JFKvsNixon

The main cause of those losses and draws would have been the team's inability to score more goals, we scored less than Brighton and Brentford and even scored the same as Spurs. We only conceded 2 more than Liverpool.

I agree, we were dominating the game with almost 70% possession. I think when we go down to ten men, the issue could be that ordinarily the team is set up to create overloads, but that is almost impossible with 10 men, so the cohesion falls apart.

I hate to keep repeating myself, but we had the third best defensive record in the Premier League last year, only a few goals behind Liverpool. How did we achieve this if our defenders, goalkeeper and manager are all shite? This is genuine question.

For us to have a good defensive record for such a young team last year, either the manager knows what he's doing or our defenders are exceptional for their age. Currently, everyone seems to be criticising the manager, so is it the players?

That was probably due to the club having the third best defensive record last season, but we struggled to score goals. Only Liverpool and Arsenal let in less goals than us, but in attack Brighton, Brentford both outscored us. We scored the same amount of goals as Spurs! Then we also lost Sancho, who wouldn't accept our wage structure and had to make up for the loss of Mudryk.

Before people starts to panic, from the same article:

We didn't miss Endrick, he decided to sign for Madrid over us. If he struggles to get a first team place I still think that there may be a deal to be done with him.

Could they use a youngster as their choice?

I think that you've misinterpreted my post. I'm not suggesting that Sanchez is good just because CIES says so. I pointed out their ranking because it's built upon performance data. That's evidence not opinion. Much like I did earlier when people were saying that Chelsea's defence is rubbished, I pointed out that they actually had the 3rd best defence in the Premier League last year. I'm just trying to balance the negative narrative by suggesting that maybe Sanchez isn't as bad as people are making him out to be.

He would have been instructed to prioritise playing out from the back over safety first a approach.

According to the International Centre for Sports Studies, Sanchez is the 6th ranked performing goalkeeper. https://football-observatory.com/WeeklyPost499

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/ckgj7gjj799o

Which suggests that if we sort out our attack and add depth to our midfield we have every reason to be optimistic this season.

We had the third best defence in the Premier League last year, behind Arsenal and Liverpool.

Just over two hours to go until the window shuts.