First things first.
The culprits for all the trouble we're facing are the senile old man Tixi and Pep Guardiola himself, to the extent that he has had an influence. All the chaos began after winning the treble, with a disastrous transfer window (only one player brought in) and the contract extension for Walker, which is even worse. If we had any sense and luck, Walker would have been Bayern’s problem by now, not ours. Forget all his current shortcomings as a player—he’s a rarely unintelligent person, and that’s an even bigger problem than him losing his speed.
After the first two culprits, injuries come into play, which we can’t control, but we’re still back to those two because we have no backups.
The problems are so challenging that even if the club were ultra-active in the next two transfer windows (winter and summer), we still wouldn’t have a clear squad situation:
- Walker – Old, slow, the biggest defensive liability, opponents target him and exploit it to the maximum against us.
- Stones – Injury-prone, a player you simply can’t rely on.
- Gundogan – It’s pure luck that he has just one more year on his contract, and hopefully, he won’t be an issue next season. He’s old, slow, and a shadow of the player he used to be.
- Lewis – Probably the most overrated talent ever, and Pep has had many like him throughout his career: think of players like Rode, Gaudinho, Højbjerg, Krkić, Tello, Rafinha, Cuenca, etc. I actually think some of these players have had a more successful career than Lewis will ever have. Sorry, kid, but the maximum role he can realistically play is the one that Sergio Gomez had.
- Bernardo – He’s a dead player now. Many have already said everything that needs to be said about him here. He’s been unusable for 18 months, even though he’s not exactly old yet. The 30,000 minutes he’s played under Pep have taken their toll. He’s lost his speed, his sprint, his dribbling. He passes the ball backwards, has no crossing ability, his pressing is useless, and he loses the ball more than ever.
