Once they won the title last season that would have been the perfect time to revamp the team. However due to their poor planning and the pandemic theyve really made an unforgivable error which will be compounded into a fatal one if they finish outside of the top 4.
That £70mil they spent on Jota + Thiago looks like madness now. They should have tried to move on Salah, Mane and Firminho (all 3!!!) for £60mil each last summer and then used the £250mil on 5 new u25 players across the team...
A step back to take several steps forward would have made far more sense and really kept them near the top for a few years to come.
Its Barcelona level poor planning.
Just imagine if they finish 5th (or worse) then they will have shot themselves in the foot with little strategy or prospect of getting into the top 4 next season.
As for Godfrey, i think he'll need a solid preseason with Ancelotti and the rest of the team to create and build a structure and plan going forward now alot of building blocks are in place.
This and the following summer should really push us up a level.
I mean there's a lot of talk of "Ferguson always recruited from a position of strength" which is true, but in honesty he was also brutal in letting players leave too. The output of Mane and Firmino has really dropped this season quite substantially. Firmino has 6 goals this season, and got 9 last season. Thats in over 4700 minutes of league for 15 goals. It's over a 50% reduction in output.
Mane it's a similar story, 7 league goals when in the last 2 seasons he had 18 & 22. It's a big reduction.
I think they have ultimately missed the boat to freshen up the squad. There was probably a window where they could have maybe got £70m for Mane and £50 for Firmino but they hung on for too long.
They are declining as a result of not making the big calls in time. Selling those assets for big prices will be almost impossible this summer. As I think I said the other day, the logical thing to do is to hold the assets and the key amount of depreciation has now occured. But you can see the squad needs a freshen up, the contracts need to be dealt with and Salah is increasingly restless.
This would have been a hard process to manage for them anyway. The curveball in this has been Klopp, who at a time where innovative thinking would be required seems to have become further entrenched to the players he has. He has the potential to take what will be decline and retreat and turn it into a collapse.