The 7-0 is the obvious highlight. It almost feels like it was flown in from a different, better season.
That we immediately followed it up with a dismal defeat at Bournemouth was more representative of the kind of campaign we had. Beating City was satisfying, but again the reverse fixture was deeply depressing - we looked like any number of no hope midtable teams who just turn up at the Etihad, accept their routine spanking and hastily depart.
In a fairly poor season we’ve still managed to dish out some hammerings - 9-0, 7-0, 7-1, 6-1. We’ve gone from a consistent side to one that can be devastating on its day, but equally shambolic on another day. And we saw far too many of those days. The away form has obviously been dreadful, our late run at the end of the season makes it look a bit better but it’s nowhere near good enough for where we want to be. Wolves away and Brighton were real low points, as well that tame defeat at Old Trafford when they’d just lost their first two games and we let them pick up a fairly comfortable three points to kickstart their season. Didn’t have any cup runs to keep us going.
Hopefully it’s better next year. With Bajcetic, Gakpo, Nunez (sporadically), Jones and Elliot (again at times) there have been some positives. Alisson’s been the obvious standout as player of the season. Following up a season we got very close to an unprecedented clean sweep (yet ended up losing the two biggest ones) was always going to be difficult and from early on in the season it became apparent how tough it would be, and how much the previous season had taken out of us.
Having that shitty WC right in the middle of a season hasn’t helped at all. We were looking a bit better right before it came, then took forever to get going again afterwards.
EDIT: the signing of Arthur must be up there with Balotelli as one of the worst in our recent history, contributed absolutely nothing and didn’t even help take any workload off the rest of our midfield because he predictably got injured almost as soon as he was available.
ANOTHER EDIT: Jota firing one into the corner immediately after Richarlison’s antics was a great moment