im all for talking about the rafa and what he brought to the club but i think its finally getting tiring now
he isnt here anymore, thats it. he is gone. this thread is starting to go the same way as many others since he left, the points of view have been done to death, we all know them.
we should leave it there. and hold onto the hope he will come back one day.
i agree, it`s time some fans moved on, benitez did a great job especially early on (i honestly dont think paisley or ferguson or any other manager would have taken that side to 2 CL finals in 3 years) but it wasnt all great, in 6 seasons we manged one title challenge and when i say challenge we were always a longshot after our poor run of form around christmas, roy evans was probably closer to winning the title in that `fourth in a two horse race season`, that 97 really was a frustrating season, the likes of fowler and mcmanaman were at the top of their game and that season we spent months on top and we had a 5 point lead over united on new years day, by february they had caught us but when united went top they kept dropping points, they got beat by derby when they had that wanchope and they got beat by sunderland as well but both times we blew it, what made it worse was we kept on playing the day after united so we knew we had a great chance to go back to the top with only weeks left in the season but both times we got beat, one of the games we were 1-0 up against coventry at anfield who were in the bottom 3 at the time and we ended up getting beat 2-1 in the last minute.
that is right up there as one of the most frustrating games i`ve ever seen at anfield.
james was terrible in that game, he was shite the whole run in, that was when he came out with that video games are ruining my concentration excuse.
that side used to wind me up, we beat the likes of newcastle and arsenal away and i remember fowler scoring 4 in a 5-1 win against boro but we`d just lose to shite teams.
even right near the end of the season united were only 2 points ahead and had to come to anfield but they beat us 3-1 with goals from 2 corners (i think pallister got them both) and 1 from andy cole when james flapped at another cross. i wish we had hyypia back then.
fowler got sent off in a drawn derby game for fighting with unsworth so he missed the last 3 games of the season (and the bluenoses celebrated that draw like they had won the title themselves because they knew it f##ked up our title challenge)
the second to last game of the season we lost to wimbledon (owen scored his first goal) so united won the title but going into the last game of the season we were in second place 2 points ahead of newcastle and arsenal and guess what we ended up 4th, 4th in a 2 horse race.
we didnt even get into the champions league (only top 2 went in back then) when it looked certain.
the only consolation was that everyone around that time including united fans, t.v pundits, journo`s etc thought it was only a matter of time before we won the title, fowler was a goalscoring machine, owen had just broken into the side and he`d been getting rave reviews about how good he was, it just looked a matter of time, near 15 years later and we are still waiting!
but that was the only season since 1990 that i really thought we were going to win it, fowler couldnt miss, everything he hit that season went in, but our defence just fell apart when the pressure came on.