Motherwell Then United

[Attilio]

Two prime examples of how quickly things can go tits up for relatively successful teams at our level.

Comfortably top 6 for both teams for 3 or 4 years and then nosedive to the bottom of the table.

Were these teams over-achieving in those years and were simply found out, or are there more subtle reasons for these falls?

United are looking just as crap if not crappier than Motherwell did last season and I can't believe it is as simple as losing Armstrong/Double Barrel/Ciftci.  Or is it?

Is there an element of 'managers losing the dressing room'?

[CW 90+3 02/05/16]

United have been comfortably top 6 for around 8 years, not 3 or 4.

They were also genuinely challenging for a treble in January/February this year and the 12 months before that were playing the best football in decades and racking up 4-0 wins for fun.

Ever since they sold the 2 boys to Celtic on transfer deadline day at the end of January, I've never seen a fall for grace like it.

Looking terrible for them even though it's early days.

Ah well. at least they didn't laugh at us in all the years we were sh!te and all the times we went down or missed promotion or went in to admin.

[Prince Buster]

Ah well. at least they didn't laugh at us in all the years we were sh!te and all the times we went down or missed promotion or went in to admin.

That's right PRD, they were always so nice and polite to us in our times of trouble.

I hope karma smiles as it should on them; I heard it's a b***h though.

[Spiritof62]

Sooner or later, selling your best players catches up with you.

To their credit, in the past they have done well to replace players sold on, however the current batch of youngsters are not a patch on their predecessors.

I thought they looked very poor yesterday and Hearts strolled the game with no sign that the Dabs got the expected new manager bounce.

With 50+ players on their books, it's obvious many will need to be shipped out before replacements come in.

Financially it must be a nightmare.

[Count Duckula]

Can't keep on selling your top players year on year and not expect a decline eventually.

Fact of life in Scottish football that you need to sell to survive.

Fully expect us to suffer same fate as it comes to almost every club apart from Celtic and Rangers (rip).

The United situation has massive parallels with Hibs. Both brought through numerous young players to sell on for massive fees. Both managed to win a trophy during those years. Here's hoping it ends up with the same result........relegation for the filth!