There are points worth going over here so I'll try to do so somewhat thoroughly.
Yes. Your argument depends on whether where we are now as opposed to that 'starting point' is an improvement. I don't think so.
1) We still lost the league to an Atleti team that let a 10 point advantage slip away and nearly lost it to another bad RM. Not an improvement.
2) We exited the CL at an earlier stage than last season at the receiving end of a 5-2 result that included a 1-4 humiliation at home. Not an improvement.
You are right that his football is better than EV's, but that isn't saying much because EV set the bar very very low. The same could be said of Setien but no body here wanted him to continue. And Setien, like K, performed very poorly in the league despite the better football. The squad of 'washed up veterans' you say he motivated lost twice against Real (which hadn't happened for god knows how many years) and drew and lost against Atleti. The onus is on you to explain why losing that many points against direct rivals is somehow not a clear indicator of K's terrible coaching. On the other end of the spectrum, the 'washed up veterans' couldn't win must-win games against weaker teams, either: i.e. Granada and Levante. Or do you think that losing against both strong and weak teams is acceptable?
The only thing he has going for him is his commitment to youth. I'll happily grant you that. But he has overplayed Pedri and underused Puig, so the record there isn't flawless either.
At the end of the day Barca is an elite club however that should compete for LL and the CL. Under K, we dropped both. That is the standard against which he should be judged. If this were Real/Chelsea/Bayern, he would be sacked. Why should we communicate to the world that failure here is tolerable?
You basically start from a wrong premise, and you build an argumentation on shabby foundations:
1) "At the end of the day Barca is an elite club however that should compete for LL and the CL"
That's correct only in principle.
If you try to apply the principle into actual empirical reality, there you see that teams come and go in cycles.
So, no team always wins, because sometimes the cycle is over, and the new cycle has not started yet, or is just starting.
2) Given 1, you can't demand titles every year. From any team.
You say that other coaches are sacked if they don't win, but that's totally off from real world of football.
Pep was not sacked after 2017 at city, Klopp was not sacked after 3.5 years without a trophy at Liverpool. Zidane will not be sacked this season if he does not want to go.
Pochetino stayed at Tottenham without winning even a League cup for 5 years. And other countless examples really.
So, no that's not the only standard. Depends on many things that a coach is judged for and most importantly the phase or the cycle the team is in.
And this year, given what was the state of the team and the squad individually in August (look at 1), there should be no title demands, but other objectives.
So, what we can discuss is what those objectives were, and if they were met.
3) Your points 1 and 2 do not prove anything, as you can see from above.
- We drew Napoli last season, had we drew Bayern we would have been humiliated in the previous round. No argument really there.
- Atletico had a better squad than us this season, and are at a different phase in their up-down cycles. The fact that they let 10-pt slip proves nothing about us really.
It's their own shortcoming.
It's only a miracle that we found ourselves challenging for this league suddenly in April. You are presenting the issue as if we have been favorites and then we bottled it.
But even if that was the case, look at 2 again. You can't claim that was a demand not met.\
3) Sure, EV had the bar very low.
But Koeman did not only raise the bar.
He made us have the best attacking output in all Europe (even above Bayern, City, and all other top European teams).
You cannot just pass that.
That's not 'just raising' a bit the low bar. It's a tremendous improvement.
Of course, our defense is not where it should be, that's clear.
But if our attackers had better conversion rate this season, we might have won an unexpected double.
4) Failing to win derbies, and failing to win must-wins against minor sides is an important mentality problem.
But:
i) It's not a Koeman-induced problem. It's a mentality related one, and it has been here for a looong while.
At least after Lucho, everyone could see there was something wrong in this team on the issue.
ii) You can say Koeman did not resolve it. And I can give you that.
My opinion here is that it will never be resolved with Messi, pique, alba, and busi being the leaders of this squad.
We need winners to resolve this issue
