Why are we here?
Incompetent board hired a manager with no pedigree in squad building and gave him ultimate say on transfers He then proceeded to buy former players for inflated fees and didn't retool the squad to the necessarily level quickly enough. The rebuild needs to be a multi year process like LVG was doing (except without the boring ass football)
Maguire, Evans, Shaw, Sancho, Antony, Martial, Rashford, Mount are all players that don't fit a rebuilding profile (clearly injury prone, inconsistent). Yet they command 50% of our wage budget.
What's wrong this season?
1. Injuries. Our best players have not played together enough. We have the likes of Maguire, Evans as our CBs, a clearly aging and injured Casemiro, and no LBs.
2. ETH hasn't been able to maintain his original desired playstyle, nor has he implemented a stable Plan B playstyle.
What should we do?
Do an indepth analysis and rebuild of the squad with a 3-4 year horizon. The goal is to get young athletic/technical players (think Mainoo, Garnacho) and develop them with a manager who has demonstrated ability to implement attacking football and develop youth.
GK - Onana okay, backup okay
RB - Dalot, AVB keep (solid)
CB - Martinez, Lindelof okay (replace Maguire/Evans with 2 players priority #1, do not renew Varane)
LB - Shaw okay (replace in 2 yrs), Malacia sell (knee injury, priority #1 replace)
DM - Casemiro (priority #2 replace soon)
CM - Mainoo (priority #3 add backup)
AM - Bruno okay, Mount (sell for funds in 2 yrs and replace, unecessary with Bruno)
LW - Rashford, (priority #2 add athletic depth option)
RW - Antony (replace in 2 yrs, priority #3 add if Mason not retained), Diallo (give time to heal), Garnacho okay
ST - Hojlund okay (add depth, priority #1), sell Martial.
We need to add 3 defenders and 1 striker ASAP, and then 1 DM and winger in next year, and then another winger, CM, LB in the year after that.