I noticed Arne Slot speak about how crucial 1v1 battles out wide are in modern football and he highlighted the PSG game.
A game in which we lost all four 1 v 1 battles:
Mendy came out on top against Salah.
Hakimi came out on top against Diaz.
Barcola/Doue came out out on top against TAA.
Kvara came out on top on top against Robbo.
This is why we hardly created a thing across both legs, but Villa, who are worse than us overall, did find some success going forward against PSG. Scoring and creating chances.
Rogers, Rashford, McGinn won some duels out wide against Hakimi/Mendy. Where they lost the game was Hakimi and Mendy also won duels going foward themselves with late runs. Kvara and Doue won duels in the first leg against their full backs.
Next season, I don't see Salah winning many 1v1 duels against any really athletic full back, with concentration (for his off the ball running). In fact, a bit like against Fulham's Robinson, we'll have to take the risk of allowing Salah to cheat defensively and stay forward.
On the other side of the pitch, as much as I like Gakpo, I think we still need a dominant 1v1 attacker capable of dribbling past people with ease. Sell Diaz and bring in some like Kudus/Gittens.
As for the CF, I was watching Isak today and midweek. He's good potentially world class, but he's not worth 150m. The money he's worth (85-90m), Newcastle wouldn't accept, so I hope we're looking at alternative options now in Cunha (depending on his pressing stats)/Pedro/Etitike. I see us going for a multifunctional pressing CF, similar to Dembele/Bobby F, than an outright number 9. Again, it's something in Arne's press conference which gave me that impression when asked about what type of forward we're after. (paraphrase) "One that works incredibly hard".