Quote Originally Posted by reg View Post
No, I disagree. We *have* escaped your logic; we are fourth in the league, not bottom. Even at this late stage and despite everything we could still win the title.

Of course, players are human! However, professionals give up the right to use human factors as an excuse; they do their job, they win or they lose and that's it. Then they get ready for the next one. That's why they are professionals. They don't care about outside factors.

And that is true for Curly's wife's brain surgeon as it is for me and Arsene Wenger or the nice lady who's just been here to fix a minor problem with a car.
We can only be said to have escaped it if you believe that this team has performed to the utmost of its ability and that fourth is the best it could have expected.

But I don't think that is your argument, is it? You believe we have underperformed and refuse to accept that the poisonous behaviour of our supporters may be any sort of factor in that underperformance on the grounds that professionals shouldn't allow the fact that the people who are supposed to be on their side are instead consistently booing them. And if you refuse to accept that, the logic dictates that you don't believe there is or should be such a thing as home advantage.

Effectively, you are arguing that among professionals, there should be no such thing as morale. You seem to think that anyone getting paid to do a job will do the job the same way regardless of human factors. I would have thought you of all people would understand the importance of morale to performance.