I am as guilty of a knee jerk reaction as most of you after the disappointing way we lost on Saturday. It hurt, it really hurt and it will take some time to pass. However after spending most of yesterday sitting in the sun surrounded by family and having a few drinks, I started to think about where we were and how far we have come. I started to think that the best way to describe it was as a re-birth. Let me explain.
When Poch was appointed we were dead, forget what Harry had done with one season in the Champions League we hadn't had a team of any sort of consistency since the 80's, not a team capable of competing in the league year in year out. Yes we had won the odd cup and flirted with the Champions League for a season but compared to the teams we aspired to be were a laughing stock. The little kid in the playground who tries so hard to be taken seriously who is made fun of and tolerated for a while then pushed to one side as an irrelevance.
We were a club rotting from top to bottom. Filled with overpaid players and an academy that wasn't producing any players at all (Yes I know Harry Kane broke through but he's the exception). We needed major surgery, we needed someone to take the club totally apart and rebuild it with no money, because we didn't have any. Then a little Argentinian turned up and started to re-build the club after years and years of neglect.
He started slowly at first but bit by bit we started to get excited by what he was doing. We could see players improving, Danny Rose and Kyle Walker turned from inconsistent players to England Internationals. He bought wisely and started to breath life into something that had been dead and buried. The club started to stir and started its new life as a baby.
Like all children at first it was inquisitive, it wanted to learn and improve and we clapped and egged it on, hoping that it would eventually take its first steps. Slowly but surely it started to stir and we started to hope. Those first steps were taken and the child wasn't a baby anymore it was an infant and was continuing to grow.
A new stadium was proposed and the child started to enter its late infancy, still growing, over achieving a little perhaps. Two title challenges before anyone expected, and suddenly we were willing the infant to be a man. We were wishing away its years of learning expecting it to take a leap it wasn't ready for, but like all parents we wanted what was best for our child and like some parents we heaped too much pressure on the child, became impatient at what we saw as a lack of progress and the child started to fight back.
Kyle Walkers head was turned by more money, Danny Rose did 'that' interview and now Toby as well. The child had become a teenager and was starting to question why things were being done a certain way, why it couldn't get its own way and yet we tried to reason with it but unfortunately without success, and unfortunately we lost a player to a rival.
Now we are at a crossroads and decisions have to be made. Do we allow the teenager to develop into an adult or do we wash our hands of it and say I'm sorry I tried and allow it to go completely wild. We were told the new stadium will allow us to compete with players wages. The players are paid well and have huge bonuses in their contracts but to most footballers a bonus isn't enough to sustain that ego.
They see weekly wages as a sign of respect. I don't agree with that but I get it. I'm not saying that the club should pay players whatever they want but we have to increase the wage bill if we are going to take that next step into adult hood and really compete at the top table of football. I saw Poch's comments after the game and I think hes frustrated at the way business has been done in the past. I'm not telling Daniel Levy what to do but he has asked us to trust him and we have, now's the time to repay that trust and not let this team break up because he wont pay the wages.
We, historically are not a big club, whether people like that are not its true. Look at where we sit on the following charts:
League Championship's:
Man Utd 20
Liverpool 18
Arsenal 13
Chelsea 6
Man City 5
Tottenham 2
That's what we are up against. Yes Chelsea and Man City have won theirs more recently but look at how many we have won, 2, that's it and the last one was 47 years ago. So we are not a big club. Its worth noting that before Fergie rebuilt Man Utd, they had only won 7. I'm not saying Poch is a Fergie but stating that with the right manager and the right backing as well as allowing him time look at what can be achieved. Why throw that away now?
European Cup:
Liverpool 5
Man Utd 3
Chelsea 1
Us? Never got past the quarter-finals in its current format. Yes we did reach the semi-finals in 1962 but there were 4 rounds that was it, so to me as good as that was it pales into insufficiency compared to the competition in the 70's and onwards.
FA Cups
Arsenal 13
Man Utd 12
Liverpool 7
Chelsea 7
Man City 5
Us? 8 and we've lost the last 8 semi finals. Now that's a handy stat to have thrown about these past few days so lets look at our opponents.
Arsenal twice who to be honest were streets ahead of us at the time we played them in those semi-finals in 1993 and 2001.
Chelsea twice again well beaten in both of them by far superior sides in 2012 and 2017.
Newcastle 1999 a team that had qualified for the Champions League a few years before and had challenged for a title against us who were still in our dark days of underachieving players and mangers.
So that leaves Portsmouth in 2010, Everton in 1995 and Man Utd yesterday. In my opinion we should have won those three. So when you look at that stat and do some research you see we were the underdogs and punching above our weight against far superior opposition on five of those occasions. Does it get mentioned nope because it doesn't suit an agenda.
So are we a big club? No we aren't. Hurts doesn't it? The truth normally does, but you have to accept it if you are ever going to move forward because its the only way to do so. The fans calling people like me clappers need to get off FIFA and Football Manager and read some of our history. Then they will understand what we are up against The sheer scale of what a group of people who I believe have the best interests of this club of ours in their hands are trying to achieve and what they are up against.
However if we allow the teenager to develop into a man who knows where we can be taken. If Daniel Levy pays the wages that allows us to compete we could enter a period of sustained success. The father of all this, Poch would have achieved far more than any of us dreamed off. I'm tired of the media kicking us for doing it the right way, so I don't watch or read the news or papers anymore. I look with my own eyes and see what I see. A man who took over a corpse who breathed life into a club, trying to shepherd a baby from its early stages of life into a man. Someone we can be proud of. Someone we want to be associated with. I'm willing to make a deal with the club as a whole.
I will not make knee jerk statements, I will not shout Poch out, Levy out or demand change for three seasons. Three whole years. What I want in return is continued progress. I want top 4 every year at a minimum. I want the players paid what is seen as competitive wages, not ridiculous money but something that will keep them here for the duration. I want signings to improve the team every year, not bargains but quality proven players who will add something to us, even if its only one of them, to make us challengers at the highest level and able to attract those players that will help us get there, and I want a trophy, I want to be able to celebrate us winning something. Because I believe that if we can develop like we have these past 4 years from a dead corpse, to a baby, to an infant, to a teenager, to potentially a man, then we will sit atop the summit of them all and stay there for years to come.
However if Daniel Levy allows this team to break up, he will have destroyed our best chance of sustained success in nearly 50 years and for me that would be unforgiveable. I don't want to go back to the 90's and 00's and become someone else's fodder. I want the boy to develop into a man. So three years it is, deal Mr Levy?
