Resilience

Its a word being used to describe mourinho's united at the moment. the 0-0 at liverpool, the 1-0 over spurs. Im my opinion Man u should be good enough as a club to dominate teams like liverpool and spurs (at home). its a sign of their decline imo that they have to rely on this side of the game now. however it does prompt the question, where is our resilience? When I hear this word it draws up visions of a rugged, we will outfight you, we will not let you score attitude as a team. You have your midfielders piling back to form a shield in front of the defence, relentless running and closing down, and defenders who block, get the first header, and simply refuse to be beaten. These are not things that you 'buy', they don't cost money, it all comes from attitude, and that comes from an ethos from the manager who instills this in the training ground and in turn on the pitch. Even those players who aren't cut out for the battle side of things, you see them chasing down balls, pressing higher up the pitch, putting pressure on them constantly. This is something that is distinctly lacking in our game. For me it should be the first thing, the first foundation for every team, the 'we will not be beaten' attitude. it makes teams more defensive minded sure, and you can go completely that way and be successful (Burnley etc) but yesterday you could see it coming all 2nd half, this was not a team. whether acting on Bilic's failure to tell them to bolt up the back door or simply failing to do it when told, we lacked resilience. Why? We;ve had teams with Billy Bonds, Julien Dicks, Steve Lomas, Stuart Pearce etc….players who do not buckle, do not put in sloppy performances, but instead put body on the line and love nothing more to shut the opposition down. In our squad the only one of this mould is Collins and he hardly plays. Call in resilience, call it backbone, call it what you like but our team is distinctly lacking in it. You can say we've bought players without any, arnautovic etc. but for me Noble, Antonio, Reid have shown it in the past…so why not now? is it because they lost faith in the manager? Yes we came from 2 down against spurs but thats one match in 10 or so and immediately after we revert to type. for me the manager instills this into the team ala allardyce, dyche, mourinho. it becomes the basis of everything else, the simple know how to close teams out, to defence ruggedly and efficiently as a team….ive seen none of it this season and can't recall it last season after several thumpings. I don't know about the rest but this is something i want in the team. even Pulis does this. I could never imagine a Pulis team putting in such half hearted shifts for entire halves or matches. Laziness in training? Poor set up tactically? Players without fight? whatever the case, its not good enough.