Despite having to sell players in the off-season, manager Gary O'Neil managed to keep them in midtable in the Premier League.
"I personally think our current squad is better than the one in 2018-2020," Shi said to fans in response to queries on social media.
"In the Premier League there are around 10-14 clubs at a similar level, the position in the table depends on a lot of factors but it's not the only criteria to judge a team's competitiveness.
"We miss Raul so much. I admit the peak Raul is a player who is very hard to replace, at this position we struggled to find a top one after his unfortunate injury."
He added: "We are going to sign one or two number nines this summer. The peak Raul was a top three striker in the league, which is really hard to replace. We did struggle on recruitment in the past few years.
"Hopefully the new strikers or Hee-chan can perform well next season."