Out of interest, what would you base this on Mick?
Haha I see the trap Luke but it's a fair question.
The quality of players we have mate firstly and formostly. We've got a number of players who IMHO would get into a "squad of the league" and most would be on the fringes of it. Sturridge, Coutinho and Firmino for example up top, Clyne and Lovren at the back, with Sakho, Can etc not far off.
Then there's current form. By current form I don't just include league performances (although they feel to me like they're improving, ie we're picking up more points and playing better) but we've also banjoed the Mancs over two legs, then put out one of the best teams in Europe the other night in the same format. All season we've proven time and time again (in my eyes anyway) that we are a good team waiting to happen. We were even doing it under TPM occasionally once the hyperbole and silliness had been stripped away, the trick has always been to get us to play "like that" all the time, or at least to grind out a result when we don't.
On our day or even within our fifteen minute spells of those days, we are a bloody good team. Nobody will ever convince me that we wren't and aren't plenty good enough to have made a much better fist of things this season in the league. In many respects the better teams we knock out in Europe convinces me even more that we really ought to do a little better than get beat 3-0 at Watford, 2-0 at Newcastle etc. The two things I'd have done different with the benefit of hindsight would have been to buy in the mid season window when nobody else was (always a good time to buy that) and to have better coped with playing direct teams earlier in the season.
I'm over the moon with how we're playing now and our results, but I think if we'd done those two things we might have just surprised a few people THIS season as opposed to waiting for the next one in the league. Obviously the way things have panned out in the Europa league is doing us no end of favours in the feel good factor.
I know many have commented on it but there are many striking similarities to the first season of Benitez, with potential cup success going hand in hand with league failure. I know many will say "well if he can do as well as that then that'll do for me" but I would add a couple of other points. Firstly Benitez actually won the thing in Europe in his first season, we haven't yet and it'd be a travesty not to after Thursdays heroics. Secondly, I'm hopeful that even if Jürgen does win the Europa league he might do better than one FA Cup in the next five seasons. There really is the potential with this fella for true "legend" status in my opinion, but to achieve it he must be absolutely ruthless. I think perhaps we missed a trick to be totally ruthless earlier in the season when he first arrived, hopefully it's the last time.
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