I just want to state that at this point in time, I was very young (9 years old) so some rash decisions were made. In this case, almost made.
I had just gotten into football and Man United the year before and I had heard all this talk about how they are the biggest and greatest club in English football having won pretty much everything. However, since I started watching and supporting them, they had not won anything nor really competed for the big trophies.
I had expected them to be winning all the time and the big trophies at that too. At such a young age, you would believe the team almost invincible given the way they were spoken about.
The 2005/06 season was going to be the third in a row without the league title. What made this worse was the fact that Chelsea were now the team to beat and they went on to win the league in the next 2 seasons.
My brother is a Chelsea fan.
Seeing him smile at his team's victories, I couldn't stand it. And to rub it all in, they went on to get 90+ points, in both those seasons.
I began to have second thoughts on whether I had made the right choice in terms of team to support. Where I got to the edge and almost decided that this was it, was in the games against Blackburn Rovers specifically the second at Ewood Park.
We lost the first game against them at Old Trafford early on in the season (1-2) which left us 6th in the table. A tough pill to swallow at that point and at home as well and although I was quite upset, there was still a long way to go in the league and hey, anyone can lose a game of football at times, right?
As the season went by, there were too many dropped points causing us to drop further behind 'The Special One' and Chelsea, who were absolutely on fire. But that game at Ewood Park was, well, I don't know.
The match was a good watch, from a neutral point of view as the score was 4-3,
to Blackburn 😵.
They did the double over us that season in a game that had everything. Goals (obviously), a red card (for Rio Ferdinand) and a hat-trick which belonged to David Bentley. Fair play to him and them though. Well deserved.
Losing this game left us 15 points behind Chelsea leaving it almost impossible to catch them.
Why I was feeling so down and disappointed after these games specifically is because they were games we should have won, they were games where we didn't take our chances, played poorly and deserved to lose, and like I said I had heard that this team was the greatest and the biggest and the most successful yet we had not won anything of note for a few years.
I also said in a previous post that I am a sore loser (still am) but back then, I was a bit extreme and that losing left more than just a sour taste in the mouth especially with all that I have just mentioned about the club. I was just so angry and said things that a wiser head might not have said.
Whether winning these games would have helped us in the title race or not, I don't know but it couldn't have made things any worse.
Thankfully, I have calmed down a bit with age but those games are still difficult for me to look back on.
Obviously I haven't changed teams (if you didn't know). Luckily I didn't because we went on to win the league three seasons in a row after that, the League and Champions League double in 2008, and in the following years, watching my team win absolutely everything from FA Cups to Europa Leagues. Some might say that I am not a true fan for thinking this, but I was really young and what the hell did I know when it came to being loyal to a team.
Moral of the story: patience is a virtue. Things just take time, although 12 years since winning the league is pushing it.