No, I mean from the whole squad. The best players make up the XI, but the others has to be at least close to performing consistently as subs or in games where they start.
I'm surely not expecting any kind of consistency from sub players. The main players who play week in week out should be always performing at a standard of 7/10 every week though.
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Like I said, Pogba, Sanchez and Zlatan are the only players we've signed that'd be considered marketable and we really needed a mid and a CF when we signed Pogba and Zlatan. We've never really spent money on average players, just players that we expected to be - in your own words, 'good and consistent', but they ended up being average for us. It is no coincidence that Pogba and Zlatan have been two of our best signings in over five years.
Why are you persisting that Pogba has been a success so far ? He surely did nothing to justify his 89m price or making him the most expensive player in the world. If he performs in this season as the last 2 then pushed for a move to Barca, he'll be considered a big flop regarding expectations and price tag. At least Zlatan was free.
No spending money on the likes of Blind, Rojo, Darmian, Schneiderlin, Lindelof ..etc was simply a waste of money and didn't help us in the run. If we actually had a plan these past 6 years, the rebuild could have been done in 2 years max, but we were chopping and buying without a clue about what we need.
They never really relied that much on Coutinho compared to us and Pogba. He was just a cog in a well-oiled machine. The fact they sold him and didn't even replace him, but kept going proves so.
They relied on him and his long range shooting heavily. Think we had a previous discussion about that. He unlocked loads of games for them.
Do you think any of our current midfielders can do as good a job as Pogba? What if his replacement flops just like our other signings? We'd be a worse team for that.
He has higher quality than the rest of our midfield, that's assured and no one is denying that or that he's class on his day. The problem he never shows it week in week out and it's actually his own problem, no one else. In the past 2 years almost everyone was blamed for his inconsistency, his midfield pairs, manager, Zlatan, Lukaku, the wingers, almost everyone was blamed for him not performing consistently. It's his problem.
Surely if he performs consistently and reached the expectations put on him when he was signed, I'll keep him any time but if he's still as inconsistent as the previous 2 years coming the end of the season, I'll prefer to move on. 3 years of inconsistency are too much for me.
That's on the manager. Deschamps played him in a two and he still excelled.
We have signed just two midfielders since Pogba, with ?three moving on. So it's not like we're just signing them because of Pogba, we needed them. Pogba is not the reason almost all our players look out of depth in our non-system. Most of the top teams out there play a 433, and if it doesn't fit the players, which one will?
During the previous 2 years almost everyone didn't stop telling us the reason of him not performing to his best is that he's shite in 2 men midfield and needs 2 defensive midfielders with him and he should stick on the left midfield of 4-3-3 to get the best out of him. Any new signing for the midfield is supposed to get the best out of Pogba. That's has been the most used excuse for his inconsistency here.
I don't think 4-3-3 fits anyone bar Pogba. We don't have real wingers to build the play on and Lukaku is almost always left isolated without someone close to him, and his holding up and building of the play is inconsistent to drop deep like Zlatan.
But if we reverted to 4-2-3-1 again or any formation with 2 men midfield and he ended up playing poorly, the full blame will be thrown on his midfield pair again.
It's his problem.
So do every other player tbh. Stick any player in this our team and it'd take a miracle for him to even maintain his level.
We didn't buy him to be part of the machine because we were already shite at this time. We bought him to build the team around him. His inconsistency is preventing us from doing that so far.
So if he's not the kind of player that needs to be a clog in a machine rather than a player you build a team around, maybe part companies ? He goes to a machine like Barca where he'll be in shadow of Messi and I'm sure he'll do well while we get players that make us more balanced.
Anyway the view will be more clear coming the end of the season regarding his performance and effect on the team and if he's willing to leave himself or not.
You surely know that it's the best for me like the rest for him to stay, become a star and plays a consistent performance week in week out helping us winning trophies. I have defended him a lot last 2 years even during his weak patches I never said I wanted him to go but to just improve.
Problem is this is 3rd year. I'm starting to lose faith.
