The season is fizzling out. We're out of all the cups. We're still (just) in the race for a place in Europe, but let's be honest, we're outsiders for that now. I don't know about your 'worn trope', but the only trope I can see, which is now beginning to crack, is the trope of de Zerbi's...
Manager makes adjustments to the team, brings in new players at the right time, with spectacularly successful upturn in form and results. Yes, I think that's normally defined as a manager doing his job, and doing it very well.
Or maybe he was just lucky, like Klopp, Pep, Ferguson, Venger and co.
Oh gawd! - don't start another argument ('cos I won't join in!) I know I'm in a minority, but I think he stopped playing the right keeper in the middle of last season! Yeh, yeh, I know - I get it - he left us on a sour note so he's sh*t and all that! :)
His career has gone downhill since he left...
No, it's not all down to de Zerbi. Potter in two and a half years had to convert a totally defensive, backs-to-the-wall team into an attacking exciting team - and he had to do it using the tools that the recruitment team provided for him along the way ............. Locadia, Jahanbakhsh, Percy...
As will de Zerbi's tactics against Rome, and a series of poor results against bottom of the table sides, be deemed a disgrace once he has walked out on us for a big pay day ("He never was that good, really - I thought he was sh*t all along" will probably be the new mantra of the more entitled...
Yes, the whingers will never stop whinging - always seek out a bad patch and hark on about it ad-infinitem as if their highly selective set of bad statistics represents the norm (they don't), ignoring the very successful turn around to very good times indeed, which inconveniently gets in the way...
A massive winless and goal-less run like this, you mean? (sorry about the format - the cut and paste was a bit wonky).
7 August 20221
Manchester United
1–2
Brighton & Hove Albion
showManchester
13 August 20222
Brighton & Hove Albion
0–0
Newcastle United
showFalmer
21 August 20223
West...
I'd be very surprised too - but in all honesty we could do a lot worse. For all the vitriol aimed at Potter due to the manner of his parting, and the constant mentioning of the barren spell, the truth is that he had eventually got things very right indeed, and the team that he handed over to RDZ...