All these "good" responses. Even one saying INEOS have done a great job.
That squad finished 8th and won the FA Cup, and the year before finished 3rd and won the league cup.
The half a new squad we've replaced it with finished 15th with an average of 1 goal a game. It needs to massively improve just to get to the same level.
This place is so obsessed with hating on our own players people are genuinely blind to anything positive they do or bring.
Multiple key players from that team were in decline and we had no succession planning in place, or were flat out duds.
Varane (now retired), Casemiro (last year), Eriksen, Amrabat (loan signing), Onana, Rashford, Hojlund, Antony, AWB (actually like him but prefer Mazraoui), Lindelof, Malacia (expiring), Evans (retired) and Kambwala all are gone or about to be justifiably so.
McTominay I think we were right to move on and had the right idea to use that money to finance buying a CM to phase out Casemiro, but Ugarte looks well short of the quality so INEOS will need to address that.
Of the players we still have Martinez and Mount I rate, but with their injury issues and resulting absences those are players we haven't gotten good ROI on in the last 2 years on. I'd be okay moving both on if possible next summer.
Bruno is great, but we need to get to a place where we're less dependent on him.
Now I'm not arguing INEOS have been flawless. They've certainly made mistakes, but moving on from the majority of that squad was a necessary and correct long-term vision to work towards is all. Replacing them productively is the hard work, made even harder if you look at the 4-5 years of transfers we had prior to 2024.