Toni Kroos

a veteran, arguably the greatest passer of the ball in the 21st century, serial winner, someone who stands on a higher platform than Xavi and Pirlo for some people, retires at the peak of his powers. There was not even an attempt at bringing a midfielder with high level passing ability and experience.

Nacho Fernández

a veteran, an academy graduate, a serial winner, a great captain, bleeds Madrid, leaves the club. There was no attempt at bringing in a high profile center back with enough experience to lead the defense in the absence of Rüdiger or Militao, who already had suffered 1 ACL at that point.

Luka Modrić

a veteran, one of the greatest midfielders ever, serial winner, great captain, a colossus at even 38,39,40 years old leaves the club even though he wanted to stay here and retire, and there was not even an attempt at bringing a high profile midfielder with leadership and experience.

Carlo Ancelotti

a veteran, one of the greatest managers ever, a true professional, a father figure for the players, a legend who won us 3 Champions Leagues has to go through a season with insane injury problems, and he doesn't get any help from the board. No winter transfers, no nothing. Was he perfect? Of course not, but with the limited squad he had, he still got 84 points in the league. Will we get there after buying 4 new players and hiring 2 coaches this season? Let's see, we need 14 points in the 7 remaining games to even match that "horrible" season.

So, 4 veterans who are legends of this club leave and you don't feel the urgency to replace them, for what, maybe for a rebuild? Oh, I know about that rebuild attempt.

Xabi Alonso

a veteran player, an arguably new young coach who went unbeaten and won the Bundesliga, did something that could never be done before, and probably won't be done in a long while. You bring him with high aspirations and big dreams for the future. "Yes, he's a system coach, we will play organized football". "This is a long-term project". We do in fact play a lot more organized in the early season, but not all of Xabi's requests are fulfilled. We still did not bring any midfielders, we did not fill the gaping holes in our squad, we spent most of our money on rising talents from different leagues and took a gamble, we still did not find a way to not make our superstar divas upset etc.

Was Xabi tactically outclassed from time to time? Yes, obviously. Was sacking him going to change anything if you don't fix the internal issues in the squad? Definitely not. Xabi could not command enough respect in the dressing room, and was overpowered by Pérez' superstar team.

Finally, what I'm trying to say is that most of our issues, let it be the players having performance dips, let it be the players not acting as a team on the pitch in 90% of our games, or any other problem you can think of, all of them are caused by the chain reaction of Pérez' and the board's actions. Pérez won the ego battle by brining the best player in the world to his club, but he did not think this thoroughly. Our squad planning did NOT account for injuries, did NOT account for some of the best players to ever walk the earth leaving the team, did NOT account for huge egos clashing with the coaches' decisions. You can love or hate any player as much as you like, but you should not fail to see the main reason behind our failure.