I will never forgive them for letting us grow stale from a position of total strength.
The team we had from 2018 to 2021 was up there with the best in my lifetime. Sacchi Milan, Pep Barca, Zidane Madrid, and Klopp Liverpool. 8 world class players in one 11 - Ali, Trent, Virgil, Robbo, Fabinho, Thiago, Salah, Mane. All that needed was minor tweaks. We could have had Enzo Fernandez and Bruno Guimarães for about £50m total. We would be set up again and rolling.
That is just in the last 12 months. Look at the state of the bench in Kiev 2018. Look at those near miss titles in 2014, 2019 and last season:
We were linked with, but did not buy, a forward player in January 2014. Suarez was on his last legs and Sturridge injured by the final straight.
We go so, so close in 2018/2019 and a few silly draws cost us (Goodison 0-0 still bothers me). Once Coutinho was gone, teams knew there was a lack of imagination in our midfield and well organised teams could frustrate us. Henderson was ponderous on the ball against such sides and having a different profile of midfielder, even on the bench to replace him in those games, could have been the difference. We lose the title by a point.
We bring in Adrian on a bosman as there's no money to buy a back up. He costs us big time against Atletico in 2019/20.
2020/2021 - we go into the season with 3 centre halves, 2 of them injury prone. We lose all three of them. We are actually top with Matip and Henderson at CB somehow at one stage. Now imagine we'd bought a 4th choice or even moved one of the injury prone ones on as well as Lovren, and bought two (like well organized clubs would do).
And then last season. Gini goes, a terribly underrated player - EXACTLY the type we should be able to pick up whenever we need to refresh things (£20-35m, versatile attributes, international). We sign no one. We massively miss his defensive screening and ability to stop transitions - we drop many silly points in the first half of the season (remember Brighton at home? West Ham away? Brentford away?) and we lose the title by a point. They DO actually sign Diaz that January and what happens? The entire club is lifted by it. Players go on record saying there is a buzz from the new signing (think it was Salah or Virgil who said as much), and we now have City level options up front...it pushes us back into a title race and we have a great second half to the season...why did they not learn from this?
Bottom line, if we were top of the net spend (apart from City, United and Chelsea) we would have another 2 league titles and a European Cup, minimum.
So, now that the great Klopp team of 18-21 is done, what next? Well they have one final transfer window to not mess things up. They simply have to strengthen us in January or we will not make top 4. That is the bare minimum that they need to do now. Miss out this season and it will be very very hard to get back into it with Newcastle getting stronger every window and the others catching us up.