I agree with this. Top half isn’t good enough. The squad massively underperformed in the league last year so that’s not a benchmark for improvement to say that finishing top 10 is a step forward. To me that would be a huge failure. I expect at least Europa, and ideally to be challenging for champions league football. The league is so competitive and if you are not 100% on it you can easily drop points. Yesterday was an abysmal performance and attitude from the players, which we have seen time and time before. After beating City they think they just need to turn up to put a team like Bournemouth to the sword. I can take losing, but that was shocking, we should never have stats like that against a mid table side. It would be different if it were Liverpool and they had that type of domination against us, but I know we would raise our game and not let that happen, which is the point I’m trying to make. I would only accept a mid table finish if we had an amazing run in the champions league due to prioritising that instead.
I don't mind losing, especially if we play well but just get beaten on the day. But our inability to build any sort of momentum is killing us, and has been for years. It's the reason we did well in Europe last season. You don't need consistency if you're meeting random teams and the fixtures are months apart. In fact, the new format makes it easier for inconsistent teams to excel as in the group stage you only meet everyone once.
