Let’s be honest we haven’t played to our usual standards all season, we’ve got away with results that could have gone differently.
The hierarchy of the club need to take responsibility for where we currently are with the squad and performances.
There seems to have been no forward planning for two summers now, but last summer was very, very poor. Savinho really needs a season to get settled and his head round the league and what Pep wants and we only picked up Gundogan because he asked and Barca needed to offload.
We allowed Alvarez to leave and did nothing to replace him hoping that Bobb would be good cover for Haaland. That turned out well, and Haaland will break down eventually I expect.
However, we make a loads of cash on Alvarez so that’s ok.
We started this season with a squad who our top 10 performing players had played 60+ games the previous season, then nearly the whole squad went to international tournaments.
We have several ageing players who now are struggling with injury regularly, De Bruyne has now had 3 continuous season plagued by injury, not a game or two but big chunks of the season.
Walker’s decline has been noticeable over two seasons.
Stones like De Bruyne is missing multiply games regularly over the last couple of seasons.
Grealish and Doku can’t stay fit and missed games last season as well as now.
Foden is picking up injuries and got totally demoralised by his England experience this summer and is still suffering for it.
We haven’t addressed a back-up to Rodri for, well ever. No wonder he finally got knackered for the season.
Nunes wouldn’t be playing if everyone was fit and Lewis shouldn’t be going game after game, but needs must.
The powers that be, decided that we didn’t need to strengthen when let’s be honest we could have done with 3 starters to challenge the other players and expand the squad.
One common factor is all our regular injured players go to every international call up, even to friendly games, and often come back injured. Ake, Dias, Walker, Stones, Foden and Grealish to name a few this season alone.
I wish our senior ageing players would support the club that pays wages not playing in pointless internationals, and the club should be advising they are not available.
I have faith and if we get any trophy this season it will probably be our greatest achievement.
I do wonder if the lack of investment has anything to do with the 115 charges and possible penalties if we lose the case.