Man Utd Fans and Reality Gap Syndrome

Article by e-Manchester United Correspondent Noel Hutchinson

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Are you a Manchester United fan? Do you suffer from Reality Gap Syndrome (RGS)?

How often have you heard somebody say something like:

“ Rested? Rested? For the amount of money Wayne Rooney gets paid he should be able to play every day, let alone twice a week!”, or a fan calling a football phone in to say “David Moyes doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing, those substitutions were ridiculous…..” and then go on to explain what Moyes should have done instead, based on the fan’s knowledge of football gained from thirty years in the plumbing trade.

These are examples of what I term Reality Gap Syndrome (RGS).

So, respectively, however much Wayne Rooney gets paid has no effect on his physical status as a human being, it won’t make him capable of running any faster, for any longer or any more often than he has ever been able to. He is an athlete who plays an intense, fast moving contact sport and as such is surrounded by experts who monitor his body to the minutest detail for wear and tear, fatigue and illness to ensure that when he plays he is physically and mentally as near to perfect as it is possible to be. If he needs to rest, he needs to rest. That is Reality.

David Moyes has spent his entire adult life in the professional football trade; as a player and then a manager of Preston North End, then Everton and now at Manchester United. He works with his squad and backroom staff day in day out, he has studied the game across the world for years, he was identified by Sir Alex Ferguson (the most successful manager the game has ever seen) as the right man to take on what many would describe as the biggest and hardest job in world football and he is widely recognised as a very talented manager by all and sundry players, managers and pundits. The idea that somebody who watches football as a hobby has a better grasp of the modern game is more than laughable- it demonstrates a complete lack of self-awareness and a bad case of RGS!

Manchester United fans who are suffering from this debilitating condition should take the following steps to aid their recovery:

1 - Read this; http://e-manchesterunited.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/moyes-in-eye-of-perfect-storm.html - for a reality check on the season so far:

2 - Ask themselves every morning “Am I a football manager”, if the answer is “no, I am an electrician/taxi driver/accountant etc” say to themselves ten times “I know more about my own profession than David Moyes does”

3 - During football phone-ins stand in a field as far away from a phone as possible, (making sure it’s not a football field as that is a workplace environment for other people).

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