Dribble
Well-Known Member
I think things are a bit more nuanced than that, albeit I agree with several of your points. I believe complacency more than faith in the squad has been our shortcoming, but not in the way it may seem.
Pep prefers a small elite squad. We'd repeated ManUre's historic treble & it's at that point where we should've gone big in the transfer market imo. Not a wholesale replacement of that squad, but in terms of succession planning.
Walker was still the best RB in the world imo. KDB was still in the top 3 midfielders in the world. Bernardo has always been criminally underrated. From the outside looking in, the quietly effective Rodri may not have been our best player, but most City fans recognised him as by far our most important. He's the glue that gells the rest together.
Stones had become probably the best footballing CB in the world at that point. Grealish began to make sense. He wasn't the Jack of Villa, but Pep had turned him into a wide central midfielder which allowed us to strangle teams to death with possession.
As a No 8, Gundog moved seemlessly between creating opportunities, supporting the attack & fortifying the defence when needed, & during that treble season he excelled. Add a young & increasingly influential Foden to the mix, with the Striking Viking & Alvarez, & that's some fuckin team!
HOWEVER, beyond those players (excluding Aké, Akanji, Dias & Ederson), there was a clear drop off in quality & most crucially, experience.
Now to the complacency. No one doubted the world class qualities of these players, but where we royally fucked up was not to consider the hand of ole Father Time. Only death escapes him. What was a delayed evolution, is now becoming a need for a desperate revolution, & that's on us!
As many of us feared, all it would take was a long-term injury to Rodri, & for age & injuries to creep up on the older members of our treble winning team, & the perfect storm was created. This is where I separate Pep's faith in his players from the complacency of thinking the perfect storm would never happen before our evolution commenced. Well it well & truly has, & we've been caught with our sky blue y-fronts down.
For whatever reason, we never legislated for playing 60+ games a season, with essentially a world class senior squad of 17 players, where half of them are either approaching 30, or in their early to mid-30s. It was a car crash waiting to happen imo!
Reports suggests that Pep now accepts he needs a bigger squad. WTF! \0/
HOWEVER, another thought crossed my mind regarding Txiki. We've learned he wanted to retire 5 years ago, but extended his stay until this summer. During that period, City monitored & identified his replacement, & by all accounts we've been in close contact with Viana & Sporting for nearly two years regarding our interest.
Now this is purely me speculating, but could our lack of major movement in the transfer market be down to not wanting to fill the squad with Txiki's preferred signings, leaving Viana with little to do for the next 3-4 seasons? It's like clubs knowing the manager is leaving, so being reluctant to saddle the new manager with new players from the previous regime on long contracts & big wages, in case they're not the types he wants?
Reading between the lines, it's not beyond the realms of possibility that this could've been the case. Unfortunately, the perfect storm of losing Rodri, crippling injuries, older players not having the physicality they did 2-3 years ago & us not having the experienced quality in reserve, has caught up with us overnight.
All it took was for a long-term injury to Rodri, for the dominoes to come tumbling down. This is all on City. I seriously hope major lessons have been learned.
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