The funny thing is, Koeman spent most of last year blaming all of our flaws on Martinez, sly digs about fitness, not being able to defend, etc. I even recall one instance when he criticised the balance of the squad. I cant remember the exact quote, but it was something along the lines of the squad was made of left backs and wingers (?).
Well, there can be absolutely no blame attached to Martinez now, he has dispatched almost all of his squad and assembled his own expensive one in its place, so unless backwards Baines can still use Martinez training methods as something to cowardly hide behind for his own performances and our total lack of ideas, I genuinely don't know what Koeman is gonna do for excuses. Team needs jelling together, didn't get the striker he wanted, etc... All things that were a direct consequence of spending over £230m in 1 year seemingly without any plan as to what team he is going to play when he got them.
Sigurdsson may very well be a good player, but I can't for the life of see where he fits into this team. But after spending 6 weeks and £45m to get him, you would think Koeman would. And that's after he spent over £30m to buy 2 other players to play in his preferred position, and another £8m on another after he finally landed him.
That defence today, including the 2 DMs he insists on playing, even though the fullbacks don't go forward, was made up of 6 Koeman signings, and 1 left over from Moyes. Keane and Pickford are the only 2 to come out of it with any credit whatsoever, and Pickford got lobbed, on his line, from 30+ yards. If that was Joel, he'd have been crucified.
And Sandro... I said to my brother, can you imagine if we had paid the actual going rate for him? Fair enough, it might be too early to judge, so I won't be too harsh on him, but he has got a steep learning curve to say the least. And he needs to stop with the theatrics already, it's embarrassing.
It's gonna be a long season.
