yesterday the classic old guard was represented by one single player (bonucci), and you can put alex sandro and cuadrado there too. bonbon was fine (pretty good if you consider his long layoff), sandro was meh, cuadrado was our joint best player, and could easily have had 4-5 assists if our strikers would finish off some of those perfect crosses, and a goal if he was a tiny bit more lucky with that beautiful shot hitting the crossbar right before the end of the regular playtime. i don't see a clear pattern at all.
as for the mental fragility, we are missing loyalty, leaders with cojones (á la mandzukic, licht), plus we're not a team anymore. while vidal, marchisio, evra and even pirlo knew what juventus stands for, i can't expect passengers like ramsey, rabiot or even ronaldo to feel connected to the club. also, guys like pjanic, matuidi, benatia, mandzukic (etc) were seemingly good friends and had a chemistry on and off the pitch. now we have the world famous cr-pinso bromance, and what else? sad reality is that these guys aren't bad players, but mostly just mercenaries at juventus. if only we had a true motivator as a coach... and this is the true failure of the recrutiment strategy, with chiesa being a refreshing exception. chiesa looks honored and motivated. we'd need many more chiesa's.