Would you have swapped your two titles for the chance to witness a more exciting form of the game. After all football is essentially about entertainment. You can argue all you want that the excitement of the odd last ditch winner or piece of individual skill is enough to keep you satisfied. But wouldn't you love to see your team play with the attacking flare of teams like manchester united, arsenal and barcelona. would you need new management for this? will a more asthetic game be demanded soon by abromavich?
In the last couple of years we have beaten Barcelona 4-2, Liverpool 1-4, United 1-3 and 3-0, these are just a very few agianst some of the best that have been very enjoyable thank you very much. I do not see where you get the idea we lack entertainment. We have poorer games like anyone else but we have our fair share of highly entertaining games as well.
<div class="quote_poster">HeadCase Wrote</div><div class="quote_post">Football is about winning surely then entertainment</div> From a fan's point of view, who are easily on a par, in terms of importance to the club, with the team itself, you'd prefer to have a happy medium. Play boring football, you get the situation at Bolton where fans are boycotting games due to boring football and sky high ticket pricing. People aren't really begrudging United the title this year because they've managed to combine superb footballing entertainment with winning. It would have been all too easy to go down the Chelsea road and end up with a majority of the games being defensive and grinding out boring wins as opposed to giving the fans what they want. The problem with Mourinho is that he had a certain style, definitely more European (in the sense that it's all based on defence and slow build-up to a counter attack. Very Italian in that respect), and it's translated well in terms of winning etc, but some Chelsea games have been a real struggle to watch, and that's come from numerous Chelsea fans who drink at my local. They've all said that United have played the far better, more fluid football this season and it's finally paid off. Look at Arsenal, despite their struggles when it comes to putting the ball in the net, they are certainly good fun to watch and really do play some amazing football at times. Even Liverpool haven't been too bad in the entertainement stakes this year. I think a teams reputation and whether fans of other clubs will praise them come the end of the season is dependent on the style of football they play. Remember everyone hated Blackburn last year for having one tactic: kick the fuck out of the opposition for 90 minutes? It didn't get them anywhere. This year, Sparky's instilled a bit of flair and attacking guile to go with that physical approach and it's got them a very good league position (still a realistic chance of European football) and an FA Cup semi-final, in which they were agonisingly close to beating Chelsea. People now take notice of them and they are one of the upcoming teams who, with the right acquisitions in the summer, will be on a par with the Tottenham's and the Everton's etc (UEFA cup, pushing for Champion's League). I suppose what I'm saying is that slow, methodical, defensive football has it's place but this year really is a triumph for entertainment and, as Johan Cruyff described Manchester United this year, "total football".
