4-2 4-1 who cares...........
Yeah look, we lost an away game to a side in form. It happens, I don’t think it proves anything. Especially when playing 50% of our first choice defence, including a teenager in his first PL season who had been shunted around 3 different positions, and a defender who had proven capable on the left side of a three, but never consistently in a 2.
But just to sketch out my position more clearly, in comparison to lots of people on here I think our squad is actually quite good. I’d say it’s capable of top 6, certainly top 8 at a minimum, and I’d like to think with everything going our way we could be top 5. I think that now, and I thought that last season too. I don’t go for this ‘the squad isn’t good enough’ that seems to be becoming prevailing now, and I didn’t think it last season either.
‘17th is not good enough’ devoid of all context, is of course true. But had Ange stayed on I think we would hand been no where near 17th this year. Something I did not factor in to my own ‘positivity’ on Ange was whether the league move to set pieces would have caught him out more, and whether he would have adapted with different player profiles. So maybe this season wouldn’t have been as better as I expected, but it certainly wouldn’t have been 17th.
I think we should be in the top 6, pretty much always at a minimum. But last season, I was happy to do whatever it took to make sure we ended the season with something, after everything they went through. Anything to reduce the percentage odds of winning the EL for some idea of competing in the PL to end up in 12th or something…not worth it for me.