People don’t have the patience mate. They’re willing to see yet another managers head roll in the stubborn belief that someone is out there that can actually get this group of players where we ‘belong’.
Patience is not to be substituted with blind faith. I’ve noticed on this board that people place way too much emphasis on just pure time. A player looks awful at 20, but no need to worry, because still 5 whole years until he’s 25. The team looks terrible, but if you add one year, that terrible transforms.
Time alone does not generate the patience. It’s two way. We are getting played off the park, routinely, by relegation fodder. Not only are we being outplayed because ‘our players aren’t good enough’, our current misfortunes appear to be directly exacerbated by decisions from the manager. Why, other than just ‘time’, should this induce some sort of fierce optimism or positivity?
Are you guys actually aware that it’s a possibility that Amorim is a failure here? It seems that we start, in our heads, with the predetermination of him being a successful, trophy winning manager, and then work backwards from there. It’s the same with ‘young’ players, it’s the same with players because they are new. When you understand that the chances of players/managers failing are very high in general, I think you will start to appreciate the concern. Not concern for no reason or negativity sake, but concern based upon concerning performances in football matches!
For what it’s worth, I am not saying Amorim Out at this stage, but I can appreciate why anyone would not be convinced. All you need to do is watch the actual football matches (which seems to form less and less of the basis of football opinions in this day anyway, but that’s another matter).
Eddie Howe came in, mid-season, at Newcastle and transformed the club. A toxic environment for years, with several failed managers and written off players who were fighting relegation at the time. He won game after game there and has largely continued in that vein, despite a few dips. It’s not mandatory to be rubbish. Several managers come in and can improve a team. Unai Emery, Eddie Howe, Gary O’Niell. The same goes for players. Players also don’t need to be rubbish because they are young.
Ultimately, it’s been 13 years of this now. I soon adjusted from baseless optimism that was contradicted on the actual football pitch, to optimism earned by what is seen on the actual football pitch, because ultimately, we learn the hard way that the proof is in the pudding and not whether we are ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ on Redcafe. So if I see an unimpressive manager, or even an academy player who I think is shite, I will say it today. It serves nobody to pretend he’s good, ‘negative’ or not. At the end of the day, he’ll just be in our team and good or jot, we’ll have to live with the return from that. Let’s not over-complicate footy analysis. Some teams play good. They are not super human players or managers. Why can’t we be amongst those teams, instead of always being amongst the teams that don’t play good? People have become so accustomed to being not good that it seems part of the plan. Until Emery comes in and shows that actually, you can just be good instead.
Now I obviously concede that it is early days, Amorim has by no means been condemned yet, certainly not by me. My main point is that being shit and disorganised in the present is not irrelevant at all. Like, make your team less shit and disorganised quickly please, not in one year either. Just do it, your compelling words in press-conferences mean zero in the grand scheme of things. Let’s get back to calling football by what we see on the football pitch guys, it’s not that difficult. First it was DOF this, DOF that. We sacked ours in no time. West Ham sacked theirs, and now I’m hearing that like us, they are considering whether to actually recruit another one. These are all super-solutions created by podcast nerds in recent years, the reality is, whatever your job title - just do your fecking job please, and stop doing a shit one.
I was probably one of the few people here who voiced concerns on here about Amorim before he joined too, while most of course just painted a rosey narrative of it all. This isn’t point scoring, when it’s all said and done, it’s on the pitch that arguments will be won and lost, not on the net.