I'm not writing anything off. I've said - repeatedly - that i'm sure we'll turn this around. We have to. Some of the players we have will get better as the season goes on, that's fine. I also agree that we're low on confidence, but I don't expect it to magically improve overnight. I think we'll be low on confidence on Saturday, and if we start the same way it will only get worse. At some point we'll get a break and snap out of it, we just have to hope it's soon.
You actually think the same as I do though, you're just determined to be relentlessly positive (which is admirable) whereas I'm trying to be realistic. The only point I was making is that we won't find things as easy as we did last year. You agree with that, you're on about the manager having been let down because you know we needed a new striker. That's all i'm saying, we definitely did and we didn't get one. It's a problem. Not insurmountable but a problem nonetheless. Once again, i'm not saying we can't win games, but the idea that we'll do it easily just isn't realistic. There is no indication that this team has a lot of goals in it, let's just accept that and try to win games whatever way we can.
That brings me to the last point. I don't think it will come. I think we'll improve, but I disagree - as I did when we had him - with the notion that Lukaku in any way hindered our attacking play. The argument was that we relied on him, and when he didn't turn up we were screwed. It was true to be fair. What was supposed to happen was that he would go and suddenly the goals would be shared out everywhere and we'd be a much better attacking unit. It hasn't happened though, and it won't. It's pie in the sky stuff, there's no chance 3-4 players are all getting us 12-15 goals this season. We've played 10 games and only 1 player has scored more than once. We still look like we're reliant on an individual to do something out of nothing to get us a goal, the only difference is we no longer have anyone capable of doing it.
