The Power of Positivity
We can kick this off by declaring that yes I am a Manchester United fan and this is a post about Manchester United. So you can take from that what you will about bias, but I’m hoping that I come across as someone who is able to shed the blinkers and comment fairly on any team.
This post is kind of a defence (or at least my explanation for it - whilst only being a fan and having no inside knowledge) against the recent poor form Manchester United have been in and all the resulting negative press around tactics and ability of the players to play in the new formation under Ruben Amorim.
But first we have to start with my view on how good teams actually are. I believe that there is a bar to how good a team can be. No matter how many of the best players you have you can only be so good. There is a certain level that teams can reach but you can very rarely pass this level purely based on the ability of your players within the squad. Teams can sometimes pass this bar with a great team and 1 or 2 exceptional talents but it is very rare, think Barcelona with Messi, or Real Madrid with Ronaldo as the most recent examples. It is though super hard to maintain this and they will eventually drop back down to the bar or below relatively quickly.
Looking at the Premier League at the start of this season (24/25) there was probably only Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool that were at this mythical bar of talent, capable of winning the league. Below them would have been Newcastle, Chelsea, Manchester United and Tottenham all vying for that final Champions League spot. The rest I have included in the table below.
Ability
Now you can argue about what pot your team should have been in at the start of the season but just because they are in that pot doesn’t mean they can’t change throughout the season. My main point is that ability is only one of the factors that determines a teams performance throughout the season.
So now lets get to my main point of this post, what affects teams more than ability i believe is confidence and positivity. Knowing you can win any game and believing you can win any game has a bigger impact on teams where ability levels are quite similar. Across all the teams above, the gap in ability between the first 5 pots is marginal. This is where I believe Manchester United are really lacking. It’s not a lack of ability or a lack of effort it is just a real crisis in confidence and believing you can win a game no matter the circumstances.
This gets compounded when you enter a run of bad performances and every game gets harder as opposing teams sniff their opportunity knowing a team is lacking in confidence. It also affects the players as every chance you get in a game to score a goal comes with more pressure, the pressure of ensuring you don’t make a mistake, everything just becomes that little bit harder game by game. This is where Manchester United were so good under Sir Alex Ferguson, opposing teams didn’t go into games believing they could win which made their job easier, but the team also knew that no matter what happened in the game they could still win and the game was never over until that final whistle went.
You can look at Leicester the year they won the league, they were clearly not the best team ability wise in the league but they surfed along a wave of positivity and belief throughout the season that they could do it. Minor setbacks along the way didn’t derail them, they got back up and ensured they got the momentum going their way again. Bournemouth and Forrest this season are a good examples as well. Finished in 17th and 12th place respectively last year but now more than half way through this season sit 3rd and 5th. Bournemouth has also suffered quite a lot of injuries but the players coming in are picking up the baton and the belief grows around the whole squad.
Manchester United go into a game tomorrow against Everton who have recently had an upturn in form since Moyes came back as manager and the belief is growing. This is a low in confidence Manchester United against a confident Everton side and it coule be another defeat for United if they don’t find some belief and confidence from somewhere. And this is the main point, you don’t become bad players/team over night, the ability is still there but you have to believe that you are good enough and that everyone around you is good enough. As much as winning becomes a habit so does losing.
Anyway whatever happens tomorrow I just want to highlight how I believe that positivity in football and in life is so important if we want to improve and better ourselves everyday.