They were closed off, they were defensive, they were a team of individuals who had retreated into their own personal shells of self-pity and recrimination.
I made mistakes.
I made a lot of mistakes.
I dropped players who were out of form, only to see their replacements play even worse. I changed the formation, I changed the tactics, I tinkered, I experimented, I lurched from one desperate, short-term, and ultimately futile solution to another.
I was a manager who was out of ideas, who was losing control, who was drowning in a sea of his own and his team's collective, and catastrophic failure.
The system was a mirror, a cruel and deeply unforgiving reflection of our decline. The morale indicators, which had been a sea of vibrant, happy, green, were now a uniform, and deeply depressing, red.
