It’s clear this is one of those ‘transitional’ seasons teams have on occasion when the old guard are being phased out, and a new team is in the process of being built.
This has clearly disrupted/damaged our team morale, with players not knowing whether they’re part of the future or not - and the squad is starting to fracture. Players aren’t showing up as professionally in training, and don’t have the drive and team spirit of previous seasons.
In this context, I’d say Pep is doing a pretty incredible job keeping us in touching distance in the League, and winning games when he clearly can’t select certain players who seemingly are fit - but aren’t in the right headspace to play.
The Rags have been ‘transitioning’ for the last 10 years, and have been laughably shit pretty much the whole time. When Klopp has a transitional season, the Cult end up miles away from competing.
It’s a mark of Pep that, despite all the shit going on behind the scenes, we’re still putting serious pressure on an Arsenal side that’s having a frankly astonishing season by anyone’s measure.
We’re lucky to have him!