100% it isn’t all down to the coach. And I agreed that finishing top half this year would be a decent achievement. You don’t go from 17th to 4th or 5th in the league. It very, very rarely happens even allowing for the extenuating circumstances.
However, I think there was a near unanimous belief that our finish last year was an anomaly attributable mainly to the fact we prioritized the Europa League. The vast majority of people expected a big improvement on last year's league campaign and didn’t expect to be in a relegation fight. That was certainly my view. I guess you could say that injuries played a big part last season and this but I’d still say we’ve underachieved hugely. And, at this point, we have a good chunk of our squad back albeit, admittedly, the combination of Kudus, Deki and Maddison being out does leave a big creative gap but this is pretty much it for the season (Bentancur is probably the only notable one to come back?).
So, my belief is that this team is underachieving and just needs that kick start to pick up enough points to get us out of trouble. I had hoped RdZ might provide that and the noises being made by the players seemed positive but yesterday was very disappointing. Of course, RdZ may well still prove to be the difference maker. I believe that he will but I’m not sure what I’m basing it on. If I take yesterday as a taster for the next 6 games, I’d have to say that all my assumptions about why we finished 17th and are currently 18th are wrong and we really are that bad. If that’s the case, GHod help us all.
