No. He should have started to add players in the summer but all he did was add Fellaini. We were league champions and needed to put our foot down. All we did was let a talented group in City continue to add more players, overtake us and consolidate it with further signings. The 3 years under Moyes and Van Gaal had us playing catch up and now are finally in 2nd and on Chelsea's level at least.
We are also above the rest of the teams and had Pogba out for over 2 months. The thread is about the evolution of the squad as a whole anyway. The rebuilding job is still ongoing and we are naturally behind City in that regards. We are closer to Chelsea and it shows. There is clear progress and that was evident with our great start. It has been hampered with injuries, but as a whole we are going in the right direction.
This was my post from another thread and I could have easily tried to defend Jose here as I normally do but then some things don't seem right at the moment. Maybe I'm overracting because I genuinely thought we'd challenge for the league, maybe I need to have a rest or something but this is how I honestly feel about this whole issue:
"This whole saga is looking like his final seasons at Real Madrid and Chelsea all over again and this is my worry. When you throw everybody under the boss and save your face in the process, most players would never say a word but foundations would begin to have been laid for down-tooling.
At the start of the season both managers, off the top of my head, had the following players available for starting positions:
Bravo
Zabaleta Stones
Otamendi Clichy Fernandinho
De Bruyne Silva
Sterling Aguero Sane
De Gea
Valencia Smalling
Baily Shaw
Fellaini
Pogba
Mata Mkhitaryan
Martial
Ibrahimovic
My starting eleven would consist of the bolded but there's a point worth noting about that city team namely that they were very thin on actual central midfielders. They had old Yaya, Fernandinho and Fernando in their ranks but had to improvise by getting attacking midfielders to play that role. It has worked big time but at the time it never looked like a wise decision as Silva was considered too fragile to thrive in the mid field hustle and bustle and De Bruyne was fond of loosing the ball rather easily and would easily got tired even when playing in the hole (behind the striker). It's only because it has now worked that we can include them as central midfielders in the joint starting XI but going into the season lots of people thought that city was such an imbalanced side with a lot of attacking midfielders who loved to play centrally and could only get shafted wide because they could not all play behind the striker. It was a problem for them in Pellegrini's era because they often played one of De Bruyne and Silva out of position (on the wings).
I also recall that they actually wanted to sign Pogba because every man and his dog knew that they needed a replacement for the powerhouse that Yaya Toure once was but baulked at the price. I even remember that at the time, I was very jittery that were going to sign Pogba when it all seemed like it was going to happen. I wanted Real Madrid to steal the deal because at the time for some reason I never thought we'd pull that transfer.
Whilst I understand that we all have our different preferences I don't think there was such a big gulf between the two teams as such. I don't believe they were better in the goalkeeping department, I don't believe they were better in central defense, I don't believe they were better in full back positions, I don't believe they were better in central midfield (without the improvisation i.e. with Yaya and Fernandinho), I don't believe they were better on the wings as well. Attacking midfield position, I'll give you that one. Center forward, again I'll give that to you. They have the better players there. Let's talk about Conte. You'd expect a title wining team to perform as such with a new manager (the previous manager had been sacked) in a new season after they down tooled the previous one. But guess what, they were very shambolic and looked anything but a title contending side but a good team that was just getting along in the top 4 race. And if you watched Liverpool vs Chelsea where the latter were torn to shreds you'd understand what I'm saying. But from then on, Conte actually looked inwards and gave the league something it previously had not seen, at least not in that magnitude. The 3-4-3 winning code that none was able to sufficiently crack. I am not a Chelsea fan but if I do not acknowlege it's brilliance, I'd be lying to myself.
We also forget that the Jose knows this league like the back of his palm going into his first season with us compared to Conte and Pep so the argument that he started on a lower pedestal has to take this point into consideration also.
I feel so sorry for Martial at this point because I know he can do more. See people have different temperaments but if you take the number 9 shirt for me and give it to another guy, It would piss me off and I won't utter a word about it but I could give 80% of my commitment and expect the manager to rely on that guy that got my shirt to deliver for him. You see players don't talk all the time but when a manager can readily throw them under the bus, sooner or later they'll begin to do their talking behind the scenes and before the screens on matchdays but they'll never say a word in the public eye. I read an article on Sterling few weeks or months ago where Pep was getting praised for how Sterling seemed to have improved
him but he dodged the glory and said it was all down to Sterling because he was becoming less active on social media. If you were that player wouldn't you run through the wall for your manager? See its not always all about yourself. That attitude will produce another Real Madrid and Chelsea debacle.
I think there is a genius of a player somewhere in Martial waiting to be tapped. For such a young lad to have carried the team over the line the way he did it's quite disappointing that he has not hit his heights since then. People have differing preferences in football but I for one would love to see Rashford play more centrally. Yes he's still raw and all the that but I think he wouldn't do any worse than Sterling who for all his inconsistency still does deliver. I had great hopes in the young lad and still do. We seem to have forgotten how highly rated this young lad once was. I don't think we would lack bite in attack if we played Martial and Rashers off him, flanked by world class (or near world class) wide attackers like Mahrez.
At the end of the day it's all about the manager's preference but when it doesn't work out, its only fair we constructively critique the decisions.
I know we are second on the league table but that's a false sense of security because Burnley are closer to us than we are to City and so if fans express concern on the back of back-to-back average performances, they have a right to do so. See position on the table doesn’t determine points but points determine table positions. So its plausible that a team in 3rd can go as low as 6th in one single matchday. It's fair to look at our number of points compared to our rivals and our recent performances rather than actual position on the table and have a discussion about it.
I could come here and defend Jose but I owe it a duty to my conscience to tell it as I see it.
Apologies for the long post."
