With the clock running out the last couple of hours of 2022, I found myself browsing social media in a bored daze only to come across many, many posts on both Twitter and Facebook of fans going in at the team after getting a DRAW against Leeds today.
I just can’t get my head around it. We can’t honestly expect to win every game, I mean even Man City were held to a draw by Everton today – these things happen in football, if they didn’t we wouldn’t love it so much.
If we’d come out today and played absolutely awful, then yes, have a dig, but honestly, we dominated the game but came up against a Leeds side whose entire game plan was just to stop us from scoring. They had no intention of winning, all they wanted to do was make sure we couldn’t get the ball in the net. Eleven men behind the ball, time-wasting, constant fouls – they were all part of Leeds’ gameplan and they all worked.
We didn’t do ourselves any favours by not taking our chances when they came, sure, but people are going mental at Sean Longstaff for missing those chances – he’s not a striker, it’s not his natural instinct. The reality is, Sean Longstaff of old, even six months ago, wouldn’t even have been in those positions to take those shots, and I say this as someone who has been very critical of his performances this season.
The fact remains, this squad is overachieving by sitting in third place in the league. They’ve played out of their skin and got us into a great position, but the depth of the squad isn’t great and not one that is suitable for a sustained assault on all competitions.
Hopefully, we’ll bring in a couple of reinforcements in January which will help, but for me, this season is a complete free hit. Whatever we do in the second half of the season won’t erase what an amazing start we’ve made and the fact remains, we will drop more points, again, that’s football. But jumping on players’ backs, or banging on like it’s the end of the world isn’t helping anybody. Just see it for what it is, a blip, and trust that we will bounce back.
We’ve got Arsenal next who are running away with the league at the minute, are we going to go nuts if we get beat on Tuesday? This will be the first game in a long time that I’m not backing us to win – not that I don’t believe we can, just that common sense says we won’t. But I am ready to be wrong and will not be shocked if I am, but I also won’t see it as the end of the world should we lose. I trust the squad and I trust Eddie Howe – it hurts when things don’t go our way, and it seems to hurt more these days because things have gone our way for so long, but we will bounce back.
Look, I get it, you have every right to vent your frustrations, but I just ask you have a think about how far we’ve come and how much has changed and realise how good we have it.
In Howe We Trust!