Trafford
Donnarumma
Bettinelli
Ait-Nouri
Guehi
Khusanov
Cherki
Gonzalez
Reijnders
Semenyo
Marmoush
11 new players within the space of 12 months. Time is required for this group of players to settle. It's a 50% squad replacement rebuild and the guy has us sat currently 2nd in the Premier League, in another cup semi final, Round 4 of the FA Cup and almost into the KOs of the Champions League.
He's doing an incredible job.
Biggest transition we’ve been in since the 2009-10 season.
Not only are loads of these players new, we have an unusual amount of young players. Back at our Centurions+Fourmidables+Treble best, the vast majority of our squad were aged between 26-32. Now the vast majority of our squad are aged 19-24.
Young players are inconsistent, by default. Even looking at our most accomplished U24 year old - Gvardiol - he’s fucking mint, but at 23 he still makes the odd mistakes. Never mind some of our young lads who aren’t at Gvardiol’s level or are even younger.
Better players iron out the number of mistakes they make as they gain experience. All of: Trafford Khusanov Alleyne Ait-Nouri O’Reilly Lewis Nico Cherki Doku even Savinho and Bobb and and obviously Gvardiol, will all be much better players in three years time (whether they’re still with us or not).
You’d hope young players would be helped along at training and through games in their development by our senior players, but many of our senior players barely feature; like Stones and Aké, our very best player in Rodri, and we’ve not yet seen Kovačić this season… we’ve hardly seen any of them, and when we have they’re struggling coming back from injury. Plus Dias was much improved compared to last season and now he’s out.
I’d argue that we are doing incredibly well to be 2nd in the PL, 3rd in the CL, in the semis of the EFL Cup and hopefully will march on in the FA Cup.
We are the top scorers in England, we have scored 12 more goals than the two teams directly below us. And we’ve just signed another goalscorer. This is a good sign. We’ve also played well in a select number of games, but with our inexperienced and younger chunk of our squad, it’s inevitable we are going to have a select number of terrible performances n’all. And this is not anything to do with Pep losing his touch or us needing to get someone else in… if anything, Pep Txiki+Viana have put together this squad so Pep should see it through to where they hit their prime as a unit.