Calling them bums is a bit of a stretch I agree but I think he meant those players just weren’t as good as what we had and that maybe we had the money to buy world class talent but chose the bargain way that worked for us before.
I wouldn’t call it a declining team but that’s when we began making bad decisions.
again, mvp was never gonna get replaced by similar quality. modric, de bruyne could have been close in quality, but they were out of reach. who exactly did we miss out on because of higuain?
we could have bought better midfielders, that is true, and the depth wasn't up there with the best teams. but let's not miss the point: decline is not synonymous with a cl final, especially not with a team that barely fits in the top10 of the deloitte money league. decline is when you lose the league domination against less wealthy teams. until 2018, we performed close to our potential. after that, we started to overpay bums, underperforming became a new norm, we cemented old players until the end of their careers (tici gave incredible contracts to bonucci, sandro, khedira, even mandzukic's last contract was rushed and badly planned), we started to gamble too much, left way too many positions without mid term solutions.
bad decisions happen with the best too, even real madrid bought players like hazard. if you're saying that we made bad decisions before 2018, of course, i agree. "decline started before 2018" is incorrect, period.