Probably was back then. The decline started after Koeman left, Puel took a lot of the wrath for it but he got dealt a bad hand and did a very good job in the circumstances, i know some dont agree and will cite boring football etc but they also dont factor in he lost the two highest goalscorers from the previous season, Wanyama who was a key player and the second half of the season lost fonte and Van Dijk, i would question who else could have done a better job losing probably his 5 best players which were the spine of the team
It's was death by a thousand cuts since then with a few periods of hope, when we went top under Ralph was great but always a false dawn. SR came in and this new dawn has been more of a disaster than any of us could have imagined. What baffles me about the club since 2016 is that despite it being clear that its has been failing for 10 years now, there is an arrogance about it that we do things differently and better than others.