Post by ingham on Nov 24, 2015 16:52:13 GMT
They can always come up with a word for our predicament, the people running the Club. Consolidation, transition, building. Or, when they've just arrived - ambition, success, champions league, world class. If we're losing, they know we need to change that. It might be the manager, so we change him. Or some of the players, so the new manager changes them. Now and then, the people who knew all about the future, and all about what was required, abruptly sell up, and don't seem to be interested any more.
Any fool can find a general term to distinguish success from failure. Most Clubs can do that, which is why most Clubs never achieve anything that lasts.
Very occasionally, someone comes along who knows. We can't be sure why. They can just tell. When they do things, they work. Not, like Mourinho, all the time, of course.
But sometimes, and, in rare cases, often.
All we're doing is replacing one set of words with another, one set of ideas with another set. One speech with another, one sackload of promises with another. One easy solution with another. Bigger ground, spend more money, spend less money. An older manager, a younger one. Players who are keen, and, surprisingly often, players who don't seem all that keen at all.
The only alternative to finding that rare talent who actually KNOWS what to do - and how do the Board do that, when they don't know anything - is to start at the beginning, like the beginners we are.
Is there any sign that the people running the Club are interested in why they have done so appallingly badly. Or, if they deny that, why they have failed to grasp what it is they HAVE done so glaringly obviously.
Usually, we just go back to making decisions, making announcements. They tell us to wait, to get behind the boys, to trust them, to do all kinds of things that have no bearing at all on whether we will ever learn to play better than we do.
But that one area, the one that determines all the others, that attracts support and media attention, that attracts players and managers and coaches, and that actually MAKES A DIFFERENCE, none of them seems either willing or able to get down to it at all.
We're overdue a half-decent short term fix, by sheer luck, if nothing else. With a new manager who does okay, like Warnock or Holloway, or maybe even better than okay. But lack of know-how and understanding means that the traditional killer - the long losing run - will get him in the end, and usually sooner rather than later.
That paralyses us. Even though it is the one, reliable, virtually guaranteed pattern in the last 25 years (and for most of the others), the one thing we can do with our eyes shut, we behave as if astonished that anything so outlandish could HAPPEN
Usually, it is there in the very first game. Some bewildering disaster, sometimes at home, that we so much don't want to believe that we end up getting behind yet another bunch of overpaid, underperforming losers.
Perhaps there are players out there who don't fit that description, but we seem to have very little interest in identifying them. When we have money, we spend it all at once, and then spend more money we haven't got, as if all the players we could ever want just happen to be available on that day and at prices which we can't pass up.
I'm inclined to think that the cluelessness goes so deep that it isn't accidental. Instead of assuming that the managers, directors and players really are TRYING to win, even if they haven't the first idea how to do it, why not start with the assumption that they AREN'T. After all, if they don't KNOW how, it is meaningless to suppose that they are genuinely trying. If they had LEARNED how to do it, then it would make sense.
But we would know that. Because they would be doing it.
They do know how to take millions, tens of millions, out of the Club every year. And I imagine that they WOULD fight, and fight bitterly, perhaps for years, if someone tried to take THAT away from them.
But are they like that when it comes to football. Do they know how to stop opponents getting the ball away from them? Is that a priority? Do the Board ensure first of all, before all the talk, that they HAVE 40,000 fans, or that they know how to get them? That they know what it takes to get the Club in the Champions League?
Perhaps we are unwise to imagine that they think like us at all. That they're putting together a structure that will stand up, manufacturing and TESTING an engine that will do the job and keep on going year in and year out.
It would make sense to think so if they had done just that. But it doesn't make sense to think so when they never have.
Are all their contracts just undertakings to go through the motions. And once a few hundred million more has enriched players, managers, speculators of various kinds, they're gone.
Because most of them are soon gone. And most of them have made not a blind bit of difference to the Club, its competitiveness, wealth (except to lose it), support, know-how, talent, credibility.
The only source of money, source of support, source of continuity, the only thing that goes on and on and on - except failure, losses and incompetence - is the Club's Support.
Amazing, considering how little we have, apart from our fellow supporters, to admire.
Any fool can find a general term to distinguish success from failure. Most Clubs can do that, which is why most Clubs never achieve anything that lasts.
Very occasionally, someone comes along who knows. We can't be sure why. They can just tell. When they do things, they work. Not, like Mourinho, all the time, of course.
But sometimes, and, in rare cases, often.
All we're doing is replacing one set of words with another, one set of ideas with another set. One speech with another, one sackload of promises with another. One easy solution with another. Bigger ground, spend more money, spend less money. An older manager, a younger one. Players who are keen, and, surprisingly often, players who don't seem all that keen at all.
The only alternative to finding that rare talent who actually KNOWS what to do - and how do the Board do that, when they don't know anything - is to start at the beginning, like the beginners we are.
Is there any sign that the people running the Club are interested in why they have done so appallingly badly. Or, if they deny that, why they have failed to grasp what it is they HAVE done so glaringly obviously.
Usually, we just go back to making decisions, making announcements. They tell us to wait, to get behind the boys, to trust them, to do all kinds of things that have no bearing at all on whether we will ever learn to play better than we do.
But that one area, the one that determines all the others, that attracts support and media attention, that attracts players and managers and coaches, and that actually MAKES A DIFFERENCE, none of them seems either willing or able to get down to it at all.
We're overdue a half-decent short term fix, by sheer luck, if nothing else. With a new manager who does okay, like Warnock or Holloway, or maybe even better than okay. But lack of know-how and understanding means that the traditional killer - the long losing run - will get him in the end, and usually sooner rather than later.
That paralyses us. Even though it is the one, reliable, virtually guaranteed pattern in the last 25 years (and for most of the others), the one thing we can do with our eyes shut, we behave as if astonished that anything so outlandish could HAPPEN
Usually, it is there in the very first game. Some bewildering disaster, sometimes at home, that we so much don't want to believe that we end up getting behind yet another bunch of overpaid, underperforming losers.
Perhaps there are players out there who don't fit that description, but we seem to have very little interest in identifying them. When we have money, we spend it all at once, and then spend more money we haven't got, as if all the players we could ever want just happen to be available on that day and at prices which we can't pass up.
I'm inclined to think that the cluelessness goes so deep that it isn't accidental. Instead of assuming that the managers, directors and players really are TRYING to win, even if they haven't the first idea how to do it, why not start with the assumption that they AREN'T. After all, if they don't KNOW how, it is meaningless to suppose that they are genuinely trying. If they had LEARNED how to do it, then it would make sense.
But we would know that. Because they would be doing it.
They do know how to take millions, tens of millions, out of the Club every year. And I imagine that they WOULD fight, and fight bitterly, perhaps for years, if someone tried to take THAT away from them.
But are they like that when it comes to football. Do they know how to stop opponents getting the ball away from them? Is that a priority? Do the Board ensure first of all, before all the talk, that they HAVE 40,000 fans, or that they know how to get them? That they know what it takes to get the Club in the Champions League?
Perhaps we are unwise to imagine that they think like us at all. That they're putting together a structure that will stand up, manufacturing and TESTING an engine that will do the job and keep on going year in and year out.
It would make sense to think so if they had done just that. But it doesn't make sense to think so when they never have.
Are all their contracts just undertakings to go through the motions. And once a few hundred million more has enriched players, managers, speculators of various kinds, they're gone.
Because most of them are soon gone. And most of them have made not a blind bit of difference to the Club, its competitiveness, wealth (except to lose it), support, know-how, talent, credibility.
The only source of money, source of support, source of continuity, the only thing that goes on and on and on - except failure, losses and incompetence - is the Club's Support.
Amazing, considering how little we have, apart from our fellow supporters, to admire.