The inability to beat a single big team this entire season, and especially the manner in which the Supercoppa was lost, should be a wake up call the management and coach. This team is not half as deep as everyone says it is. Nor are many of the players even as good as they are touted to be.
To review the state of the squad..
Goalkeepers
Sommer is finished and Martinez never even started. The guy has one season of top flight experience in his entire career and now we're reported interested in Donnarumma? Beyond idiotic way to waste our transfer budget.
With Sommer having severely declined since last season and Martinez looking even more worthless than Audero, our goalkeeper department is weaker now than it was last season. Negligent management. An imminent headache.
Center Backs
De vrij has been solid overall but still has his "Giroud moments" and is prone to collapsing under pressure. He's also 33 in a month. Acerbi is also 37 in a month and perpetually injured. We've downgraded in this position compared to last season. That middle CB position also needs to be addressed as a priority.
LCB is perfect with Bastoni and Carlos and even Bisseck as cover, but we definitely should've taken Hermoso. Speaking of Bisseck, as much as I like the guy we need Pavard back - both in form and fitness as he wasn't good this season prior to his injury. Watching Bisseck get repeatedly skinned made me long for the Pavard of last season.
With an out-of-form and injured Pavard and a still-green Bisseck, we're actually worse off in this position than we were last season. Another downgrade. Apparently Palacios is also not ready for Inter and we're looking to loan him out. Another impact-less waste of money and overall, the defense is objectively worse than it was a season ago. Indeed, we've conceded more than double the goals now than we had at the same stage in 23/24.
Wing Backs
I'm happy with Dumfries' renewal and obviously Dimarco is a lock. Carlos is great and Darmian is a serviceable backup against the shit teams but no longer against the stronger opponents. This is not the same Darmian who filled in so admirably at RCB during our CL final run two years ago.
I'd also like a better utility player than Buchanan to fill in on either flank when needed. A mediocre player constantly played out of position, Buchanan was doomed to fail from the beginning.
Midfielders
Asllani needs to be sold immediately, the project has failed. He is simply not good enough.
A rotation player is urgently needed to back up and provide competition for Hakan. I've been crying out for years for a defensively solid DM and there's plenty of them on the market. Personally I feel Zielinski can play the role but ideally he'd be sharing more game time with Mkhitaryan. Speaking of, this needs to be Mkhitaryan's last year as a starter and Inzaghi needs to do a better job integrating Zielinski into the midfield.
Barella is a lock obviously but Frattesi looks to be out, if not in January then in the summer. He not been able to build upon the impressive and impactful super-sub role he had last season and now his relationship with the coach has allegedly disintegrated too. Again I feel Inzaghi has done a poor job of integrating him and building his confidence by giving him a few starts against weaker opponents.
Forwards
There's something incredibly wrong with Lautaro and as far as I'm concerned, if you average out his form over the time he's been here, you couldn't rate him much better than 7/10. His lows are so incredibly low (and last for so long) that they severely detract from his highs. Realistically though, we're stuck with each other for a while to come.
Hopefully Thuram continues to grow and while I'm not convinced he has the skill to really play much better than he is now, he can still be an important player for the immediate future.
Correa had one miraculous 10/10 performance before getting injured again. Arnautovic is a joke. We deserve everything we got for blowing €10m on this retard.
Taremi has been serviceable at times, useless at others. Either way, on the whole, he is not delivering enough and he is not of the mold we need for a difference maker off the bench either.
Conclusion
I said it at the time on the award-winning, globally renowned
Inter Jections Podcast, you simply cannot go into the next season with the same starting XI as the previous season. Especially when half your squad is 35. It's proof that your mercato was shit, borderline negligent, if you're unable to improve on it after two transfer markets.
The way I see it, we need to get to work immediately i.e. this January. If Buchanan and Frattesi want out then fuck them off. Palacios too. Asllani needs to be sold immediately. I'll take Cristante from Roma as a Hakan backup for now.
Arnautovic only has 6 months on his contract, terminate him. Bring in a pacey forward with some skill and dribbling ability for a fucking change instead of these lumbering idiots we're always signing.
That's not even mentioning the goalkeeper and CB situations which will have to wait until summer.
The reality is that with a combination of aging players, a lack of proper turnover, a dismal summer mercato spent on players who have delivered zero impact, and the inconsistencies in form of some players (such as Lautaro plummeting off a cliff), you could argue the squad is not as good as it was last season. The point tally proves it too as we had 2 more wins at this stage last season. Tellingly, those two wins came against Napoli and Juve.
Only fucking Inter can take a championship winning squad and acutely worsen it. Grande Inter, never change.
If we have another non-factor of a January mercato, which we will, we're seriously jeopardising our season, which we are.