On the first part do you mean that you disagree with me on that? James, Godfrey, Allan, Doucoure and obviously Dom were our 5 best players last year by some margin. Digne was the closest but he had a poor season compared to what he can do in my opinion.
I’m not exactly excusing the manager, he should’ve of course done better but I’ve said it before that I can’t blame a manager for players not turning up against the likes of Sheffield United and Fulham, honestly with the “quality” of our squad you should win that game without even needing a tactical plan, only way we lose that is if we’re massively tactically outplayed, which we weren’t, or else the players couldn’t be arsed, which they weren’t.
That’s my opinion and if you disagree with it that’s fine but there’s legitimately 20 people I’d see leave the club before Carlo, certainly not untouchable or without criticism but he can only do so much with what he had.
People will point to 10th and use it as a stick to beat him but he got 59 points, 4 points off Europe and 9 points off Champions League all with this gang of cowards who threw away games throughout the year. Off the top of my head I can’t lay a whole pile of results on the fault of the manager, I can remember multiple to put on individual errors of players though.
Put it this way, beat Sheffield at home, Burnley at home and Fulham at home and we’d be in the Champions League next year. As disgusting as that is to read quite frankly I can’t put any blame on a manager for losing that set of results but those are the margins in football and those margins aren’t won or lost by managers, it’s players.