By the end Carlo was scraping points for us the only way we possibly could, sitting deep and being great on set pieces.
People didn’t like him for it though. That was one of the greatest managers in the world (who will probably pick up another league this season and be dangerous in the CL) and people on here were calling him a useless dinosaur, a has been, who couldn’t coach. They then expect some ‘young progressive’ manager to come in and with the exact same conditions somehow massively overachieve where Ancelotti Allardyce Benitez weren’t able to (let’s ignore that we already tried that with Silva and ruined his career as well)
People need to wake up. The manager is virtually irrelevant at this point. This group of players are a rotting core for the club and have been for ages. I’m not judging any manager of this club until the majority of Coleman Kenny Keane Holgate Digne Davies Gomes Delph Siggurdson Iwobi are out the door. They’ve shown gone and time again that they are nowhere near good enough and they just don’t care either.
No one could get a tune out of them. Koeman had some good form with Lukaku Gueye and Barkley, and it disappeared as soon as they left. Silva did ok when he had Gueye and Zouma and then dropped like a stone when they went, Ancelotti had a good run when he relied on Docuoure Allan James in midfield, as soon as injuries started the form fell of a cliff and he had to revert to the most primitive football we’ve ever seen just to get points.
The theme is the same. This is a terrible squad littered with three or four good players. It has been for about 7 years. If those good players are fit and playing we can come mid table. If they’re not available or we sell them we’re in a bottom half scrap. This has been the pattern time and time again yet people refuse to see it.
‘We should have enough to beat x even with y and z out injured’ - No, no we don’t, without two of our top players (DCL Richarlison Doucoure Allan Mina) we are one of the poorest 11s in the league, and definitely one of the poorest squads.
If we get DCL and Mina abck and the remaining players stay fit then I’ll be confident that Benitez will have us somewhere between 12-8th. If Docuoure goes down again and Allan or Richalrison joins him then we are in a lower table scrap. Changing the manager doesn’t change this at all, he’ll just get a short term bounce if the injured players come back, we’ll sell some in the summer, and then he’ll start like Silva did and we’ll be back here in 12 months.