Defeat at Wolves and time for some optimism, again

I opened the fridge yesterday and found cider and lager, so it became a snakebite Saturday and this morning I'm feeling it. I'm getting too old for this and might soon decide to cycle every day and only drink wine. But it did give me an optimistic outlook on yesterday.

You see, there is little point in taking any other view at the moment because Steven Gerrard is going to get next season and money this summer and he's going to get his chance. And if it doesn't work and let's be clear that is the most likely outcome, we go again.

Dean Smith was never the right man for us when he was appointed because the success he had at Brentford was given to him because of how the Club is setup. I've written about this before and what happened before and after Dean Smith sort of points to that as the case. But Dean Smith was one of ours and I've written about how we'll never likely get that again and why it was important.

Steven Gerrard isn't one of ours and he's got the job because he played the game and managed to win a trophy in Scotland in a two horse race. I've written this before, but if I managed Celtic or Rangers, I'd win something, especially if you gave me nine chances. But Gerrard is ours now and Steven Gerrard was always going to have to take the gamble and we're about the biggest club he could get and we have the biggest potential.

And that is why there is little reason in getting frustrated, because even though all things point to Steven Gerrard leaving at some stage next season, if things don't work out with these new players he's going to get in to fix things or early into the season after even more players can't fix it, we have to hope and we have to believe and we have to have some optimism.

And it's easy for us to have this optimism because of the potential. It's what brings us back.

You see, very few sides win the silverware and I joke about Scotland having two sides, but I'm really joking because it's the same two. The truth is we only have two sides in this League most of the time and for us to become one of them it's a near impossible task and to hope that someone can do it that has never done it before is going past optimism on the scale and heading towards lunacy.

And for the record in case I haven't written it enough times before, I don't believe it's just about bringing in new players. It is about getting the best out of the ones you have and getting them to do things the right way. We've got a squad of internationals and some very talented players that are not playing the right way and a result of that is what we see now.

All the data in the world is only going to help you optimise that part of the game. Football is about something more than that and Steven Gerrard knows this. He knows that the best managers get an extra 1% out of every player and that that is what wins silverware. Yes, having the right players is important but there is not much wrong with what we have now and I'm not convinced the approach he took yesterday is the right one.

But it is our job to be optimistic and there is all this potential so we have to hope it gets better with new players next season.

The manager