We face Stoke City at the Boleyn Ground today and it’s an important match for us as we need to turn the good recent performances into results.
We’ve built up a big expectaction this year and that’s the nature and demand of the football club. Clearly when you’ve built that expectation when you don’t reach the standards you’ve set there’s a bigger disappointment there because everyone has been looking forward to it so much and it hasn’t quite delivered what excited them earlier in the season.
That disappointment can frustrate over into showing a little bit of discontent. But that happens across the board.
When we drew against Man Utd we were applauded off and when we lost to Chelsea we were applauded off – the atmosphere throughout the game was fantastic. We weren’t criticised at all but we hadn’t won for them. They appreciated the performance. When we don’t play as well against teams they expect us to do, like when we were 3-0 down against Crystal Palace, you expect to be criticised.
We shouldn’t have gone 3-0 down to Crystal Palace, but we did. The Premier League is accepted as the best league across the world because Manchester City have just lost to Burnley away and just lost to Crystal Palace away. In this league you cannot come into any game expecting to win it if you don’t perform to your best.
If you don’t the top club could lose to the bottom club at any stage of the season.
I’ve been reminding the players for weeks and weeks and weeks that performances are fine, but we’re in a results business and we’re really disappointed that we’ve allowed this run of games to get us in this position. The bottom line is we know it’s not good enough. We can keep going on about performances as much as we want, but performances have to equate to winning football matches. For us that’s what we all want – starting today.
Sam Allardyce