Genuine question this but I suspect I already know the answer. Why are you so determined the RS are on 'roids' (despite being absolutely crap) but not the likes of City and Arsenal (good)? It's just a proper weird hook to hang your hat on.
I’ve said in the past I think City have doped, I’d not be surprised if Arsenal are doing it now. The pattern is exactly the same of unbelievable consistency not seen before and the same players every week avoiding injury. The swings in form are just too big.
You expect major upturns in form when things change like a new manager comes in, or massive investment into a team (like when Chelsea and City started investing heavily). What I don’t understand is how similar groups of players under the same manager can increase 20 plus points on a season hitting consistency levels barely seen in PL history, only to then drop back the following season. Players coming from nowhere to be world class, before then being horrendous for 6 months before then becoming world class again.
City when they started investing looked like what performance improvement should look like, season on season getting better and better as more players arrived until they finally reached the summit. Arsenal will probably be 90 plus points this season, they were 69 last season. Jesus hasn’t even been fit all season and whilst Zinchenko is a great player he doesn’t get you 20 plus points by himself. Equally a Liverpool team good enough to post 98 and 99 points in consecutive seasons shouldn’t then be poor enough to collapse just because they had a few injuries at CB.
I thought the 19/20 season by City was suspicious, they’d just posted 100 points; then 99, but next thing is they’re losing to Norwich Wolves and the dreadful United and Arsenal teams they’d been thumping previously. Then all of a sudden the same players just crank out two perfect seasons off the back of that.
Tbh I’m still suspicious of City. Aguero, Silva, Toure, Fernandinho, Kompany were world class, most of them were known to be class before they got to City and they were all class under Mancini Pellegrini and Pep. They should have been absolutely irreplaceable. Instead Pep brings in a load of players that tbh I’d not really heard of before they got to City. Dias Laporte Rodri Bernardo Jesus etc. and next minute they’re playing football that’s probably even better than what Silva and Aguero could manage. Now i know Pep is a genius coach, no denying that, but I just find it odd that he just went and found replacements for legendary generational players, half of whom most people hadn’t even heard of, and the performance level just didn’t dip, in fact it got better. I watched De Bruyne at Goodison for Wolfsburg and there was absolutely nothing there to say he would ever go on to be the best midfielder in the world. He was contained in both games by an extremely average Everton team.
World class players, the true world class players, stay world class regardless. Messi, Benzema, Modric, Ronaldo etc. Most of them were identified at a young age as an absolute prodigy (not Modric admittedly) and then have maintained those levels year after year. Madrid have done the same now with Vinicius, and PSG with Mbappe, Barcelona with Neymar before. They identify the true world class talent extremely early. Regardless of their teammates, regardless of their teams, regardless of their manager, club football or international football they perform at a world class level. On the contrary I get suspicious about players that had never been world class and suddenly become the best in the world for a period in their mid 20s before having these odd seasons when they drop down to being average again. Salah was according to lots of commentators better than Messi 5 years ago yet a 37 year old Messi is now miles better than Salah, Firmino is washed up at 31 despite having been ‘the best false 9 in the world’, Coutinho is on Villa’s bench and TAA has gone from being the best RB in the world to people questioning whether he actually knows how to defend.
Doping is rampant in nearly all sports so it’s just naive to think the richest sport in the world isn’t rife with it. There can be an argument that’ says ‘they’re all probably doing it’ but still doesn’t make it right. I’d be absolutely amazed if in the course of time it doesn’t come out that Jürgen and Pep were both at it in this period.
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