Its never "just the players". Mate, other teams can play a possession based system as well, even Wolves mostly looked quite comfortable on it as well. It not just the players, better players obviously help but its also the set up. When you attack and defense are as far apart as we were today and the objective seemed to be "first idea should always be a through ball" than even Prime Barcelona wouldn't have kept the ball.We just lack the players for it and no tactical set up is going to change that unless we actually start bringing players that are world class on the ball and know how make the opposing team play on their terms.
You are right, if we want to get close to them and maybe even beat them, we have to bring in better players. But today and more often as not we are not playing teams as good at them. So the argument is a bit misleading. Look at Arsenal, look at Liverpool, look at Bayern, look even at Brighton - they all look more comfortable in possession than we do.Look at the best possession teams in Europe, look at City, look at Barcelona etc etc and none of them will be half as good if they didn't have the players that they've got.
Won't try to stop us bringing somebody in but lets be real, we are hearing this thing since the days of Mourinho, certainly since Ole. If you act as if only new players could change the status quo than you make sure you will be in an evergoing rebuilt.Eric seemed to have the right idea last summer by prioritizing perhaps the very best possession midfielder in the world but I genuinely have no idea what prompted him to change course so rapidly this season by pursuing mount who in my opinion his lack of world class ball playing and passing will not be compensated by his running and defensive work, I suppose we could make an exception for Bruno being so careless simply due to his sheer deadlines as an offensive threat and casemiro is pretty well suited to play possession based football given the right circumstances as we'd seen with real.
We still need a world class midfielder and we need it fast lest we waste bruno's and casemiro's peak and ending up having to buy 3 instead of one.
Today was bad, because most of our players looked off. Can happen. We looked like this last season too though. Can happen as well. Its players and manager. And he is giving you clues when he talks about being the best transitional team. That does mean, he isn't valueing possession as much as transition, which will reflect on his setups which will reflect in the things our players can do well and what they usually can't do well.