Pep is a tactical genius but he isn’t infallible. We all remember his 1st season here. He set his stall out to how he wanted us to play and quickly realised that he didn’t have the players to do it. He didn’t change his philosophy/tactics and his 1st season was a real slog. I feel like we are there again, the problem this time is, he has overseen the decline in the squad, he hasn’t inherited this like he did in 16/17.
We are consistently signing players who are worse than we already have. You don’t maintain/improve standards by doing this. In some cases it’s difficult/nigh on impossible…how do you replace a VK or a David Silva? However, it’s not just these legends.
We have gone from Sane to Sterling to Jack on the LW. Mahrez to half the squad on the RW. Walker/Cancelo to Rico at RB. We tried to improve the midfield with Philips and Nunes. It’s not rocket science that if you keep buying inferior players, whilst your best players simultaneously grow older, a decline occurs.
Pep either needs to change his theory (very unlikely) or he needs to demand that we cease shopping in the reduced aisle, because most of this current crop are either not up to it, or past it.