I can understand being depressed about it, because we dont have much money to buy, or players willing to move/rescind contracts to make room for signings, so its hard to see how we will improve further in market.
But one thing I dont get is saying we downgraded, only one of value we lost is Pjanic, who been mediocre far too long. I expect Arthur if healthy, will be at worst what Pjanic gave us past 12 months, which is generally underwhelming except spurts of being the top top player he usually is. But the rest? We are adding Mckennie, Pellegrini, Kulusevski, 2 young energetic depth players that should prove more useful then the ones they replacing. And Kulusevski that should be the biggiest addition, starter quality all around attacking option, the players he is replacing are aldready in the squad.
You can say attack is downgrade, purely on quantity, losing a Higauin that has been so useless, but that would be semantics. We will replace him guranteed, and anyone replacing him should be guranteed to be better then whatever he gave us past season, which was little, except a spurt of couple months of assisting goals.
You all are so worried about the players coming in and out (and I am too, because I expect another quality midfielder to join, and should join if we signing free attackers and loan signing Mkennie, surely saving the funds for something?), my main worry instead for this season will be our coach. No matter the quality of the new players, it wont matter if our new coach isnt good enough, and its worrisome because he is simply a blank slate, zero idea if he will be another Ferrara or another Conte, or anything in between.