I very much agree with the bolded sentence. But it also makes that very difficult when lots of posters just conflate what's gone wrong in a given game with what they think is wrong with OGS, or the team. There's no balance to it. You get something in one game and people point to that and the fact it's been a problem in 5 or 6 other games and think this proves that's how this team is, and just ignore that it hasn't been like that in 50 other games.
But in any case, that's a futile debate. I wish we could just re-start. Accept we've just stepped out of one phase - rebuild - and are now in another, where things have to come together, and where we can recalibrate expectations too. During the course of this season, very good things need to happen - this is when all that investment and all that painstaking rebuilding of the squad and club culture should start yielding tangible results.
Early returns seem to be some things are in place, some aren't. Maybe we still need a little patience, there are many new pieces in and a lot of impact to sort out. Maybe we need to remember that the results of getting Ronaldo maybe cannot be reasonably expected to match how good it feels to have gotten Ronaldo. But, we are no longer talking about a patience of seasons, but of weeks, or at most months. This does need to come together in a clearer way than it has so far. I think OGS has that view too. Last year, this felt like a team that was becoming great, staking a claim to be back among the PL elite. This year, it needs to provide a sense that it is back, undisputably.
It is both fairer and more relevant to judge OGS on his results now than it was 6 or 18 months ago. I just wish people would do so without drawing stuff they saw occasionally during the past two seasons into it. How he does with this squad is what he should be judged on.