Making the CL final doesn't mean we've progressed in real qualitative terms. You say has the spending of Everton and Chelsea made a difference, well yes it possibly has, Everton were 28 points behind us in 17/18, they were 17 behind us this year, Chelsea were 7 points behind us 17/18, 1 point ahead of us this year.
And you say "until the Burnley game" we were up there, but that left nearly a third of the season left, a final third in which our form was relegation 14 points from 12 game which is absolutely atrocious, and would surely have been better had we not only had Sissoko, fucked Wanyama and Dier to rely on as midfielders for most of that spell?
I'm not advocating we sign players for the sake of it, I rarely get excited by our signings and haven't overly rated much of our transfer business lately, and I would argue we would have been better off also if Poch had made better use of the academy players too, but how anyone can say the decision not to improve the squad was a correct decision or was a "success" is hard to fathom, whether that be better signings or better integration of academy
We have slept walked into needing a bit of an overhaul (Poch has suggested this himself) not just a couple of minor upgrade tweaks. Never a good situation.
