Think there's more to it than that, Mount would likely been a totally different player under Klopp, likewise McAllister and Szoboszlai being inferior under Eth. It's not the standard of the players in question but the pedigree of the coaching that will extract more out of them.
The quality of this team is continually ridiculed to exacerbate the issue of why there's failures this season but provisionally this is a decent team when assessing the capabilities of the players individually. The seasons predictions thread is further evidence of this as foresight excludes recency bias to have a more impartial view of the squad overall. The fact that there's hardly if not any concrete targets in the market that without certainty many of us can say brings the team to significant level, exemplifies that the squad has decent strength.
Therefore it emphasises the reality, that the manager is fundamentally the weakest link when assessing consistency and results in correlation to squad depth and quality. It's even more damning when considering that this is the best accumulation of players the manager has managed in his respective career.
'The gap and the gain' theory springs to mind with Eth and it's very obvious when assessing both what he's done and what he is attempting to do. With two years in charge we have knowledge of the gap (understanding what's needed moving forward to win) and with two years he has demonstrated his capacity which covers the gain (what it takes to get there). Tactically when you assess United over both seasons, the manager doesn't have what it takes from a coaching, philosophical and tactical perspective for the team to bridge the gap and enter the territory of winning (gain). I believe Erik is a good manager under the prospectus of Murtough, but he's the total opposite when assigned with the ambitions of Ratcliffe. The time horizon Ratcliffe has orchestrated his aspirations on makes Erik's position even more farcical.
Protruding further into that theory, it's fundamentally what Solskjaer highlighted in his interview, the inability of making the next step. The next step doesn't happen from changing player personnel, it's the momentum the manager builds in moving from strength to strength. So when players are signed, they are signed into a function as opposed to being signed to inaugurate the function. That's how reputable coaches have a system that works within 6 months as opposed to having a shopping list to show some semblance of success. Erik doesn't have what it takes, I've made countless predictions this season which have proven to be true from the summer signings, to the teams performances and I think it's beyond rationalisation to assume Erik is going to come of age with further windows and more time.
