Why, this season alone, which remains in its infancy, barely out of nappies and still prone to occasional accidents, we've been subjected to numerous blips and countless crises. From Arsenal's crisis against Aston Villa on the opening day, that calmed into a blip with the capture of Mesut Özil, to Joe Hart, who continues to be given special dispensation to enjoy the longest-running blip in the history of football.
Manchester United, though, are a strange case. We've got used to them experiencing the occasional blip every season under Sir Alex Ferguson. Yet we've also grown accustomed to them treating such periods with the glowering contempt of their then-manager. They'd lose two or three games on the trot, or suffer a particularly uncharacteristic, heavy defeat, leading to predictable headlines regarding their imminent demise. Then, quicker than you could holler "Fergie out," the team had shrugged off their torpor, like a soldier shrugging off a few hours of dreamless sleep when woken by a shower of enemy shells.
This season's Manchester United, however, with David Moyes in the swivel chair, is a very different beast. We know the players, of course. Indeed, they're the very same players, with the addition of one of Moyes' most loyal and dependable henchmen from Goodison, Marouane Fellaini, that won last season's Premier League without breaking sweat, who had it all but wrapped up by March, and went about the final few weeks of the season with a palpable air of meh-ness, nonchalantly conceding goals, barely even turning up to give the crowds their money's worth.
Yet now, things are not so straightforward. Where United fans would laugh knowingly at headlines suggesting a crisis at their club in the past, now they aren't so sure. The majority of them have, thus far, spent the early days of the season in a strange state of good-humoured terror. Desperate for David Moyes, the 'young Fergie,' hand-picked for the job by the man himself, to succeed, they are like someone who wakes up to find themselves on an unfamiliar rollercoaster ride on which they would never have agreed to embark had they been awake. Terrified of heights, they are forced to endure a wretched, nauseating experience, where blip and crisis merge, with painfully disorientating results.
Having thrashed last year's 'everybody's second favourite team,' Swansea City, on their own turf, the watching world nodded sagely, at one in their assessment that the transition had been so seemless, the squad bequeathed by Ferguson so brimming with serial-winning talent, as to be barely noticeable.
With that performance in mind, the like-watching-paint-dry spectacle against Chelsea was seen as a blip, an off-night, something to forget, if only we could remember any of it in the first place.
Until, that is, they arrived at Anfield. The performance at the Liberty Stadium seemed a distant memory within five minutes. Liverpool looked all verve and pace and telepathic, ball-on-a-piece-of-string passing, that left the befuddled champions chasing shadows for most of the match.
Still, "Bah!" came the cry from the United faithful. "We never play well at Anfield and, besides, we'll put Crystal Palace to the sword next time out." So, still a blip. Only the team didn't stick to the script, labouring against the newly-promoted Londoners, a worrying lack of imagination the running theme throughout.
Nevertheless, three points had been gained, and the 4-2 victory over Bundesliga high-flyers, Bayer Leverkusen, brought about by a performance of relatively slick movement and swift counter attacking play, seemed to suggest the dawning of a brave new world (or, at least, a familiar, Fergie-like world). No blips or crises in sight.
Which lasted all of five days, when a potential crisis of epic proportions darkened our doorways, as we watched the footballing equivalent of witnessing our spouse enjoying unfathomably long, rampant, noisy sexual intercourse with a rich, young, handsome, virile neighbour.
Yet still we told ourselves this was just another blip, and allowed a tepid 1-0 Capital One Cup victory over Liverpool to assuage our growing fears.
The defeat to West Brom, though, on our home soil, and conceded with barely a whimper, meant we could no longer keep the talk of crisis from bobbing its gruesome head from beneath the surface. Grimacing, we joked about relegation scraps and trips to Bournemouth in the coming years, as it finally dawned on us that our star may have waned with the passing of the guard.
Going 1-0 down in the first five minutes at the Stadium of Light, on Saturday, was hardly the tonic we craved. And, as woeful cross after woeful cross blazed high into the grateful hands of the leering Sunderland supporters in the stands throughout the first half, our crisis appeared to be descending into full-blown melt-down (and perhaps would have done so, were it not for a David de Gea save of impossible-to-describe magnificence).
Until, that is, a young Belgian-Albanian-Englishman (pah!) by the name of Adnan Januzaj batted away the thunderclouds with Zeus-like authority in the second half, a beacon of light and hope in a darkening world, and a potential new hero for United's fans to worship for years to come (assuming he isn't whisked away to Bayern Munich with all of football's other players).
Hang on, we're still no clearer as to when a blip becomes a crisis. Never mind. Chances are they're both just things dreamt up by the story-hungry press, and seized upon by an insatiable public.
Ask supporters of clubs such as Leeds United, Portsmouth or Coventry City what constitutes a crisis, and they'll no doubt suggest something rather different to a few hilarious Joe Hart blunders or the most successful team in the history of English football sitting six points from the Premier League summit after seven games of a predictably unsettling season of flux and upheaval.
Though, if United don't beat Southampton after the international break, I'll be checking Bournemouth hotel reviews on Trip Advisor, just in case.
No comments:
Post a Comment