We don’t have any “right” to be challenging for Europe. What we do have is a squad, level of investment, wages, and apparent ambition that says we should be.
But we’re underachieving on that, we have been consistently since Gerard’s first run of games, and there are no signs of improvement - quite the opposite. The longer he stays, the more bereft of ideas we look and the worse the squad selections, substitutions, and alienating of players gets.