egotistical players who think they don't need to chase back or that they're better than everyone else. Work at the basics and we'll be half way there.