There's this weird, self-hating thing going on with Kagawa that I just don't get. A lot of our fans seem to think we're beneath him, that somehow we need to change entirely to accommodate him. It's really odd.
Its not that hard to understand really. In a nutshell: our football has been a bit dull in recent seasons; Dortmund play really exciting football that many would like to see here; Kagawa was one of the creative forces behind a very exciting Dortmund team. Ergo, we would like to see Kagawa help us metamorphose into a really exciting, incisive, creative, potent attacking force.
I dont buy into all this business about our players being too static or whatever else. I dont know if Kagawa can or ever will recreate his form at Dortmund for us. I dont know if his "top level" is higher than Rooney's or not, and I dont advocate breaking the team up and recreating it in his image. But I think there is a case to be made for returning to the drawing board to think about how we are going to play, not to fit Kagawa in but to get the most out of everybody. And as for Kagawa specifically, I find it frustrating when we buy someone with a load of potential and then dont use him properly or give him a real chance to show what he can do. In this instance it is clear enough what happened and there is nobody to blame particularly, it is just a tough set of circumstances - for Kagawa at least. (The working theory, that RVP arrived and scuppered the intended plan, to play him at 10 and Rooney at 9.) But that doesnt make it any less frustrating.
This self flagellation thing - the "self-hating" thing - it is just people look at our football and they feel faintly dissatisfied with it. Even when we are winning things. There is a whole different philosophical debate about this, in the sense that I cant really remember a time since i joined this place when there hasnt been a vocal section of fans, even if a minority, criticising our football - even at times that are later viewed as glory days. People look back now to when Ronaldo was here and we won the CL as an era of amazing football but at the time it wasnt so unequivocal, from what I remember anyway. There is always a rose tint on hindsight. Having said that, rightly or wrongly in the here and now many people feel our football should be more attractive, and some of those people feel that Kagawa is the kind of player who can deliver that. I have no idea if this is right, but I would like to give it a go. Having said that I am well aware of the dilemma of how to fit in all our best players without compromising somewhere with people's preferred positions.
"A lot of our fans seem to think we're beneath him." I can only speak for myself, and I dont think this really applies to me, but to go back to my first para, I dont think we are beneath him, I think we are beneath ourselves, beneath our own expectations of where we should be and what we are capable of. This isnt about results, it is about styles of football. And I would like to see whether Kagawa is capable of lifting us.
Anyway, all this is rather missing the point in our current situation, arguing about sexy football is what you do when you are winning boring, at the moment we have much bigger problems than worrying about how to accommodate Kagawa or play more attractive football.
