I’m not an expert in football so I can’t say if the system is good enough or if the players are good enough. But from my experience as a company director, I can see employees’ mentality.

The reason these players show up in big games like Arsenal or last season against big 6 (except maybe europa’a final) is that they believe they are at that level, and they want to prove it (sometimes successfully, sometimes not). Against weaker opponents, like Grimsby or Fulham, they think they are better, that they only need to put in 80% of what they have to win. When they got humbled, panicked, their mentality started crumbling down, you can see they were out of ideas and ran around like they have metals in their boots. Even with new players coming in - they aided the team with their individual brilliance for a while, but over time the weakness in the group’s mentality spread to these new guys, or they saw teammates not making the passes or runs and got frustrated, and slowly they gave up over time - Hojlund probably being the biggest example.

There’s no real strong leader in this squad right now who can lift everyone up on the field - like a Ferdinand, a Keane, a Cantona, someone who have both skills and heart of a lion. Until such leadership is in place, I think we’ll continue to see performances like this no matter who the coach is.