A team that won a title>a team that finished in an unimpressive 3rd place and lucky 2nd place.
Ole was an issue but the true weaknesses and quality of the squad was exposed. We've also lost almost 10 players and counting including 2CMs our weakest position and done nothing about it.
That's without looking at the fact that we only have one good RB(AWB is horseshit), an archaic GK, zero depth on the wings outside Sancho/Rashford and questionable CF options with a 37yr old man child that's trying to leave and being toxic in the process
Ten Hag is a talented manager but he's already being set up to fail IN HIS FIRST YEAR
There is no luck in the league, especially when you finish consecutive seasons in the same place.
As for the players we lost: only Greenwood is an actual loss. Pogba was injury prone and inconsistent, so was Cavani. Mata and Matic barrelly played. Lingard should've been sold 2 years ago.
Aside from that our first XI is still here. I will agree that our GK and ST are our biggest issue, but even so Ronaldo is still a goal machine. Questions remain if ETH can integrate him in his system, but looking at every single interview and quote he said about Ronaldo, he seems keen to work with him. And we both know that while Ronaldo is a belend, his professionalism is never in doubt.
The reason for our catastrophic failure last season was a complete loss of form/morale from a lot of our key players: Rashford, Bruno, Harry, etc and the internal conflicts because of Ole's hoarding syndrome. As a result we had too many disgruntled players.
Now we've trimmed the squad a bit, and we're only trully short in 1 area: CFs. Every other are has a good depth, only CM has a quality issue, but we are actively working on De Jong and that Slovenian fella.
As such our first priority is to get the best out of our existing core group of players. There is a reason that in EtH's first press conference he was saying that we have a treasure trove of talent that needs to be tapped. And instead of taking this as good news, everyone lapped it up as EtH being a yes man for the Glazers.
The manager knows what he is doing. And knowing EtH, by Christmas we will be punching above our weight. I expect a lot of people to be surprised once the tactics kick in.