Season 2011-12 Fan Articles

Don't look back in anger

By James   Martin  ::  21/05/2012   52 Comments (»Last) There's a danger in life of looking back upon certain events or periods of time and judging them through a retrospective scope rather than contemporary viewpoint that existed at the time. I fear that this is a problem that afflicts many of us football fans far too often when assessing the present achievements or failures of our team.

Chelsea's win in Europe has partly inspired me to write what will probably be construed as a defense of David Moyes but is something that I think holds true for most football teams. Putting aside views on 4-5-1, dour Davey, pounds per point ? all those arguments, other lines of arguments are: he was rubbish in Europe, he's rubbish in cups and bottles it in big games, and he can't beat Liverpool.

If you look back, it's so easy to identify these failings and find examples for them but I would argue that they're taken out of the context of the time of the events. It took Chelsea nine years to win the European Cup, even with their players, nine attempts in a row. They had to go through the stage of getting knocked out in early rounds, getting knocked out in the semis (twice), and even losing it most painfully of all in the final. In short, they had to learn to lose it in every way imaginable before they learned to win it.

It's easy to look back on our European campaigns and think that we had the team to go all the way, we should have, Moyes choked away in Florence etc etc, but all I remember thinking at the time was how strange Europe felt, how inexperienced our manager and players were in it, and how novel it felt to even be there. I didn't even fathom the thought that we could win it.

It's the same in the FA Cup, we hadn't had so much of a sniff since 1995 then a final comes around, looking back, this was the first big game for many of the players and the manager in their career, they had no experience of winning the big games whilst Chelsea knew how to.

Same with Liverpool, easy to look back over all the derby defeats and say what a terrible record but I remember before 2004 we hadn't won at Goodison for god knows how long. That 1-0 win was out of the blue as we were used to getting battered by them and not even competing against them. It was celebrated amongst my generation for the rest of the season. Derby wins were so rare, like wins at Elland Road, White Hart Lane, St James's Park were. No one mentions the one last season, the 3-0, or the cup game anymore.

Moyes has changed that, as a rebuttal to all the critics who say we haven't moved forward under him. After the cup quarter-final, my Sunderland supporting mate said, "Everton were always going to win, our team lacked big game experience, it was too soon for them whilst your team looked comfortable at that level."

The cycle of our team is so much further on now than it was when Moyes first came in. Rather than European qualification being a pipe dream, it's now an expectancy... along with the expectancy to do well once we're in it. Derby wins are no longer fondly remembered as one offs every 5 or so years, they're expected every game; that song about super Lee used to make me cringe at how small time it was but you don't hear it any more. Plus the more big games we play the more expectancy and experience we are obtaining.

Cup semi-finals used to be a pipe dream which barely occured. Now we've had two in 4 years and rather than turning up just hoping for a miracle, like we did the first time, we came this year fully expecting in every way to win. Yes, we let it slip, but the onus was on us; we weren't hoping for a lucky set piece win, we expected to control the game and did in the first half before choking in the second. Obviously still too soon for us, as disappointing as that is.

For every year Moyes keeps us at this level, though, we are improving through our collective experience and perhaps next year is when we will progress in our cycle as a team. We've shown a consistency in the league this latter part of the year that we haven't seen in a long time. When we next get to a cup semi or final, most of the players will have played in and lost enough of them to not be awed by the occasion. They'll be expecting to win regardless of the opposition ? and so will we.

Perhaps this view only applies to younger fans; those who lived through the glory days still retain the expectancy that this team is somehow still linked to the one that knew how to win league titles. From what I remember, however, this team has evolved out of the mindset of a team that only used to expect to survive in the league. These 10 years haven't been continuous smooth rapid improvement, but surely the level of expectation, and the frustration inherent within that, is an indicator of how Moyes has shifted the goalposts.

Moyes has many many failings but I defy anyone to argue that we haven't improved underneath him, was anyone expecting a European place (there's even been shouts of top 4 on here) and an FA Cup win at the beginning of the 2002 season? A lot of us are now though. Let's not look back, let's keep looking forward and see if Moyes can build us on to that next level of both expectancy and performance.

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