LOL - it's the club that put the players through the 40-50+ games, not the country. I look at one turning point with Dele. That was the summer of 16/17. Him and the rest of the midfielders had run marathons for Poch for multiple seasons and we got 86 points in the league, our best ever finish. Our net spending in that summer was -€10m and we bought Gazzaniga, Sanchez, Aurier, Foyth, Llorente after selling Walker, Wimmer and Bentaleb for decent money. We then bought Moura in the January for €28m to make it an impressive €18m for a CL year.
It was so obvious to me in that summer that a decline would start, and to expect those midfielders to keep going at that rate was always going to end in tears. We needed to buy DM's and AM's and reduce the burden. Wanyama was broken, Winksy broken and Dembele in and out. This isn't captain hindsight as loads of fans called it at the time. This is what happened to Dele thereafter.
18/19 Hamstring strain Jan 20, 2019 Mar 9, 2019 49 days 12 Matches
18/19 Hamstring injury Dec 24, 2018 Dec 28, 2018 5 days 1 Match
18/19 Hamstring injury Sep 28, 2018 Oct 29, 2018 32 days 8 Matches
18/19 Hamstring injury Sep 8, 2018 Sep 22, 2018 15 days 4 Matches
18/19 Muscle strain Jul 4, 2018 Jul 6, 2018 3 days -
17/18 Hamstring injury Nov 2, 2017 Nov 15, 2017 14 days 3 Matches
He somehow got through the next season, which ended up with the Russia World Cup (your point). I went to Moscow and where you are somewhat right is the burden Southgate then put on Hendo, Lingard and Dele. You had Maguire calling our left wingback, Young, into mark his man in the middle, whilst him and Stones were free men. That meant Dele had to do his own job and protect the entire left hand side with Young being AWOL. Just shocking from Southgate. If the fans could see it in the stands, why couldn't he?
So I would always be tough on the way that Jose treated Dele who could have done himself a big favour and just smashed the little narcissistic bully straight on the jaw and knocked him out. Done all of us a favour. I strongly believe that the Jose-Dele relationship was part of the reason Jose lost the dressing room and the massive decline started. You could see guys like Sonny just quit on Jose on the pitch and wait patiently until he'd left the building. Hugo dropped some very strong hints in his recent book.
However, we should be clear. It wasn't Jose who broke Dele. That was Poch, with a little bit of Southgate thrown in. It was mostly Poch, and Steve Hitchen can take some of the rap for not getting his manager reinforcements in midfield. Even when he did a year prior, it was bloody Sissoko.