Again this conversation of already decline in 2018? He won the giro with the performance of the decade on stage 18, how can a man that is declining do the watts that he did on that stage? And then he did the podium on the tour. So froome was declining when he won tour 2017,Vuelta 2017, giro 2018 and podium tour 2019 in a row. If this is declining i hope chris froome could decline of this way in the future. Other argument is the fact that he was doing 450 watts in a climbs of 20 min effort and 420 watts in climbs of 40 min effort on may 2019, you can see that on strava, what a declining.If he's good enough to work for a teammate and willing to do so, then no reason to keep him off the Tour team. Due to the injury, plus his age, plus the fact he had already starting to decline, I don't think he can ever been a GC rider again.
The problem is not the age, it's his right leg. He started on the bike to soon last year with a lot if imbalances still on his body. He screw the recovery with that.
Or maybe he was doing 8 hours of training in africa, to more lately be the best in the world at tour de france.