I think this situation goes both ways to be honest. Peace was not wrong with he said in his post. 3-4 years ago, we started to buy certain type of players - the footballing type, if you like (seems like the latest buzzword around here) - because we wanted to change our style of play, to adopt a more attacking approach as opposed to sticking with our pragmatic football from the years before that. We wanted to have a system in place whereby we instill this new style of play in the club from top to bottom and hire a specific type of manager to manage those players. Even if we were to sack the manager or he leaves after a few years, the style will still be there and we just need to find the same or similar kind of manager (think Barcelona). That's arguably why we were hell bent on getting Guardiola back then but when he didn't want to join us, for whatever reason, the club decided to betray what they had been planning all along by hiring Mourinho, who we all know his playing style is the complete opposite of what we tried to implement going forward. Perhaps, they had no one else to turn to, panicked and chose Mourinho because it was a marriage of convenience - the club wanted to success with style but when they couldn't get someone to implement that style, they ditched it just for success. They probably wanted to believe Mourinho was a man changed and a man wanting to fix his damaged reputation after his Real Madrid days. On hindsight and without wanting to sound like a total hypocrite, I - and most fans too - enjoyed the success Mourinho brought to the club last season but one cannot deny that our squad depth and quality - the squad given to him with those players bought by the board - got worse each season under him. He ostracized certain players from the start and sold them almost immediately - because they weren't tall or supposedly didn't run about enough. He doesn't put the same faith in every one in the squad - certain players can play poorly for 100 games in a row and still start every week while the minute others perform poorly, they're out of the team and we won't see them for the next few weeks. People like to say it's the players' fault for not showing the hunger, desire to fight for their place but if you were in their shoes and you see boss treat you differently to some of the other players like in this case, you would want to leave, wouldn't you? Others play badly but still get chances to play and rectify their mistakes. You play badly and you don't get to play for the next few games and get a chance to prove the manager wrong. It's just like Peace said, it says a lot when we're almost wanting/relying on the Kenedy-Loftus-Cheek combo to spark us into life, to get us out of this mire. It has become that desperate and that is without mentioning the fact that we only have 2 players who we can put in the world class category - Hazard and Courtois (we're a top side FFS!). Maybe if he weren't so quick in ditching some of the players and kept them in the squad, we might actually have enough strength, quality and depth not to be in this mess right now. Our team is such in a bad shape that it's almost depressing that we need another major surgery and it's going to be even tougher now with our situation and the huge TV money coming in next season. At this point, we'll be even lucky to get a B-grade player in, never mind an A-grade. On the other side to all of this, you are right in saying we did nothing to improve the team after winning the league last season. We stood still. We should have gotten in quality players but it's not in our given rights that we will get those players Mourinho wanted (e.g Pogba, Stones). Gone are the days when we can throw money at the other clubs and 'bully' them into selling their players. Maybe it is the board's fault for not doing things right to get the players but Mourinho shouldn't also be expecting those deals to completed like we're stealing a candy from a baby. And there's also no excuse that we should be struggling this badly this season under Mourinho - with or without Pogba, Stones etc. Having those players wouldn't have solved our problems. Like you alluded to there, this team won the title last season and even if it's not perfect, they are still good/decent enough. If we're not challenging for the title this time around, we should at least be around the top 4 or in the top 10 but the fact that we aren't perhaps says a lot about the Mourinho's management with the squad than the board not getting the players he wanted. And oh, before you start pinning the blame entirely on the board on transfers, let's not forget Mourinho's own blunders in the transfer market. He, after all, was the man who championed for Falcao, Cuadrado, Salah etc and look what has happened to them now.
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