Aye, the midfield is an issue, but nowhere near as bad as last season. Still not perfect, but improving. Low hanging fruit and such. Still.
The attack, however, has become progressively worse. As you state, we create chances and subsequently waste them. The whole point of the game is to win and we cannot do so without goals.
We can blame the midfield, coach, stars, injuries, the moon, you, me, everything in between and the rest of Miranda July's impressive oeuvre, but our attack is whack and you know it.
No point sacking Bald to appoint another manager who can't make Razzmatazz prolific, or Zirkzee another expensive Ineos chemical spill.
Complete fallacy;
We are not creating good chances, unless Rashford, Garnacho or Amad run past 3+ players we create nothing, and then it is either them shooting or a cross fired across the area too hard to be capitalised on, there is no point having striker in ETH's system because they are just not utilised unless playing in a 10 position, where he already has at least one midfielder operating.
There is attacking talent and creativity in this squad, but the system and tactics employed by ETH are stunting this, or are we saying that Eriksen, Casemiro, Bruno, Rashford, Mount and Garnacho who have all shown decent ability to create assists and score throughout their careers suddenly cannot do it? or that Hoijlund, Amad and Zirkzee who have likewise shown this albeit in lesser leagues are incapable, most teams outside of the top 4 do not have half the creative talent we have, but the system is junk, absolute trash, I could set a team up to neutralise it and exploit the defence and I have never managed a football team before.
The big difference between a manager like ETH and a good manager, or even great manager, is that ETH has a system, maybe a variation or 2 but a system and he basically sticks players into and expects it to work, a good manager or better looks at the players they have and moulds their system and tactics to get the maximum they can out of the team as individuals and as a whole,
Look back to SAF, he constantly changed systems and tactics to suit his players and the opposition, and despite popular belief SAF did not have 22 superstars, players we would look on with scorn in the current set up like Fortune, Cruyff, Johnsen, Wallace, Beardsmore, Blomqvist, Smith, and there are dozens more, are they really better players than those we have in this squad, no not at all but SAF didn't ask them to do something that they were not capable, he just got the best out of them, that is why even in his last season he was able to get a title out of a squad that was certainly not the best in the league.
Look at Pep even he has always promoted ticca-tacca shite but how he has done it has changed team to team, squad to squad, when Silva left, when De Bruyne is injured he changes the system, he does it in game, Barcelona played different to Bayern, and likewise both different to City, why? because Pep has different players and the opposition in the league is different, if he picked up the Barcelona model and dropped it into the city team next game it would not work, or at least as well as his current tactics do .
ETH has just tried to pick up what he did with Ajax and plonk it down at OT, squeezed the players he has into his vision without any regard to whether it is getting the best out of them or whether it will work, trust the process, if I keep doing the same thing time after time sooner or later it must work!! oh and then occasionally he will revert to the system he inherited Ole-ball and lo and behold will pull a result out of the bag.
I am confident that any manager we could pick, even a dinosaur like Warnock could get this team back to basics, playing to strengths, tighten up the midfield and defence and get us scoring more goals, ok long term we want more, but for anyone to suggest that ETH is getting the maximum out of this group of players and therefore changing him would be pointless is simply ludicrous.
One thing is certain sure even if ETH somehow got his model working for a season it would not provide sustainable success, ETH too inflexible, and that is the biggest issue, opposing managers can easily set up against us, they know in advance that we will attack only down the flanks or on the break so can block those areas off.... nothing is coming through the middle unless it is from a defender because our midfielders are too advanced, the opposition know they can play out because of the huge gap between our midfield and defence, so there is always an out ball, add in that the right wing will always be open because for some reason Dalot is playing almost in the opposition penalty area.... even if you had 11 perfect players the system is still there to be exploited, you cannot get 9 out of 10 performances from each player each match, and that is what you need for ETH's system to stand any chance, it is a chimera of other systems and as a result has massive holes, which for some reason he cannot see, despite every pundit in world football pointing them out.
