As good a time as any to write a reply I guess.
I'll tell you what I'm most tired of more than anything else. I've been a member on here for the last 6 years, and during that time I've seen the same thing happen every single season without fail. It's a sentence which is uttered after every bad result.
"Still a long way to go"
Usually followed with "stop moaning, kneejerker" or "can't believe the idiots are writing us off after a few games". This sentence gets on my nerves more than anything for the sole reason that it never matters yet it's always said. It's thrown in your face whenever you bring up really honest facts. Infact, you can't slate anything about the team early on in the season after a bad result without this sentence being smashed into your skull repeatedly by those seemingly unaware of what's happened the previous season, or the season before that.
Let me spell it out for you - WE CAN'T AFFORD TO DROP SILLY POINTS.
There it is. If you could try to keep that sentence in the forefront of your mind, rather than the one I've highlighted above, then you might actually begin to realise that dropping these points this early in the season DOES ultimately mean we won't be winning the title.
It happens every season. We play a few sides who we're supposed to beat easily (who we SHOULD be beating easily) and we go on to lose the game or draw with relegation fodder at home. This is followed by people using the "Still a long way to go" sentence like it's supposed to make you feel better. It's then pointed out that we dropped these silly points last season and didn't win the title, and then that in turn is greeted with some laughter, maybe someone using the imaginary word "knee-jerker", and you've probably guaranteed yourself a seat at the "negative/Rafa out" tea party for the rest of the season.
Bottom line is it's the same every year, and I'm absolutely fucking sick of it. You try to stay positive, you try to believe that it's going to happen this year, and you sit through the summer with a very specific picture in your head regarding what we need to make it come true. But it doesn't happen. YEAR ON FUCKING YEAR. This summer has come and gone, and I'm sorry if you disagree but we're weaker than last season. Don't care if you want to argue, you won't change my mind, we're weaker. Somehow, against all likelihood, when your main rivals lose two important players, we become weaker aswell. And I'm not going to get into an ownership debate, there are other threads for that, but the money has been nowhere to be seen this summer. Even if it WAS there I'm having second thoughts about whether it would be invested in the right areas.
I honestly feel like I'm stuck in a timewarp. Round and round and round we go, and we just can't get to the point where we've got everything sorted and we can grow from there. Last season was the closest I reckon we'll ever get, and not because Rafa won't get it right, it's not as simple as that, there are loads of reasons why I would feel that we just won't better it, Man City's money for a start. Laugh at that all you like, but they'll be more of a force than we will inside 2 years.
I feel like we've worked so fucking hard at everything, but it's just never enough. It's always going to be just beyond us, and no "Believe!" mantra is going to change that. And it's not a "knee-jerk reaction" (yes, it's just an adjective), it's been happening for 20 fucking years, it's hardly a knee-jerk reaction to think that you're not going to be winning the title again after 20 years.
I'd said before a ball was kicked that in all honesty I didn't see us winning it again this year. Before the summer and before Xabi left I felt like we would be going into it in a superb position, ready to dominate. But the summer for me just proved that we can't strengthen like the others can, and it's just been a massive disappointment. So it's not like I'm writing this solely on the back of one defeat, it's moreso as a preempting of what's about to be said. The same shite that's said every year, and I'm tired of hearing it.
Points dropped = less chance of title. Simple as that. Don't care who you are, that's how it goes. And I just don't need to hear how long there is to go. I don't need to hear that there's still 105 points to play for. I don't need to hear that the others will slip up too. I don't need to hear all those things because you've already said them all before, for the last 20 years. They've been said enough.
