we were struggling, no denying this, i said it in one of my replies to PI. but the reasons are so much more than just missing Marchisio. Pogba was out of form since his injury in February last season, we were missing Marchisio, Pirlo and Vidal in midfield, without Barzagli and Licht in defense and Tevez upfront, we were changing between 3 formations (one of which was a non functional 433) for each game, we had bunch of new players that needed to settle in. that was a complete mess and it needed time for everything to tick. Padoin as regista was the worst of all, we couldnt keep the ball long enough to create anything really. ofcourse Marchisio is an extremely important player for us but to put that comeback of us solely on him (and Dybala) is unfair to the other players. once we got Marchisio and Barzagli back, Pogba started catching form, we found a working formation and the new players settled in, we started kicking ass. you could see in games Marchisio wasnt playing further into the season that the team had no problem dealing with Serie A teams anymore. so yes, we missed Marchisio (and others) which was a huge blow, but not the only factor in Pogba and the rest of the team sucking

