We don’t go from near quadruple winners to mid table unless something is seriously wrong. Ok fatigue, mental and physical, together with a lack of investment play a part, but don’t explain the drop off the edge of the cliff.
I've been reading a book about the collapse of multiple societies/cultures around the eastern Mediterranean around 1200BC, because that's the sort of exciting thing I fill my time with. And discussion of the reasons why they collapsed becomes oddly similar to these threads.
Even the "fell off a cliff" line. There's a name for it: the Seneca Curve, after the Roman philosopher who observed that progress was generally slow and gradual, but decline could be sudden and brutal.
This is 'Systems Collapse'. The more complex the system, the more sudden and severe the collapse. It's similar to chaos theory, or the butterfly effect.
Obviously, this can be applied to our tactics at a fairly simple level: our success is based on intensity, pressure and control, which have suffered with the premature ageing of midfielders, exposing weaknesses in both attack and defence as the glue that holds the team together cracks.
But it also applies to our organisational structure; FSGs ownership model, investment levels, Gordon stepping away from his coordinating role, Edwards moving on, Ward/Graham resignations, shifts in the balance of power between recruitment and coaching.
It's a complex system. Elements not only complement and support each other, but also at times compete, contradict and oppose. It's the complexity of the network of those relationships which makes the system, held in balance by tension as much as cooperation.
A small changes or added tension/stress applied at some point in the structure - and we've had more than that - can fundamentally change the balance. Systems Collapse then describes how small changes in a number of areas within a complex system can trigger a multiplier effect, breaking links between elements of the system, putting greater strain on others, shifting the balance and stresses within the remainder, to bring the whole thing down, suddenly and, apparently, inexplicably.
But this is only football, and we're only midtable.
Interestingly another observation of system collapses is that those in charge of the system, whatever it is, often recognise the problems and make changes to try and address them - but it can be really quite difficult to know whether those changes will make things better or worse, without hindsight.
