The whole narrative is about the CL spot

Put a confident goal scorer in this team and we'd be many points better off. The whole squad would play with a bit more confidence, because the whole risk:reward balance would be different. And there would be far less discussion about Amorim's formation. Meanwhile, the squad would have the same weaknesses and would require more or less the same overhaul of personnel (minus one goalscorer, I guess) and incremental work implementing the footballing philosophy.

I could not agree with you more. This game is all about winning trophies. If we win it, I believe it takes us back to being the most successful club on this land?

We need more than just a top scorer. Currently we create very little all around for a striker to get on the end of, we have a keeper who doesn’t seem to know how to be a keeper half the time, we have ineffective wingbacks who offer little, we have a midfield that is unbalanced and lacks quality and rely far too much on 1 player.

While I appreciate your positivity I honestly think you’re massively overrating our current state. We’re a team that lack quality all over the pitch, that also lack leadership and athleticism. We play a system that the manager is insistent on playing when we lack the players to play it during a period where we are unable to bring in much needed reinforcements. We are currently 15th and in the last half a season have only beaten Fulham outside the bottom 3 (probably the worst bottom 3 the PL has ever had) and our play week to week is a mess with mistakes all over.

Yes a concurrent scorer will improve us over one that has managed a handful of goals all season but it isn’t going to transform our play.

82 - I think we can go from a side that is 15th to 8th next season. That should be the expectation unfortunately. That’s how I see it anyway. Amad will be a wingback and he is attacking, cunha, bruno, mount will be 10s, as I can Nacho sold. New striker, new central midfielder, and hopefully fullback and we will look a lot better. Likes of Yoro are improving a lot, de Ligt and maz have settled well. Challenging will take upwards of 3 years minimum at best.

82 - argument about not having players to play the system is a weak one. The current players can’t even play the system they were designed and bought to play, hence why the previous manager was sacked with the side bottom half of the table. They can’t play any system as a top side, not consistently anyway. This side as a back 4 got beaten 7.0 and multiple 4.0 losses etx

1982 read carefully what I said and it wasn't that all is fine with a reliable scorer. I said it would look a lot better (by which I mean something like last year's bad league performance, as opposed to this year's catastrophic one). I also said we would need the same fundamental rebuild that we realise we need now.

I know what you said, I thought it was obvious a better player is likely to improve us which means more points. I’m just stating that there is a lot of room for improvement all over the pitch.

Anyway, I appreciate what you’re saying, I just don’t agree or am as optimistic as you about the state of the team (or our managers system or our reliance on youth). I hope I’m wrong and we see some improvements next season. For now let’s just hope we can beat Spurs, it’s a shame we have to play a PL side as we’re clearly far better suited to the less physical mainland European sides.

I feeling like since our 19/20 EL bottle job, most years since then we have bottled the Europa League while being by far the best team in it. Bruno Fernandes deserves a Europa League medal.

Spot on, I've said all season I would sign for 17th in the league and a trophy.