You are making excuses after excuse after excuse for finishing 7/8th, possibly lower and no good in cups season after season after season.
I don't want to sound patronising as you sound like an intelligent fella but you are completely blinkered to reality.
We keep finishing 8th because we are the 8th best team in the league - largely due to winning lots of home game, especially when the pressure is off 2nd half of a season. With this squad we will do well to finish 8th next season.
We are probably about the 25th best cup team in England - that tells you all you need to know about the players mental strengths or how they cope with individual pressure games.
Is is time for people to stop making excuses for the faillings of everyone from the ownership through DOF, through managers, through players.
Demand change, a change of culture, of expectation. But most importantly demand a change of a large number of players.
I’m blinkered? No no my friend, this is reality, this squad is and has been more than capable of being in the top 6 year upon year, everyone with half a brain knows that. We have seen what they can do when in harmony, Ancelotti is the manager than can get them doing that consistently
I do agree that we need to break this malaise about cup competitions but again we have a manager with a winner’s mentality who isn’t going to sugarcoat things like previous managers
We don’t need a large quantity of players, we already have a bloated wage bill as is, we need quality in the areas we have weaknesses in, that being CB and CM, that takes 1-2 signings per role minimum once you take out the weak (Schneiderlin, Keane, Sigurdsson at a push), if we can also add an experienced striker to work with Kean and DCL and a better standard GK to give Pickford proper competition then even better