To be really fucking fair to Hughes, nobody could have seen the entire team’s fitness drop off the cliff just like that. His buys are not bad ( like Wirtz, Hugo and to a certain extent Kerkez) and his sales were even better.
Out of Hughes and Slot, I would give Hughes another chance and see if his buys for this season work better under a new head coach who takes his physical conditioning seriously than the current head coach that we have now.
Just purely on paper, our squad should be challenging for the top 2 position in the league comfortably and going to at least the semis of the UCL.
This team will look very different under Luis Enrique, Xabi Alonso, Andoni Iraola, Cesc Fabregas or even Sebastian Hoeneß.