We would have done a lot better if the tactics weren’t so negative and our CB’s weren’t so crap. Kane and Son scored 40 league goals between them. You should be pushing the top 4/challenging for the title if you can produce that kind output offensively so for me the blame lays squarely with the back four.
Title? Nah, not even close most seasons. Top 4 though, I agree with. We scored 68 goals last season, which was joint 3rd last season and would have been 4th the season before that. In fact, our 67 goals in 2018/19 got us 4th place, behind Chelsea (only 63 goals) and ahead of Arsenal (73!).
I'm not laying the blame squarely with our back four though. We clearly had instructions to sit back and defend after going a goal up. With Verts and Toby at the back, and a decent DM in front of them, that might have worked, but not last season. ANY non-world class defence would struggle when your whole team is sitting back and conceding possession. As we all saw, opposing teams realised that they could just save their energy and over-run us at the end of each match. It was idiotic management.
You still need others contributing goals
40 goals is just over 1 per game
Where are the other goals coming from
Okay, so Bale got a good chunk of those, but you'd expect any attacking player to nab at least a handful. Even our midfielders should be expected to contribute a few goals.
For the sake of argument, let's assume a 4-3-3 with Son and Kane (with their 40 goals) at LW and CF. The third attacker (Bale last season, Moura or Bergwijn this time) should contribute at least 5 goals. Pessimistically, add 3 each from the midfielders (mostly Hojbjerg, Alli, Ndombele), 2 set piece headers from each CB and another 2 from each full back. That's 62 goals already. Add a few from the subs (esp. the 4th and 5th attackers) and you've got a top 4 goal return.
It'd be nice to score a few more though!