As per the other thread and the spending, it could be said that the turmoil at board level and with two SD’s in two years hurt us. Howe was then possibly - just assumptions - allowed to take much more of a prominent lead than he should have. The recent reports on Ross Wilson’s role seems to suggest this is true, as recruitment is now heavily with him instead. I hope this means we maybe bring it back in on player transfers and make fewer mistakes this summer. Elanga is probably still saleable, Wissa would be an ideal transfer to Saudi, Bayern may still want Woltemade as a long term Kane replacement, Barnes and Murphy would appeal to newly promoted clubs, Gordon seems to still have top end appeal, Tonali still valued, etc. So I think with a better structure we can quickly recover from last summers mistakes.
In an ideal world Howe can work out how to do better. His main issues seem to be about lack of time on training ground, but could there be more flexibility to his approach to tactics, more trust in his team? Can he not just trust to more of his squad? Hard to believe Joelinton couldn’t have been rested for Ramsey, hard to believe Shahar is worse than Trippier, and so on. And he just needs to not be scared of trying something different, this whole die on my hill approach is pointless.