Quote Originally Posted by IBK View Post
Ranieri understands three basics about a successful team. 1) Make sure your players are motivated and have self belief. 2) Play to their strengths and have players play regularly in their best positions. 3) Team balance is vastly more important than individual technical ability.

The sending off was the most important factor in yesterday's defeat, and IMHO its pointless trying to blame Wenger for this by criticising his transfer policy. We all know that his gambles re player purchases have come back to bite him time and time again. But his failure to address the basics have affected us much more. It feels as though we are CONSTANTLY in the middle of an experiment in which our manager tinkers with our team and is more interested in 'developing' players than letting them play their best/natural game. This is what frustrates me - and why it feels so frustrating that we are not walking the worst EPL for years.
I still don’t get this assumption that we should be ‘walking’ the league or that our performance levels are not relative to averageness that surrounds us in the league. The two things are not mutually exclusive. The league has been declining for years, while the similarity of styles and tactics by the teams are all pretty much the same. The old clichés of ‘well next year the big boys will be back’ are of course being rolled because it’s easier to say than admitting how poor the PL is nowadays. Fergie winning the league with such an average Utd team was the first real indicator but again, he was lauded for beating real quality, when in fact, everyone else behind them was just as poor. If the league around us is poor, then by association we are also going to be just as average, which is what we’re seeing. It doesn’t devalue winning the title at all because when everyone is on the same level, you still have to be the best at that level to win it.