The rebuild isn't over though, and isn't close to being concluded. It would have been close if we had been able to purchase the players Ole needed this summer just gone, but this squad as it is, is still 60% of what was needed to complete. Even if those players were purchased, we'd still have been at least two players away from having a complete team and squad.
The gaps and holes in the squad that were there last year and the year before that, are still there now. It's to his and the squad's credit that he has improved a lot of the players he inherited, but as it should be plain to see, a lot of those players are squad players in a proper Utd team. That's not to say they are bad players by any means, but they shouldn't be starting week in and week out. We needed to improve that squad by improving the first XI but it didn't happen. Add in the fact that this team is still a year or two away from fully maturing, then I struggle to think how anyone can feel that the squad rebuild is anywhere near close to completion. I said it after the first Manchester Derby that Ole lost in 2019, this team was a minimum of two years away from being considered as a good team. Ole has done remarkably well to totally rebuild the team from those days to what we are seeing now with a minimal focus on incomings (he's essentially condensed those two years' of transition I was talking about in to one), but the players we had then and those of them who stayed on, have a certain ceiling that they will reach which isn't adequate for where we ultimately want to be
If we are somehow in a title race this year it will be largely because the rest of the league contenders have by and large shat the bed. Not necessarily because we've been amazing. And I say this as a staunch supporter of Ole.
