Seriously?If only richy dcl and Pickford were our best players...all 3 have been hugely disappointing this season...pickford perhaps a little bit less than the other 2 but can easily be replaced as he is nowhere as good as he thinks he is...honestly if any of those players wouldnt have been here this season, not sure how much worst we would be in the league...
Without Richy and Pickford this season, we would be 20th right now. Absolutely no question of that IMHO.
You could even argue that Pickford would easily perform better and more consistently if he didn't have a largely poor set of defenders in front of him, and that Richy would produce more goals and assists if there was a functioning midfield working alongside him.
As others have said, we won't get better by selling all our best players. Our approach this summer should be to wave goodbye to the OOC lads, then look to shift the likes of Gomes, Mina, Keane and anyone else at the top end of the pay scale who has not contributed (in comparison to their wages). Then we should invest in mostly younger players on lower wages, and look for one commanding CB and one commanding CM to knit it all together.