Needs massive patience from our support this season. And, after the last two games, we really didn’t show much of that and were too unrealistic and demanding of this team.
Even if we’d had a decent 8-week pre-season with 6 games against decent sides, I wouldn’t expect to hit the ground running with this squad.
This squad has many players with no experience of challenging for a title neither with us or with anyone else and only played anything between 3 and 20 games for us or are just young lads nowhere near their prime (Marmoush Cherki Savinho Nico Khusanov Ait-Nouri O’Reilly Trafford Reijnders Bobb fall into most or all of those categories).
Even from those who have experienced winning a title with us, some weren’t key players when we have won them (Doku+Lewis), or they’re injury prone (Aké+Stones), coming back from bad injuries (Rodri) or are absent with an injury (Gvardiol, Foden, Kovačić) or are coming back from under-par seasons (Dias+Foden, even Haaland compared to his previous two).
… all with having next to no pre-season.
Quality and experience has dropped massively across the squad. In a few years we might well be back up there, but this season is going to be a season of building towards that, integrating loads of new players, hoping to see the progression of the younger and inexperienced to the PL players to eventually become a higher quality side.
This isn’t like 2017-18 where we added Ederson Danilo Walker Mendy Laporte and BSilva to the top quality experience of Kompany Fernandinho DSilva DeBruyne and Agüero with exciting goal contributing youngsters like Sterling Sané and Jesus… this is more like building a team like we did between 2009-2011.
This isn’t a title winning squad yet and we need to get real a bit as a fanbase.
