See, this is a far more reasoned post than what you normally do after a poor game, where its all about singling out players who were no worse than many around them....or saying our coaching isn't good enough....or the transfer policy is useless
.
At the same time....I don't believe things are as bad you are trying to suggest, just because we are not really blasting out at teams like we used to. Its all about balance - we used fly at teams and then be left exposed at the back, everyone saying we need to defend better. This season, we are defending better but that has meant playing in a different way at times, so its very tricky to know which way to go. Ideally we could be great at both ends all the time but not many PL actually are.
As I said before, however much we spend on players [ when all other clubs do the same of course ], we can't still attract the finished article, most of the time. Even the likes of Ake were not that level when we signed them. We have a mostly young squad and they are all still learning. You single Solanke out all the time now, well, this is the first time in his career he has had a run of games, he's done well in most of them but not so good in a couple. This is probably the standard for most younger players.
The inconsistency of our team shows up in performances. Eddie said on Saturday, how they stopped doing things after a good starting twenty minutes. We have looked both very good and very poor in the same match a few times. But again, most PL teams this season could say the same thing, if you look at results elsewhere. Liverpool are the only side to be consistent this season and even they have looked dodgy in a couple of games.