- Oct 19, 2004
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Dier scores that goal and we go on to win, poch did great.
Dier hits post and utd go on to win, poch treats the competition with disdain.
Poch shouldn't need to motivate the players to win that game. Many of them have never won a trophy. Is the fa cup as important to us as getting cl football next season? No. But it doesn't mean that we didn't want to win it.
The problem is mentality of the players and the fans. Utd are arrogant and believe they have a right to win trophies. We do not have that mentality yet. We need a bit of luck and winning something will happen, when it does more will follow. But poch is not the problem.
I think this mentality thing is a bit of a misnomer. I'm not saying players don't need a strong mentality, they do, but most of our players have a pretty strong mentality, otherwise how would we have got the results we have the last couple of years, beaten Real Madrid, Chelsea away two weeks ago, etc . Arsenal have won more trophies than ManU in the last 5 years, why should ManU's mentality have been so much stronger than ours, especially as we'd mullered them last time we'd played them.
People like to fall back on the "mentality" thing because it's easy, it's impossible to quantify or qualify. I think the truth is, some of this is on Poch, some is on the players and some of this is just economics and, well sport.
We were playing a very good team, just as we are a very good team. Last time we played them their manager got his tactics very wrong, this time he changed them and they were functioning better as a collective and some of their very expensively assembled players did the kind of things that very talented players can do, when they are given a good tactical platform by their coach.
We did some good things, but our manager didn't quite get as much right as theirs did and, partly as a result of this tactical error(s) some our quality players weren't able to perform as well, individually and collectively.
I really don't think there was some hoodoo going on, or they had Michael Ironside scanning our weak brained players until their little brains exploded and they capitulated. It was just a simple case of them being tactically, marginally better at doing what they do, than we were at doing what we do.
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