Very poor performance (as usual against Chelsea) but the reality is the squad has become very average over the past few years. This has been exacerbated by the fact that our transfers since we've moved full time to the stadium, when we've actually spent a pretty good amount of money, has been appalling.
19/20 season we spent £133 million gross (75 net). 20/21 we spent £100 million gross (88 net). This season so far we've spent £60 million gross (£31 million net, though the actual values will be higher as we've technically 'loaned' Romero, even though the transfer fee is still to be paid next summer).
Those are not insignificant sums but the problem is that essentially none of those players have contributed very much at all. Our two biggest signings (N'dombele and Lo Celso for a combined fee of around £100 million) have been crap. That in particular has crippled us.
Bergwijn and Sess for a combined £50 million. Doherty for 15 million, always a terrible idea. Hojbjerg for 15 million.
Reguilon for 27 million has been OK and Royal for 25 million still early to judge.
Clarke for 10 million as a young punt, Rodon for the same. Gil for 23 million. Sarr for 15 million (on loan). Will give them time, though have seen nothing from Clarke to indicate he's a potential PL level player.
Reguilon has been pretty good, though I'm not sure he's been as good as I thought he would be. Still too early to judge Royal and some of the punts (and they're all young at least). Berg has scored some important goals and PEH has been all action I guess. Romero has been good when he's played but injured on international duty.
In reality though, for basically 300 million gross expenditure over 3 seasons (more than almost all clubs in world football can afford, particularly without rich backers), only Reguilon has really definitively improved the starting 11. Some of the rest are good for the squad (PEH, Berg), some still punts at varying levels of oh crap this may not work out and some of them have contributed so little.
That's the unfortunate reality. Levy gets a lot of justified criticism for not spending but since we've gotten the stadium revenue, we've spent. A lot. We've just spent it exceedingly poorly.
We need a better structure in place.
The squad needs a major overhaul and its going to be painful. Though I still think we've got a good chance of top 4 this season because of Conte.