Quite clearly our window was far from the top clubs in every aspect, from selling unwanted and surplus-to-requirement players to acquiring targets for key positions like RW, CM and maybe also a versatile attacking midfielder/forward. Arsenal and City meanwhile got players (top players as well) for every position they wanted and didn't even spend that much money.
While we have James at RW (although a good prospect, hasn't even played premier league football or even top tier football yet), zero backup at striker aside from u21 players and obviously extremely weak central midfield options they have signed players like Rodri, Ceballos, Pepe on top of players they needed like Angelinho, Cancelo, Saliba/Luiz, Tierney among others. Not to mention how much Wolves, Leicester and Everton have improved.
I think we'll be extremely likely to lose a lot of points to teams like Leicester and Wolves especially, because their midfields are honestly much stronger and well rounded than ours right now, which is honestly unbelievable to me.
Would you really say Pogba-McTominay-Fred or Mata as 10 with Pogba/McT or Matic behind him is stronger than midfields like Wolves (Neves, Moutinho, Dendoncker, Saiss) or Leicester's (Praet, Ndidi, Tielemans, Maddison, Silva)? They have very energetic and strong midfields and I think we'll struggle to win the midfield battle in most games sadly, which will put even more pressure on Rashford/Martial to score goals on the counter, which seems we're betting the mortgage on.
What's problematic is that if teams just sit back against us to prevent us from countering (which is what will obv happen if we keep playing that card) we have to be able to dominate the midfield but there is just no way we do that with the oil tankers and complete lack of athleticism we have in midfield right now.
Hope Pogba can play out of his skin with McTominay and Jesse because we are going to need it to make top 4 this year - and we might as well scrap the EL from the get go since we have zero depth in midfield/up front and can't compete on multiple front.