For all the problems at the club that do persist, there's no argument that can be made in any serious way of us having gone backwards unless you look at specific things - i.e. results - without context, or by ignoring the broader picture. Recency bias will make the present feel worse, but it can't possibly be understated how bad things got towards the end of Jose's tenure and even though there's plenty to be said about our issues going way beyond the manager, the club desperately needed to press the reset button and fast. Literally anything would have been an improvement on what was.
It is a fair observation however. that twelve months on, we are comparing Ole's performance with the absolute worst segment of Jose's and it doesn't make for pretty reading when you consider that. It makes it uglier when there aren't any substantial mitigating circumstances; failure to bring in replacements after losing important first team players like Fellaini [might chuckle but he was], Herrera and Lukaku is certainly not one of them. Pogba remaining as our sole creative outlet throughout the whole team is not one of them. Having a young team [although players like Tommy, Rashford and Martial have plenty of first team minutes under their belt] is not one when we are tactically one dimensional and in a perpetual cycle of raising our game against the big teams, while poor and impotent against the rest. 12 months on, our football is in a state of stagnation. Plateaued. But that's not to say we haven't moved forward from where we were, of course we have you'd have to be either blind or agenda-driven not to see it.
Having a club legend as manager has allowed the board to parrot 'the future' mantra and alleviate themselves of any responsibility for the present. I think Ole did excellent in removing the dark clouds over our club when he came in, and I believe he was a good choice in beginning the transition [he has done very good things like starting to ship out deadwood, developing Fred & Tommy, moving Martial to 9 and playing well with Rashford, feel good factor etc] in to some form of plan/action. But I don't have faith in the hierarchy to utilise this time and organise accordingly. If we as a club are serious, being within a realistic chance of getting top four this season, we should have targets lined up for January to make a serious push but I like I said I can't help but feel Ole will be the face of them not-so-quietly writing this year off - citing 'the future' as a reason to why us fans should accept it.
As a coach I think Ole is too basic and wouldn't have a job in the Premier League if he weren't a legend here, and it would be typical for the board to realise this when other top coaches find jobs leaving us nowhere. But no, we haven't gone backwards. If anything, if we make the right choices, we can go on an upward trajectory from here.