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If patience is a virtue, football fans are going straight to hell. And among the first to take their seats in Charon’s boat will be a small but vocal contingent who follow Adelaide United.
Really, though, who can blame them at the moment? It must be excruciating to watch your side grappling a new tactical approach with approximately the same success a toddler would have grappling a mountain lion.
Eight rounds into the new season and the Reds are only spared bottom place on the ladder by a Wellington side that has played one game less and a Melbourne Heart side that seems intent on redefining mediocre on a weekly basis.
This season was always going to be the start of a long-term project for Adelaide; a pain-first, gain-later attempt to ensure generations of future South Australian talent will grow up with ‘keep the ball’ tattooed on the inside of their eyelids.
But already, the restlessness has come to the fore.
The fans are increasingly tiring of the struggle, despite the pot of gold they are told waits at the end of the rainbow.
The Adelaide media is baying for blood. Style over substance? Performances over results? Bah! Rubbish.
Patience is indeed a virtue. Cliche also stipulates that virtue is its own reward, fortune favours the brave and good things come to those who wait.
Do they, though? How do you really know?
That, really, is the core issue – how can you be absolutely sure all the hard work and suffering will be worth it in the end?
That’s when you need faith in the powers that be.
In this instance, that’s Josep Gombau, the man who has the most control over Adelaide’s destiny.
Trouble is the Spaniard is still, realistically, an unproven senior coach – titles in the Hong Kong domestic league, with respect, are not proof positive of one’s true ability to spread the Catalan gospel.
His Barca background buys him time. But forgive the fans if they’re a little turned off. They’ve been sold down the river before.
To Gombau’s credit he talks the talk, and has the requisite cojones to push on with the job while everyone else is throwing stones.
Not since Ange Postecoglou has the A-League experienced such bloody single-mindedness, and it must be soothing for those fans on board with Gombau to watch him beat away the haters.
The message has been to sit tight, because the good times are coming. Is that too much to ask?
Well, it certainly is a sizeable ask. Fans will roll with a long-term plan only if they’re convinced by whoever’s leading it and if they can see progress on the way.
Gombau doesn’t tick the first box and Adelaide’s form hasn’t exactly ticked the second emphatically, either. Hence the anxiety.
In senior football, results are currency. Winning breeds confidence. Losing scares away fans and sponsors. Defeat is a difficult stench to get rid of, and money doesn’t grow on trees.
Of course, Postecoglou famously asked to be a judged a year after his appointment, and look what that did for Brisbane.
But he needed less time to turn Melbourne Victory from a deadset rabble into a fearsome attacking unit.
Tony Popovic? He did it on the run.
To be fair to Gombau, he’s had eight games. And as Frank Farina and Gary van Egmond have shown, a few good results can change everything very quickly. Shame he’s not focused on them.
He deserves to see out the season at the very least – and with the club having gone all in on him, that will happen, barring another boardroom meltdown. You can never rule that out with United.
But the pressure is rightfully intensifying, because this start has not been good enough. A measure of scepticism in his methods is not only justified, it’s healthy.
If he wants his tenure to be a little more comfortable in the interim, his men need to provide more evidence this project is on the right track.
After all, the coach himself believes the problem is not the quality of the players. It’s that the old dogs haven’t learnt the new tricks yet.
A convenient excuse for Gombau, perhaps, but it’s not so convenient for the fans who still have to pay a full-price ticket to watch a team for whom winning – according to the coach – is not the number one objective.
It’s a rough pill to swallow, but the pharmacists who gave it to you own the club.
What else can you do but strap yourself in and see where it takes you?
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