Liverpool are built on a cycle and have peaked physically and mentally and had the downwards swing and are now rebuilding and preparing to peak again. You can’t sustain that physical and mental performance without the deepest of squads. I think a large part of the problem at UTD is that they have never even had a full cycle, they are constantly in turmoil and without overall structure or plan due to issues with how the club at large is set up.

A lot of punditry comes down to really simplistic generalisations like players aren’t trying hard enough because the actual reasons for bad performance are difficult to analyse or sometimes just due to the high variance of football as a sport. Reading between the lines it doesn’t seem like Ten Hag is great at motivating that particular squad but I doubt players are consciously half arsing it.

And benefitted greatly from Liverpool’s system.

Some great highlights videos came from this though. Think they did it for the bants.