Originally Posted by
FatherKnowsBest
This is what I think...fwiw.
I think they have a confidence in their club and view the odd few years of failure as being untypical of their 'rightful position'. We're talking particularly about oinkers of a certain age who were brought up in the 80's and 90's, with Waddle and Hurst, brought up on the back of '50,000 every week' at fabulous World Cup venue Hillsborough when we had a three sided ground, and all those stories from Grandad. At that time they were used to being above us in the leagues, they had 26/12/79 too and so its given them a misplaced feeling of superiority. But they always seem to be excessively optimistic (HMS P*ssTheLeague, finished 18th..?) and so when they feck it up, and reality creeps in, it is quite funny to watch the stages of denial.
On the other hand, we seem to be have confidence that it will go wrong, that we are the underdog, who's periods of success will come to an end soon, as we once again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Even when we had all those years above them in the noughties, we never seemed to get that swagger of winners. We are, in my view, excessively pessimistic, and so when we have success, we aren't entirely sure of how to react, other than to imagine it will all go wrong somehow, soon.
The statistics say, there's sod all difference, unless you are going to go back over 100 years ago. Over the last 20 years, there's really no difference in league achievements, cups, attendances or anything else you care to look at, if anything we're shading it. But underneath we both feel we are superior to the other. Its just that they don't feel inhibited from saying so.