It's all relative though isn't it?
I'm not sure what you were expecting from this season. Perhaps you were sucked in by our opening run of games?
What we saw there was nothing more than a new manager with new tactics bounce. Even Sheff Utd managed it under Chris Wilder! No one had seen underlapping CBs before and they caught the league by surprise.
It took the rest of the league time to catch up with our new style of play, and our injury plague made it easier for them than it had to be, but at this level it is inevitable that opposition teams will study you and start to work you out. At that point, you have a plain choice: keep changing the plan, or increase the quality delivering it. Under Poch, we chose the second. I hope we choose it again under Ange as there is ample proof that the plan has more than enough positive points to deserve time and investment.
There are certain areas of the first team that are still miles short of our nearest rivals. Midfield and attack in particular.
We also lack anyone who is one of the best in the world at what they do. A game changer who grabs victory from the jaws of defeat. We don't have a Salah or a De Bruyne anymore. We sold him in the summer.
Ultimately I think this season can only be judged in hindsight at the end of next season. I know that's a strange thing to say, but there have been so many lessons to learn and if they are learned, I am confident next season will be really good and in hindsight, this season will have been worth every inch of disappointment.
Some of the lessons are blindingly obvious, like the fact that we need to treat cup competitions with more respect, we need better midfielders, better attackers, better squad depth at full back and centre back. Most of these can be addressed in the transfer window.
Then there are the more subtle lessons like how to beat teams who park the bus and how to adapt in-game either tactically or from the bench to change the course of a game, and those will be on Ange to demonstrate progress in.
