Yep, should have added that in. It looked like the dressing room had completely lost faith.
It wasn't merely because we finished where we did, although successive bottom-half finishes weren't great, obviously.
The situation with Martinez was untenable, because it didn't look like it would get any better. The players had lost faith and Martinez was too stubborn to adapt his style.
Silva's four months into his tenure and so far I'd say we're right about where we should be albeit we have created enough opportunities to be higher.
Improvements to be made but shouts that 'he should be sacked if he finishes below 8th' or whatever are nonsense.
Not saying he's not open to criticism. I don't understand, for example, why he chose to play out from the back in the way we did at City. You can still play out from the back without splitting the CBs on the byline like we did. We could have used the full-backs and got up the pitch that way, for example.
But in the main it's a work in progress and everyone needs to just take a back seat and appreciate that. It will be frustrating at times and I have no doubt that we'll go through another bad run. But in equal measure I'm confident we'll go on two good runs because that's just the type of team we are at the moment.