This is the unfortunate truth and I think also partly down to our fans' expectations.
I've seen things like selling Walker had no impact on the squad or its achievements, not making x or y transfer had no impact. This comes from a meteorology where as long as we qualify for the CL, its ok and all that is needed.
I appreciate there have been other constraints but we've gotten consistently worse, year after year, since Walker left. Of course not all because of him specifically. He leaves and is replaced by inferior players. Dembele declines and is sold, is replaced by inferior players. Wanyama breaks, replaced by inferior players. Rose declines, he's still here and only competition is Mr reliable. Vertonghen and Toby get older and slower and our replacements are not yet up to scratch. Kane gets older and starts to feel the weight of his injuries, nobody to really reliably relieve the load. Lloris declines, Gazza is a pretty standard 2nd keeper. Etc etc, all through the spine of the team.
Its death and decline by a thousand cuts.
It isn't all doom and gloom but we've made things a lot harder and more painful for ourselves than they needed to be.