…Between hope and expectation!!!

After the takeover, and Howe took charge, we had hope… hope that the new owners and new manager could turn things around and save us from relegation and in 5-10 seasons turn us into serial winners?

At that time, there was no expectation to qualify for Europe, to compete with the very top teams.

They could play with the freedom and enjoyment, knowing that, whatever they did was better than we had before. And that if they played front foot football and didn’t succeed… it didn’t really matter!

Now though, that hope has been replaced with expectation… we jumped ahead… we hit top 4… played champions league and now that expectation is here already… we’ve done it before, we can do it again.

There’s now more pressure to win and get those points on the board, rather than playing dynamic attacking pressing football that comes with risks, we see the team choosing to defend first. Afraid of going behind and throwing away the points we expect to get rather than hope to leave with.